How do you feel about words you don't know?

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I was reading the review of The Proposition on Freaky Triggger, and Pete uses the word "purgitous". I occasionally find words that I don't know and try to look them up straight away. In this case, dictionary.com doesn't know the word, so I presume it's a mis-spelling. Which I don't mind, but I still don't know what word he's trying to spell.

This got me thinking about words I come across that I don't know. There are so MANY words in the language that coming across words you haven't before is almost inevitable - at least I presume it happens to other people as well. Do you just skip over the word and hope to figure out the context? Do you scurry off to the dictionary to figure out what's going on? (And do you remember the word for later?) Or do you bin the article, subscribing to the view that if the writer's trying to put in words that you don't understand, he'll be covering up for not saying much of interest?

Or all of the above? Or none?

And how do you feel? Inferior? Insulted? Happy you've learnt a new word? What?

― Johnny B Was Quizzical (Johnney B), Monday, 24 April 2006 07:06 (twenty years ago)

I am, you know, word crazy, so to words I say: Bring it on. I usually end up figuring it out from context as best I can. It's when someone (possibly me) uses a "big word" in chat that I do a quick google "define:word" search.

Was "purgatorial" the word he was going for? I haven't read the article.

― Casuistry (Chris P), Monday, 24 April 2006 07:13 (twenty years ago)

i love words and i love thinking about the small semantic differences between some words. very often the answer to "why use the complicated word that i have to look up when you could just use the easy one" is that the harder word conveys the writer's meaning just a little better.

if i don't know a word, i look it up. if i feel inferior, i don't make that the writer's fault. that "whuddya think yer better than me, mr. fancypants" attitude bugs and frustrates me.

― even cathy berberian's nose (Jody Beth Rosen), Monday, 24 April 2006 07:24 (twenty years ago)

Always happy to learn a "new" word. I do not understand (or like, if I'm honest) people who become insulted/consumed with a passive-aggressive inferiority complex when the word they are facing on the page is 'hard' somehow. The only way you can possibly dismiss a writer for over-writing is to actually know what they're trying to say, and you simply cannot toss away a piece because you, Diddums, can't rise to the intellectual challenge of opening ONE dictionary. I have ZERO pity for people like this.

Instinctively I'd say this word had something to do with purgatory the place or purge the action, and is *probably* mis-spelled or employs an experimental suffix strategy.

― suzy (suzy), Monday, 24 April 2006 07:27 (twenty years ago)

I still get loads of words I don't understand. For instance in the Guide, someone used 'perfidious' which is a fantastic word (it means treacherous, deceitful) And, my dear, words is my business - would seriously love to have wordsmith on my business card or summat. I quite often write them down and then look 'em up later in a PROPER, NON-VIRTUAL dictionary. Lots of things make me feel inferior but not this - probably because I have thousands of foreign language words in my head as well. Sometimes writers do use long words out of arrogance, sometimes it's just that only that very word will fit and it's very satisfying to get across exactly what you mean. And why do you think Will Self took up the smack - he learnt too many big words! His brain couldn't handle it. Probably.

― Nobodys Prawn (Nobodysprawn), Monday, 24 April 2006 12:26 (twenty years ago)

i think i annoy my friends sometimes in conversation as i'm always trying to think of the most appropriate word when describing things.

"oh what's the word I'm looking for..?"
(sometimes someone will offer me help)
"no that's not it, there's a much better word for it..."

― Ste (Fuzzy), Monday, 24 April 2006 12:33 (twenty years ago)

actually that's not answering the question at all, but i'm always welcome for new words.

― Ste (Fuzzy), Monday, 24 April 2006 12:34 (twenty years ago)

xxpost 'perfidious' is one of my favorite words--I first looked it up after hearing Glenn Miller's version of 'Perfidia' when I was 18. It's a pleasure learning new words when I can remember the context of discovery in this way, more so somehow than learning them as a child.

― sgs (sgs), Monday, 24 April 2006 12:34 (twenty years ago)

But that sense of having a place on a map where the word was 'found' is just as much a part of my childhood as my adulthood.

