I use too big of words. Eloquency

[Nosense]

Your colleagues are probably more bothered by the fact that you come across as massively condescending as opposed to just the fact that you use more syllables than they do.

That or they fail to understand what is being communicated. Although I am mostly siding with your suggestion myself.

 

[Owyn_Merrilin]

While I probably agree with the rest of your post, eloquency is very well-attested. You'd have an awfully hard time arguing that it isn't a word.

That's interesting. When I plug in 'eloquency' to my computer, I get red dotted lines and "no results." When I put in eloquence, no red dots, and "fluent or persuasive speaking or writing."

Hmm.

I added an edit explaining the issue.

You can find attestations of eloquency all over the place. Google returns nearly 100k results (compared to 8m for eloquence, so that's very clearly the dominant form) and you can find historical attestations that go very far back. While, as the edit says, it probably arose from what was basically an error, it's definitely common enough at this point that it exists as an actual, independent learned form in many dialects.

True, but you can find hits for pretty much any mis-spelling on Google -- which, incidentally, makes for an incredibly fun game of Scrabble if you decide to use Google (the search engine itself, not some sort of dictionary service) as your dictionary; if you can find that word anywhere on the internet, it counts. Cue hilarious challenges to seemingly completely made up words.

 

[Spaggiari]

"I use too big of words." Is not a proper sentence.

Eloquency is not a real word, you meant to say Eloquence.

Your coworkers find you irritating because you act smarter than you actually are.

 

[Jaime_Wolf]

While I probably agree with the rest of your post, eloquency is very well-attested. You'd have an awfully hard time arguing that it isn't a word.

That's interesting. When I plug in 'eloquency' to my computer, I get red dotted lines and "no results." When I put in eloquence, no red dots, and "fluent or persuasive speaking or writing."

Hmm.

I added an edit explaining the issue.

You can find attestations of eloquency all over the place. Google returns nearly 100k results (compared to 8m for eloquence, so that's very clearly the dominant form) and you can find historical attestations that go very far back. While, as the edit says, it probably arose from what was basically an error, it's definitely common enough at this point that it exists as an actual, independent learned form in many dialects.

True, but you can find hits for pretty much any mis-spelling on Google -- which, incidentally, makes for an incredibly fun game of Scrabble if you decide to use Google (the search engine itself, not some sort of dictionary service) as your dictionary; if you can find that word anywhere on the internet, it counts. Cue hilarious challenges to seemingly completely made up words.

Attestations exist with enough regularity (over so many years) that there's a very low probability that it's just a series of people making the same error. You can even find dictionaries that include it (typically with a nonstandard designation - indicating that it's less-common than eloquence).

The key issue I think is what you think makes something "a word". It's definitely not "being in the dictionary" since there's an underlying criteria for being in a dictionary. But the dictionary myth has become very strong in the English-speaking world.

Put a better way: imagine you're on a boat and you run into an island. You open your atlas and the island isn't on the map. Do you conclude that the island doesn't exist?

What makes something "a word" is whether people use it as a word: attestation. If you run into an island, there is an island. The map is wrong, not the island.

Also, made-up-word Scrabble is indeed absolutely fucking wonderful.

Eloquency is not a real word, you meant to say Eloquence.

See above.

 

[Owyn_Merrilin]

While I probably agree with the rest of your post, eloquency is very well-attested. You'd have an awfully hard time arguing that it isn't a word.

That's interesting. When I plug in 'eloquency' to my computer, I get red dotted lines and "no results." When I put in eloquence, no red dots, and "fluent or persuasive speaking or writing."

Hmm.

I added an edit explaining the issue.

You can find attestations of eloquency all over the place. Google returns nearly 100k results (compared to 8m for eloquence, so that's very clearly the dominant form) and you can find historical attestations that go very far back. While, as the edit says, it probably arose from what was basically an error, it's definitely common enough at this point that it exists as an actual, independent learned form in many dialects.

True, but you can find hits for pretty much any mis-spelling on Google -- which, incidentally, makes for an incredibly fun game of Scrabble if you decide to use Google (the search engine itself, not some sort of dictionary service) as your dictionary; if you can find that word anywhere on the internet, it counts. Cue hilarious challenges to seemingly completely made up words.

Attestations exist with enough regularity (over so many years) that there's a very low probability that it's just a series of people making the same error. You can even find dictionaries that include it (typically with a nonstandard designation - indicating that it's less-common than eloquence).

The key issue I think is what you think makes something "a word". It's definitely not "being in the dictionary" since there's an underlying criteria for being in a dictionary. But the dictionary myth has become very strong in the English-speaking world.

Put a better way: imagine you're on a boat and you run into an island. You open your atlas and the island isn't on the map. Do you conclude that the island doesn't exist?

What makes something "a word" is whether people use it as a word: attestation. If you run into an island, there is an island. The map is wrong, not the island.

Also, made-up-word Scrabble is indeed absolutely fucking wonderful.

Eloquency is not a real word, you meant to say Eloquence.

See above.

