Since most of us are writers of some sort, I thought I'd kick off a few technical topics about writing.

Topic #1: Vocabulary Kung Fu

When reading stuff from certain authors, I like to keep www.dictionary.com open in the background. Every now and then you guys pop off with some word that I really like but I'm scared to use because while I understand the context it's in, the full implications of the word need to be looked up. I love that.

So... what are your favorite "stumper words" you like to whip out to make readers reach for their dictionary?

Here's some of mine:

>>lackadaisical
Lacking spirit, liveliness, or interest; languid: �There'll be no time to correct lackadaisical driving techniques after trouble develops�

>>Hubris
Overbearing pride or presumption; arrogance: �There is no safety in unlimited technological hubris� (Yeah, everbody loves hubris... originally I thought it meant manure compost or something.)

>>ephemeris
A table giving the coordinates of a celestial body at a number of specific times during a given period.

>>allegory
The representation of abstract ideas or principles by characters, figures, or events in narrative, dramatic, or pictorial form.
A story, picture, or play employing such representation. John Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress and Herman Melville's Moby Dick are allegories.
A symbolic representation: The blindfolded figure with scales is an allegory of justice.

>>Synodontidae
soft-finned bottom-dwelling fishes.

Tom, what was that italian word for "Something extra" that you love so much?

OMFG-- just pick up Umberto Eco's Name of the Rose! I used three dictionaries for Eco's book. Here are some highlights:

Perspicious- keen mental perception
Diapharious- transluscent
Confabulate- to converse informally
Mendicant- beggar, or a monastic clergyman requiring to subsist on alms
Tumescent- to swell up
Thetical- arbitrary

This is a recommended read. Name of the Rose @Amazon

Raphael

Oh yeah... it finally came to me while I was taking a dump... Odd how that boosts my mental powers, kinda like popeye and spinach.

Lagnappe!

I have remembered Tom Chick's mystery word!

I have a bunch that I like to use occasionally.

Thaumaturgy is a nice one to use if you're talking about RPGs, since it essentially means "magic." I also think I used "chthonic" in an article I wrote about Everquest--it pertains to things that live underground.

Internecine means "destructive." Supposedly it's more fitting when talking about a mutually destructive relationship... but I use it for other stuff too.

tergiversation is one I'm just waiting to whip out. According to Dictionary.com, it means "The act of abandoning a party or cause." I figure I'll pull that baby out when I review some war game.

Most of my favorite words were, at some point, Word of the Day at dictionary.com. It's kind of fun to browse the archives and note down words that you may actually be able to use. That's where I got thaumaturgy from.

Oh oh-oh oh-h-h-h-h-h!
Oh oh-oh oh-h-h-h-h-h!

Oh oh-oh oh-h-h-h-h-h!
Oh oh-oh oh-h-h-h-h-h!

Everybody was Kung Fu Writing (AH!)
Those cats were slinging fiction (HO!)
In fact it was a little bit fright'ning (AH!)
'Cause they wrote with perfect diction... (HO!)

This thread reminds me of a lesson:

Reminder #14: Avoid Fancy Words

"Avoid the elaborate, the pretentious, the coy, and the cute. Do not be tempted by a twenty-dollar word when there is a 10-center handy, ready and able...

If you admire fancy words, if the sky is beauteous, every blonde curvaceous, every intelligent child prodigious, if you are tickled by discombobulate, you will have a bad time with Reminder number 14 and writing in general."

-Strunk & White: Elements of Style (are you a writer? Buy it)

Or, as an old College Prof once scrawled on a paper of mine:

"Save this, this, and especially THIS word for Scrabble Andrew (all were circled). What are you trying to say? Say that instead. REACH your audience, don't mock them and don't try to impress them. Knowing when to drop a twenty pound word is even more important than knowing the word in the first place."

The words were: lugubrious, prurient, and antediluvian, respectively.

I was young, armed with a dictionary, and drunk with power.

-Andrew

Your prof busted you on "respectively". Man, did they hold class sessions in a double-wide or something?