― suzy (suzy), Monday, 24 April 2006 12:51 (twenty years ago)

unknown words = treasures to discover, unlock, and use. I've felt that way since 4th grade, when we each got a thick green school-issued dictionary.

― Jaq (Jaq), Monday, 24 April 2006 13:13 (twenty years ago)

I think it's important to be clear. I know that sounds obvious, but there's a lot of opaque writing about. Sometimes you have to use a short word and resist the temptation to use a longer, more impressive-sounding word in the interests of clarity. But if there's one word that means almost what you mean and another that means exactly what you mean, the exact one wins. Even if it's one that lots of people haven't heard before. Like Suzy says, it's not hard to look it up. I can't sympathise with someone who willingly remains ignorant.

― beanz (beanz), Monday, 24 April 2006 13:15 (twenty years ago)

Yeah I relish coming across new words. beanz is OTM - obscurity for the sake of it is bad, but exactness is good.

When I was a kid and reading 'up', one of my friends (or it may have been a teacher) suggested that I substitute 'sugarplum' in my head for every word I came to that I didn't know, rather that get stuck on it. This technique seemed nonsensical to me as a fast skim reader, though - tried it but scattered sugarplums were a far bigger stumbling block than a new word. I just felt my way through and worked things out by context.

― Archel (Archel), Monday, 24 April 2006 13:23 (twenty years ago)

I usually try and work it out by context, or ask someone, or look it up. Sometimes, though, I get stuck on a word and no matter how many times someone explains it to me, defines it for me, and uses it in a sentence for my amusement, I still can't get it and will discard writing that contains the word.

Palimpsest is one such word. I just don't get it.

― accentmonkey (accentmonkey), Monday, 24 April 2006 17:04 (twenty years ago)

'Mating' by Norman Rush was a shock to me: at least a word per page that I'd never even heard before. I conisder myself to have a pretty wide (reading) vocabulary, but that novel put me in my place. always more to know...

― jergins (jergins), Monday, 24 April 2006 17:49 (twenty years ago)

Obscurity for the sake of it can be lovely, of course. Depends on the context, surely.

― Casuistry (Chris P), Tuesday, 25 April 2006 15:55 (twenty years ago)

The word "purgitous" ought to have been expurgated by the editor.

― Aimless (Aimless), Tuesday, 25 April 2006 16:11 (twenty years ago)

(I wish this thread had been spurred by my recent use of "orthogonal".)

― Dan (All About MEEEEEEEE) Perry (Dan Perry), Tuesday, 25 April 2006 16:14 (twenty years ago)

Make that "orthoganol", Dan, since you're using quote marks.

― Aimless (Aimless), Tuesday, 25 April 2006 16:18 (twenty years ago)

I really like trying to work out words I don't know from context - if I'm skim-reading I just skip over them, of course, but if trying to read something in depth it's nice to kind of step back and try and figure it out, before having to resort to a dictionary. Though this does result in my having the completely wrong sense of certain words that I never bothered to get out the dictionary for. On the other hand, while kneejerk 'why use long words when short will do' anti-intellectualism is well unpleasant, the historian whose book I was reading this morning really suffers from his love of unnecessary long words. It made it fairly fun to read, as a guessing game, but after the fifteenth use of 'adumbrate' you really start wishing dude would just say 'sketch out', which is after all what he MEANS. I mean, seriously, when you are faced with a pair of sentences like
"as in all matters ecological, one is dealing with complex interactions, and all attempts to disaggregate the whole yield arbitrary oversimplifications. Nevertheless, orderly exegesis requires such disaggregation."
it stops becoming a matter of 'aha, so he means disaggregation as opposed to any other word or phrase like i don't know 'separation of strands' or something' and starts being one of 'get one editing for clarity, pls kthxbai'.

― permanent revolution (cis), Tuesday, 25 April 2006 21:09 (twenty years ago)

I love tumbling long or unusual words in my mouth, like pebbles, like tasting a new candy perhaps. Poetry sets it in the best light, for my tastes - thats the place where you know the author spent a long time crafting the piece with and for just the right words.