Oh, don't get me wrong; I fully understand how mistakes and made up words eventually become real words. I'm just not sure if Eloquency is there yet. It's kind of like spelling ceiling as "cieling." It's incorrect, but I'm sure it would have millions of google hits if I were to search for it. In fact, a quick search turns up 3,300,000 hits -- far more than eloquency, yet cieling is an unabashed misspelling. Basically, just because it turns up on Google doesn't mean it's proper, or that it will ever be fully accepted. More often than not, it's a common mistake, but not one that has caught on enough to be considered correct just yet.

 

[Jaime_Wolf]

While I probably agree with the rest of your post, eloquency is very well-attested. You'd have an awfully hard time arguing that it isn't a word.

That's interesting. When I plug in 'eloquency' to my computer, I get red dotted lines and "no results." When I put in eloquence, no red dots, and "fluent or persuasive speaking or writing."

Hmm.

I added an edit explaining the issue.

You can find attestations of eloquency all over the place. Google returns nearly 100k results (compared to 8m for eloquence, so that's very clearly the dominant form) and you can find historical attestations that go very far back. While, as the edit says, it probably arose from what was basically an error, it's definitely common enough at this point that it exists as an actual, independent learned form in many dialects.

True, but you can find hits for pretty much any mis-spelling on Google -- which, incidentally, makes for an incredibly fun game of Scrabble if you decide to use Google (the search engine itself, not some sort of dictionary service) as your dictionary; if you can find that word anywhere on the internet, it counts. Cue hilarious challenges to seemingly completely made up words.

Attestations exist with enough regularity (over so many years) that there's a very low probability that it's just a series of people making the same error. You can even find dictionaries that include it (typically with a nonstandard designation - indicating that it's less-common than eloquence).

The key issue I think is what you think makes something "a word". It's definitely not "being in the dictionary" since there's an underlying criteria for being in a dictionary. But the dictionary myth has become very strong in the English-speaking world.

Put a better way: imagine you're on a boat and you run into an island. You open your atlas and the island isn't on the map. Do you conclude that the island doesn't exist?

What makes something "a word" is whether people use it as a word: attestation. If you run into an island, there is an island. The map is wrong, not the island.

Also, made-up-word Scrabble is indeed absolutely fucking wonderful.

Eloquency is not a real word, you meant to say Eloquence.

See above.

Oh, don't get me wrong; I fully understand how mistakes and made up words eventually become real words. I'm just not sure if Eloquency is there yet. It's kind of like spelling ceiling as "cieling." It's incorrect, but I'm sure it would have millions of google hits if I were to search for it. In fact, a quick search turns up 3,300,000 hits -- far more than eloquency, yet cieling is an unabashed misspelling. Basically, just because it turns up on Google doesn't mean it's proper, or that it will ever be fully accepted. More often than not, it's a common mistake, but not one that has caught on enough to be considered correct just yet.

You're right to call the justification by numbers into question (I immediately regreted that after posting it - imagining that someone would say just this). But there's a distinction to be made between those two potential errors. People will, for instance, recognize that "cieling" is an error with great regularity. You don't really have a substantial group of people who will insist that "cieling" actually is a correct spelling and that people who say otherwise are wrong. The attestations for eloquency on the other hand are part of a broader phenomenon of overgeneration of forms by application of superfluous derivational morphemes. There are groups of people for whom eloquency is definitely a word and not just a repeated error. One might trick them into thinking that it isn't ("you're just imagining that you ran into an island, look, it isn't on the map!"), but it clearly exists as an independent form for quite a few people, very unlike the case of "cieling".

(You should respond with a message if you're going to so I can stop cluttering up this thread arguing with people over this. Also because I'm going to sleep and won't be able to respond anyway.)

 

[MasterOfWorlds]

It has become a matter of almost annoyance to some of my co-workers, my using larger words or an extended vocabulary. My conundrum is whether the fault would be my [bad?] habit of making use of my ability to convey what I think more accurately than the average 800 different words people use in a day, or theirs in not being as well read. (Try to grasp the concept underlying that bais-heavy question, as opposed to simply answering the question itself.)

It's a dilemma that has been rather frustrating to think about, since while fundamentally it would be true to say that how I conduct my speech is more verbose than the average person, people I converse with do not like being regarded as such, and become quite indignant at being relegated to the term 'average'.
I thought I'd pose the question to others who's opinions might provide some insight.

I tend to have a larger vocabulary than some of my friends, but the majority of my friends tend to read a lot, and are able to figure out the meaning of words based on context. Oddly enough, some words I know come from videogames, like "anathema" that I looked up because it's not a word commonly used today.

Although I wouldn't mark someone who reads as more intelligent than someone who doesn't read just based on that fact, and we are talking about regularity here, a person with a wider vocabulary will always come off as more intelligent than the person who does not.

I would say that the underlying problem here, however, isn't being well read or not, but that people seem to be of the impression that having a good vocabulary isn't important. With the overwhelmin popularity of internet lingo, text speak, and other such things on top ofthe fact that only a few individuals actually seem to enjoy reading, the average vocabulary will diminish, if it hasn't started to already.