I hope you're kidding...

No, "respectively" reffered to the order of the words circled. Y'know, explaining that "antidiluvian" was the one he really was appalled by.

"Save this, this, and especially THIS word"

---

Quote:

"Avoid the elaborate, the pretentious, the coy, and the cute. Do not be tempted by a twenty-dollar word when there is a 10-center handy, ready and able...

If you admire fancy words, if the sky is beauteous, every blonde curvaceous, every intelligent child prodigious, if you are tickled by discombobulate, you will have a bad time with Reminder number 14 and writing in general."

-Strunk & White: Elements of Style (are you a writer? Buy it)

---

It's all about effective communication. There's a time (rare) when a ten dollar word makes the point better than anything else, but those occasions are few and far between.

Reagan understood that the key was making a connnection with the audience, making every individual feel like he was talking personally to him or her. Black-tie words didn't fit in that context.

BTW, Raphael, great to see you posting here.

---

Quote:

Lagnappe

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I don't remember where I heard this, but I'll always remember it:
"If you're trying to make a good impression on someone, chances are that's the impression you'll make".

So when I see pretentious writing, I assume the writer is insecure.

I took a creative writing class in college from a successful fiction writer who explained the problem a thesaurus causes very well. I had the bad habit (along with most of the other students) of being self conscious about repeating the same word over and over. So in a passage of dialogue, I'd write 'said', 'replied', 'queried', 'inquired', 'stated', etc. All to avoid repeating forms of 'say'. She demonstrated that simple common words like 'say' are effectively invisible to a reader - he won't even notice them no matter how many times they're repeated as long as they're used appropriately. Using a different word when 'said' would have worked is distracting, so it should only be done when you want to attract special attention to the word.

My mother's been using "langiappe" since I can remember, and it confused me in high school when nobody knew what it was. My mom grew up is south Lousiana (Patterson/Morgan City) and I guess I had never really realized it was a cajun word. I mean, she doesn't have a cajun accent or anything (being a speech therapist for some years will do that) and I'd lived in Ft. Lauderdale my whole life.

Langiappe is a cool word. It's fun to say, and we need a cool word that means "a little sumpin' extra." It's not quite the same as gratuity - that implies you earned it as a "tip" whereas I've always seen langiappe used more like something you give just for the hell of it. Just to be nice. Like "hey, I went to the soda machine and I grabbed you a coke too."

Anyway, when I see big words in reviews, I quite often remember my english teachers saying that if you're writing for a newspaper or something, you should write to a 5th grade level. Not AT a 5th grade level, but you should keep it so that relatively uneducated people can understand it.

"If you're trying to make a good impression on someone, chances are that's the impression you'll make."

"So when I see pretentious writing, I assume the writer is insecure"

Does this apply to speaking too? If so, maybe Dennis Miller is insecure!

"Does this apply to speaking too? If so, maybe Dennis Miller is insecure!"

It definitely applies to speaking, but performers aren't necessarily being themselves when on stage. I think it's common to overemphasize a trait or style so an audience can easily categorize you. It could mostly be his 'shtick'.

I think Dennis Miller is usually very funny, but he (and his writers!) clearly make an effort to pose as & appeal to intellectual types. That's an important point - performers like Dennis Miller usually have a lot of prewritten and rehearsed material to rely on, even during sit-down talk show 'interviews'. I don't get cable at home, so I don't know if his HBO show is actually like this, but I bet it is. If it seems not, I'd assume he (and his writers) are just unusually talented. Didn't George Burns say something like, "The most important thing in acting is sincerity. Once you can fake that, you've got it made."

It really depends on the writer. Some use the ten dollar words quite naturally and it shows in their writing. I'm sure they probably just think with that kind of vocabulary. If it appears to be effortless, it probably is. If it reads like the author had his Thesaurus open while composing, he probably did.

Sometimes the fancy word is the right one, though.

"When he himself might his quietus make...." Shakespeare wrote. Quietus is such a more interesting word than death in this case.