On the other hand, when people like middle management wankers sprinkle large words badly, misused, into corpspeak like too much cheap pepper - that I cant stand.

― Trayce (trayce), Tuesday, 25 April 2006 21:20 (twenty years ago)

Maybe that means we're critiquing management-speak for the wrong reasons: instead of looking at it as demented, meaningless jargon, we should enjoy the poetry of nouns-turned-into-verbs and clunky neologisms.

― Ricky Nadir (noodle vague), Tuesday, 25 April 2006 21:48 (twenty years ago)

is there a notable difference between cheap & expensive pepper?

― -+-++-++, Tuesday, 25 April 2006 21:52 (twenty years ago)

Palimpsest is one such word. I just don't get it.

Doesn't get a lot of play in a digital age though, anyway.

― M. White (Miguelito), Tuesday, 25 April 2006 21:54 (twenty years ago)

Everytime someone complains about the verbification of nouns, I wonder why that person hates the English language. The single awesomest thing about English is how flexible words are, how it's perfectly acceptable to just use a verb as a noun or a preposition as a verb or what-have-you.

Actually I don't know any other normal language well enough to say whether this isn't true of those languages -- I've just read that this is true. Does French or Japanese allow you to say things like "Don't 'no' me, mom" or "The sun is totally yellowing up the sky!" as easily?

― Casuistry (Chris P), Tuesday, 25 April 2006 21:56 (twenty years ago)

xpost: Are you kidding? "Palimpsest" is one of the most overused words in theory and in poetry.

― Casuistry (Chris P), Tuesday, 25 April 2006 21:56 (twenty years ago)

I get the feeling that, specifically with French, the Government's determined efforts to codify the language are killing it.

― Ricky Nadir (noodle vague), Tuesday, 25 April 2006 21:58 (twenty years ago)

Chris, I was joking about its earliest meaning of a manuscript that has been written on more than once.

― M. White (Miguelito), Tuesday, 25 April 2006 22:00 (twenty years ago)

Today from an ILM thread I learned sempiternal. It just means the same as eternal tho'.

― Raw Patrick (Raw Patrick), Wednesday, 26 April 2006 07:37 (twenty years ago)

Chris, I was joking about its earliest meaning of a manuscript that has been written on more than once.

See, in this context I get it. But for me it has become one of those "you keep using this word. I do not think it means what you think it means" words.

― accentmonkey (accentmonkey), Wednesday, 26 April 2006 07:46 (twenty years ago)

I like encountering a new word. It doesn't happen all that often nowadays; so when it does, it's like receiving a little birthday present.

I too find it irritating when people who wish to make themselves sound important take that scattershot approach to the use of large words, because they usually get it wrong. And there's nothing that makes me wince more than when I hear a sentence that's interrupted mid-flow by a misplaced word - it's like fingernails on a blackboard. Does that make me a snob?

Managementspeak is annoying precisely because it's so clunky and vague. If it was concise it would be bearable. I like science speak because, although it might sound clunky and sesquipedalian to the uninitiated, it actually is very concise because the concepts and info being put across usually have to be very precisely pinned down.

― Stone Monkey (Stone Monkey), Wednesday, 26 April 2006 10:43 (twenty years ago)

i think words needs to be move from the divergence phase to a convergence phase.

― ken c (ken c), Wednesday, 26 April 2006 11:09 (twenty years ago)

if i feel inferior, i don't make that the writer's fault. that "whuddya think yer better than me, mr. fancypants" attitude bugs and frustrates me.

otm. as if the writer is assuming that the reader won't know the word and is using it anyway just to say "HA-ha."

one thing i like about working in an office full of copy editors is that those "oh, what's the word i mean..." conversations turn into group discussions until someone comes up with it.it's nice to have all these other people who actually care about getting the right word.

― gypsy mothra (gypsy mothra), Wednesday, 26 April 2006 20:35 (twenty years ago)

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