Thread: An Observation: The New Breed of Authors Are Using Obscure Words - Page After Page

More interesting points and authors. I have taught a ton of both Orwell and Shakespeare over a quarter century in the classroom-love 'em both. Shakespeare invented dozens of words, and so many of our common sayings come from his plays; Poor Richard's Almanac (Ben Franklin), Oscar Wilde, and the "Wisdom literature" from the Old Testament ("Ecclesiastes" and "Proverbs") account for much of the rest.

As for books that could be trimmed some, Invisible Man gets pretty long and tedious in the middle stretch where the narrator is in "the Brotherhood." Even my beloved Look Homeward Angel (about my hometown of Asheville) is pretty long, though I just get lost in Wolfe's extravagant language-nobody ever wrote like him! And even though I find the whaling lore fascinating, I have been "reading" the notorious Moby Dick for many years now-I'm about halfway through it lol! Another one I mentioned above, A Tale of Two Cities, clocks in at almost 400 pages of small print in very archaic Victorian-era English. Many of my students struggle with it (or, I suspect, don't even bother), so I'm thinking of subbing in Wilde's The Picture of Dorian Gray, which is quite a bit shorter and, my colleagues in other schools report, more engaging for students.

One notoriously long contemporary work that is even as we speak giving me the stink-eye from my bookshelf is Infinite Jest by David Foster Wallace. The 1500-pages of it are the main thing keeping me from starting it, tbh.

I think over the years there has been a general dumbing down of the population which goes along with impatience and wanting things now and things being easier. Most high school graduates 100 years ago knew more than most college graduates now.

At one time the idea was to challenge students not dumb down the curriculum to their level. When I took college english I had to read The Canterbury Tales in old english. Yea it was struggle but I survived it.

So, don't start me on our educational system and the results it has wrought on our population I could write 1000 pages but I guess most wouldn't read it.

The video, reminded me of something that most of us say differently, today.

Over the holiday I watched the movie the Professor and the Madman.

Based on the book The Surgeon of Crowthorne.

I haven't read the book but I usually like better whichever came first the book or the movie.

Much of the plot is based around the making of the Oxford English Dictionary.

The best point of the movie to me was when it was stated that language is always changing so the job would never be done.

Another point that I have been thinking of posting is technical/trade related and then almost in code and snobbish.

Perioperative Care Center. Or POCC . Before and after surgery and sometimes including surgery. (Don't get this mixed up with PCC. Preventing Colorectal Cancer!)

Why do the put signs and arrows in the hallways for POCC and try to direct the incoming patient there!

Well, the English language is always evolving. If you were to talk to someone from 200 years ago, I doubt you would understand what they were saying.
Also, some words take on a totally different meaning over time.
There are also hundreds, maybe thousands of words plagiarised from other languages.
If you are having to look up meanings of words constantly, that would be terribly frustrating.
Zip Zop, I never look up the meaning of a word while reading. You can almost always work that out from preceding and proceeding words in the sentence.
Moby Dick was a struggle though...

I agree that how the word is used in context makes a whole lot of difference.

Unless it is a technical manual I pass over many words that I am 98% sure of their meaning.

I would have to look up "fluency" to understand this because it seems more nuanced that what my pea brain definition is. I have found that I tend to define words based on context and so there are many words that I think mean one thing but are actually a little different. Like Erudite I thought mean pompous, but apparently it is just a pompous way of saying smart .

Probably should have quote replied but I didn't know I was two pages late. This was in reference to ZipZop's article in post 9. https://sharprazorpalace.com/convers...ml#post1927039

Since we are on the topic of words, what about spelling?(my weak point, or is that week?) anyway, I understand that at one time the exact spelling wasn't important as long as one could tell what the word was. The english language is full of rules and words that make no sense or don't follow the same rules. Since we are dumbing people down let's go back to the old ways. I demand change!

Originally Posted by tintin

Since we are on the topic of words, what about spelling?(my weak point, or is that week?) anyway, I understand that at one time the exact spelling wasn't important as long as one could tell what the word was. The english language is full of rules and words that make no sense or don't follow the same rules. Since we are dumbing people down let's go back to the old ways. I demand change!

Before I realized he was talking about professional writers I was going to point out that I use more complex words when I don't know how to spell the common one. I'm not trying to sound smart, it is just that sometimes I am so far off spell check doesn't even know what to suggest.

Originally Posted by outback

The video, reminded me of something that most of us say differently, today.

Hmmmm? Not a word i like to use but apparently I do a lot of that when i'm working in the smithy! (iron that is)