In general, though, I agree that fancy words are ill-suited for most writing, especially game writing. I'd suspect that most readers would have little patience for them.

"It really depends on the writer. Some use the ten dollar words quite naturally and it shows in their writing. I'm sure they probably just think with that kind of vocabulary."

This is known as the anti-Alanis Morrisette effect. I always got the impression, with every song, that she had a Thesaurus open while writing.

A good example of when to use a big/obscure word is when Bruce Geryk used the term "innumerate".
The word fit and there was no "ten cent" replacement that would have been more effective (at least not one I can think of).

Quietus, man, only Shakespeare should ever use a word like that. Anywhere else it'd look phony and worse, it'd be misleading. Rather than "dead" the mind leaps to "quiet". Hint: never use a large word if context doesn't help define it.

-Andrew

That's funny. I considered mentioning that I think Shakespeare 'skates by' on snob appeal these days. I've been in productions of many of his plays (I met my wife while we were both working at a summer Shakespeare festival), and took a class in college studying his writing. So it's not that I'm bitter that it's all been over my head, I've done the research to decode the complete text of many of the plays.

There are some great gags that transcend the language, but even most of the good drama is difficult at best for an audience.

One of the plays we did at that summer Shakespeare festival was Coriolanus, one of the more obscure histories (and there's some dispute as to whether Shakespeare really wrote this one). It was pretty tough to understand the plot even after studying it & learning the lines. One night, in a critical early scene, the 2 elderly lead actors who drove the scene got confused and started jumping around and repeating the scene. It was a big crowd scene. I finally turned to the guy who gave everyone the cue to exit and said "You've got to get us out of here", and so he shouted his "Let's go!" or whatever that translates to in iambic pentameter.

The thing is, the audience of course didn't flinch. It was a small (but full) house, and many of the exits in this scene were basically through the audience. Not a puzzled look in the place. Even better, this was the special "subscriber's night". The audience was supposedly made entirely of the biggest supporters of the festival, which had been going on for decades. Afterwards, there was a reception and actors & crew socialized with the audience. I didn't hear of anyone with questions. Honestly, most of the cast would have been a little short on answers anyway.

With good performances, the audience probably grasps most of the big plot points clearly. But I bet 99% would be unable to explain lines like "might his quietus make". Did you, Mark, or did that require some research or a footnote? It's interesting to compare footnotes from different editors - there are still many passages with meanings that are disputed. But I think plays (and screenplays) inherently don't work as reading material. That's not how they were intended to be presented. It's incomplete. Performances fill in many things the author left out, and he intended that. I don't think he intended extensive academic footnotes to do that job.

It's surprising how many common phrases are believed to have originated in Shakespeare's plays, and maybe the audiences for the original productions were more comfortable with the language. But I don't think it's worked for a long time.

BTW, my favorite line from Shakespeare is "Should be, should buzz".

"With good performances, the audience probably grasps most of the big plot points clearly. But I bet 99% would be unable to explain lines like "might his quietus make". Did you, Mark, or did that require some research or a footnote?"

I don't really remember my first reading of it. I suspect I had a sense of what it meant. Just to back up a bit in that soliloquy, Shakespeare starts it off with some very plain, very simple to grasp words. "To be or not to be...." It doesn't get much plainer than that, does it?

The part that threw me is what comes immediately after quietus. "...his quietus make/ With a bare bodkin? who would fardels bear...."

I do remember having to look up bodkin and fardels. Bodkin is a dagger. Fardels is burdens, I believe.

I don't know anything about theatre, so I have no idea how his plays play now. I've seen a few and certainly the language is difficult. I just know plays as literary works, mainly.

Tom likes the word "effete" too.

