"When I consider how my light is spent..."

[flemmings]

Those people who decry the use of a thesaurus are young whippersnappers. There's a perfectly valid reason for using a thesaurus. It's that maddening tickling sensation that I *know* there's a word for this, the precise and exact word, but my aging hormone-fuzzed brain no longer supplies it automatically the way it did twenty years ago, or even ten. I hate that feeling, and I hate trying to find the near-approximations under which the real word might be listed in Roget's, and I hate it worst of all when it's phantom word pain: the word doesn't in fact exist, I only remember it doing so. Ths must be what athletes feel like when their reflexes start to slow down. Mournful: Omukute darui jinsei dake datte sa. (Is distracted by the shiny: are you serious about who sung that? Wow, the man gets around.) (Is distracted by the geeky: why is there no good English translation for darui? Possibly because we don't have a common-use word, any more than we do for the extended uses of genki. I think we say 'I feel bleh' instead, or at best 'lethargic'.)

Mind you, the people who read the original pixel-stained technopeasant rant and sneered 'The guy must have worn out his thesaurus' are beyond whippersnapper and into infantile. It may pass the understanding of those who learned their vocabulary from television and Sweet Valley High, but truly, some people know all those words, and use them, from their own quite genuine reading experience.

That said, more cheerfully, there's nothing to restore vocabulary like reading Aubrey Maturin: and ohh there's so much of it to read. (Goes off to restore vocab.) (And that's an example right there. My mind gave me only 'revive' and 'return', and I had to find 'restore' in the thesaurus.)

Comments

I LOVE my Thesaurus

[i-am-zan.livejournal.com]

'nuff said!

^____^

[rasetsunyo.livejournal.com]

For me it's more to remind myself that I do know a lot more words than I usually use. I'm such a lazy bum.

Also current thinking seems to favour using short, familiar words instead of long ones whenever possible (i've actually been explicitly told that in a writing course, which used an ahaha American textbook), which is why someone who uses a more extensive vocabulary is seen as pretentious.

[tammylee.livejournal.com]

What I dislike is when I KNOW there is a word to exactly describe what I'm wanting to say but it is antiquated enough that it doesn't appear in modern dictionaries; which would be why I have an enormous two-volume dictionary from the fifties sitting on my shelf.

I am all in favour of electronic and online dictionaries. Without the constraints of printing costs and physical book size is there a need to retire those outdated words? I say nay! *rolls in words*

*cough* Those who mock the thesaurus are probably those who need it the most!

[flemmings.livejournal.com]

Luckily, she sighs, I am antiquated enough myself to know those mid-century words from experience. If I could only remember them.

I think what riles me most is the online assumption that the only English in existence is that spoken by very young middle Americans. The fact that some words have passed from CNN usage doesn't mean they're obsolete in English as a whole. Maritime Canada, England, Scotland, Ireland, Australia, NZ- and even what I know of South African and Caribbean English- all have lovely varied vocabularies that include 'old-fashioned' words as well as dialect ones. Even the second-language English vocabs of places like India and HK and S'pore seem larger than that of current-day middle America. (morose) Possibly the only thing the English Empah had over the American cultural hegemony is that its English was far more varied and colourful (to say nothing of Latinate): which is why my language still has more in common with an Indus Indian second-language speaker than with a Minnesota teenager.

[flemmings.livejournal.com]

There's a time and place for short simple sentences. There's also a time for ornate vocabulary, and if you can't do both you wind up reading as boring as an instruction manual.

The problem of course is that people who use thesaurus synonyms are like people who look up foreign words in the dictionary: unless you have some notion of their nuance and cultural context to start with you'll probably misuuse them, sometimes with howlingly bad effect. But the more that current writers stick to plain and basic English, the less likely for young writers to meet other words in context. Vicious circle.

But as with fangirl Japanese, I still think the desire to find and use unfamiliar words indicates a more generous and positive attitude to language and culture as a whole, than smugly confining yourself to a limited vocabulary in the only language you feel you need to know.

And the charge of pretentiousness makes me want to throw things. It's like the comment some woman made at a con panel: 'When I read a foreign word in a fic I feel like the author is making fun of me.' I know everyone is the centre of their own universe, but this is ridiculous.

Re: I LOVE my Thesaurus

[flemmings.livejournal.com]

They're also a lot more fun to read, and generally informative, than reading a dictionary. You learn which words belong together, for one thing.

[petronia.livejournal.com]

I've seen some thesaurus-decrying in SSBB context lately, and as the editor I can safely say the original problem is definitely a problem, but I'm not certain a thesaurus has anything to do with it one way or the other. How I'd describe it, it's like the "I know there's a word for this" issue only the person... doesn't know there's a precise word for it. XD So they use the approximation that occurs to them. "Off-putting" to mean "disarming". "Perked" to mean "sprung". "Throbbed like a lifeline of blood". Multiply by once every two sentences and it's vertigo-inducing.

I would say what's happening is that these writers have been exposed to good prose with complex vocabulary, know how to recognize it, and would like to reproduce it, but don't have a trained ear for it. Not sure what advice to give on this point, really.

[flemmings.livejournal.com]

Doesn't have a trained ear- or hasn't read enough to grasp meanings- will cover 'off-putting' for 'disarming' which have opposite nuances entirely. But other cases I think (from personal experience- hazukashii) originate in a desire to be original as poetry is, forcibly expanding a word's accepted meaning so that it becomes semi-metaphoric. I bet they do know the right word but that's the one everyone uses so they'll use another and unexpected one. Hence, possibly, perked for sprung. Some writers can actually do this well; which, alas, inspires the rest of us to try it at home.

The only solution for near-miss is more reading, I suppose. Or being told by your editor that no, that's not the word you want. (This, I suppose, is why people are told to get beta readers, to save editors grief.)