Amanpour

oh shakespeare... hes the guy that wanted to write like Marlowe and Chaucer and became famouser than both. he good.

oops i made a quietus just now, passing the wind, cutting the cheese. harhar! shakespeare do alot of bawdy fart jokes too! im shakespeare!

etc

I'm sure Stefan and Supertanker know the three special rules for writing like a lawyer:

1) Never use one word where three or more will do: "Each and every;"

2) Never use a monosyllabic word ("use") where a multisyllabic word ("utilize") is available; and

3) Always string synonyms together to make sure you have covered your ass: "All documents, papers, memorials, testimonials, notes, doodles, and chicken scratches."

"A good example of when to use a big/obscure word is when Bruce Geryk used the term "innumerate"."

Ah.. but that word is so easily confused with "enumerate" that I don't reccomend it for frequent use.

My favorite word that should never, ever, under any circumstances be used, but was recently used in a review of Anachronox for GamesDomain (I don't recall the author):

Defenestration

Bonus points to anyone who knows what it means. Definition below
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Main Entry: de�fen�es�tra�tion
Pronunciation: (")dE-"fe-n&-'strA-sh&n
Function: noun
Etymology: de- + Latin fenestra window
Date: 1620
: a throwing of a person or thing out of a window

Two comments. First off, this discussion reminds me WAY too much of days spent studying for standardized tests. Secondly, words which I routinely intersperse into daily conversation might seem weird or exotic to other people. I mean, it wouldn't surprise me if words like "epiphany" and "banal" were considered non-standard by the reading public. As writers, do any of you have this issue as well?

- Alan

"I mean, it wouldn't surprise me if words like "epiphany" and "banal" were considered non-standard by the reading public. As writers, do any of you have this issue as well?"

Sure. The rule of thumb is to always ask yourself a simple question: is this the best word I can use here? Sometimes that word happens to be the fancy word.

-Andrew

Sadly, I knew what defenestration meant. But yeah, Bob, I'd agree that it isn't a word that should ever be used... the fact that it even exists baffles the mind.

"Defenestration"

I learned that word from a comic book. There was a joke loser superhero known as the Defenestrator. He was an T1-Arnie clone who, well, tossed people outta windows.

When I took some psychology classes, I was fond of using various forms of "synapse." I think I wrote about how I lacked "synaptical fortitude" at some point.

The last "big" word I read that I really liked was "tmesis." I can't really think of an appropriate place to use it, though.

I see Umberto Eco's Name Of The Rose mentioned here. Does it compare to Foucault's Pendulum?

-Thierry

"I see Umberto Eco's Name Of The Rose mentioned here. Does it compare to Foucault's Pendulum?"

Oh GOD, go away. Please.

"'I see Umberto Eco's Name Of The Rose mentioned here. Does it compare to Foucault's Pendulum?'

Oh GOD, go away. Please."

Yeesh, if you're going to ask me to leave, might as well pick something more inflammatory than a question about a book.

-Thierry

Oh come off it -- it's not the fact that it's a book question -- it's your unabashed pretentiousness!!! LOL! ROFL!! RTFM!!! how about a list of all the Russian novelists you read on the subway on the way home!!! ROFL! LOL! TTYL!

"Oh come off it -- it's not the fact that it's a book question -- it's your unabashed pretentiousness!!! LOL! ROFL!! RTFM!!! how about a list of all the Russian novelists you read on the subway on the way home!!! ROFL! LOL! TTYL!"

Is that it? My pretentiousness? Pffft. My commute reading list is along the lines of New X-Men, Batman, and JLA. I read some Fantastic Four on the bus to work this morning.

Last time I read anything involving russians was when when Punisher and Spider-Man beat up a hitman called "The Russian." Does that count?

Happy message board reading!

-Thierry

"I see Umberto Eco's Name Of The Rose mentioned here. Does it compare to Foucault's Pendulum?"

It's better. Whereas Foucault's Pendulum is a largely impenetrable semiotic fireworks display, The Name of the Rose puts Eco's apparent obsession for research to good use enhancing an actual story.

And to the idiot who thinks you're pretentious for asking: What the hell are you talking about? They're both mass-market bestsellers; one was made into a movie starring Sean Connery for christ's sake. Though I imagine a lot more people bought Foucault's Pendulum than managed to slog through it.