I remember in an English class when I was a Junior in highschool. We were reading a short story about a young woman taking a vacation in Paris or another such place, I can't remember exactly. There were two young men, one was old money and spoke well due to his better education, and the other was an average man who tried to pass as a well to do wealthy man. Before this was revealed to us in the story, my teacher asked us what we thought the difference between the two men were. I said that the one man was actually wealthy and the other one was pretending, and that you could tell based on the way that they talked. My teacher thought that that was insightful and told me that I was right, while a girl in my class said, "I'm smart, but I don't talk good." I laughed. Right there in class. I think my teacher and I were the only ones that got it. XD

 

[similar.squirrel]

You may want to work on your syntax, because, as it stands, you sound like a congenital imbecile with a propensity for incomprehensible polysyllabic utterances.

Trying to speak all Victorian-like usually doesn't work.

 

[Dystopia]

You are too pretentious of personality. Pompousy?

I can totally speak like you do. Right on, bro.

 

[IamLEAM1983]

I was confused for a minute when I saw a post by Coelasquid on his blog, until I realized he just re-posted something she said. Seems like I would have heard of any blog important enough to get her to post on it XD

Yeah, I probably should've linked to one of *his* posts, for clarity's sake. Still, that's pretty cool. I'm only really familiar with Coelasquid from her DeviantART page. Her "MUST SCOWL HARDER" motivational image with Kratos looking all constipated never fails to brighten my day.

 

[The Abhorrent]

If you can't explain it simply, you don't understand it well enough.

Using overly verbose language (both large and obscure terms, particularly when smaller ones are just as effective) doesn't imply intelligence, it actually usually implies arrogance. Admittedly, this is partially due to the listener easily feeling somewhat inferior due to you going over their head; no one likes to feel lesser than another person, even when the speaker isn't trying to come across as such. Sometimes trying to help people will also get a similar effect, because you can puncture their pride (even if it's there for a faulty region) by doing so. Simple people take what they can do very seriously, sometimes being a little too direct with your assistance can be more detrimental to both you and them.

And this where the above quote comes into play. The ability explain complex & abstract concepts in a way that your average or lay person can understand (usually involving the use of an analogy) shows that you really understand the concept, you can accurately compare the idea to a seemingly unrelated idea to make it more accessible to all. It's elegant use of language... which does sound similar to "eloquence", but I don't think the phrases are directly related.

To tell the truth, using big words should be kept to a minimum in all but a few situations. If you're discussing the technical aspects of a subject with your fellow experts in a field, use of more specialized terminology (or jargon) helps because you need more precise language; and everyone present should be familar with that language. Even then, knowing when to put in the simple explanation is very useful. Another situation when one can use more verbose language is when you're deliberately trying to go over another's understanding, but that should be saved for when the listener has earned your ire and really needs their arrogance quelled. This does run the risk of backfiring catastrophically, because they actually might be able to understand it; leaving you looking like the actual fool. The final situation is when using complex language is something of a joke, which may be followed up with the simple explanation just as well; the verbose explanation is the set up, the simple explanation is the punchline.

I've got to be careful myself about using complex terminology, because I can easily use them without considering the fact the people I'm talking to don't have any idea what I'm talking about. I've come across as arrogant when there was no intention to do so. To tell the truth, some of the courses I've taken (complimentary studies in sociology for example) have annoyed me for using overly complex language unnecessarily; they're attaching a longer term to a concept, almost as if they're trying to take ownership of the idea, while a much more simple term already exists.

---

In summation:
A "smart" person uses big words, because they think it makes them look smart.
A smart person knows the big words, but uses the simpler ones because they understand what those words really mean.

 

[Owyn_Merrilin]

I was confused for a minute when I saw a post by Coelasquid on his blog, until I realized he just re-posted something she said. Seems like I would have heard of any blog important enough to get her to post on it XD

Yeah, I probably should've linked to one of *his* posts, for clarity's sake. Still, that's pretty cool. I'm only really familiar with Coelasquid from her DeviantART page. Her "MUST SCOWL HARDER" motivational image with Kratos looking all constipated never fails to brighten my day.

So wait, you know Coelasquid, but you don't follow her main comic? Brace yourself, because you're going to love this.

http://www.thepunchlineismachismo.com

Actually, I typed that one from memory. <link=http://thepunchlineismachismo.com/archives/71>Here's a link to the first page.

 

[MetalMagpie]

No opinion to give on the actual post. But the irony of the title really made me chuckle.

 

[Togs]

Using big words doesn't make you sound intelligent it makes you sound like an arrogant douchebag.
It's ultimately no different to overmuscled jocks flexing in public, the term "social masturbation" springs to mind.
I love big words (and language in general)- loquacious and banal have such a beautiful sound to them, dasypygal makes me giggle and atrophy sounds dark and ominous- just because I know them doesn't mean have to throw them around to give myself an ego boost, grow up for Pete's sake.

 

[Togs]

Snip

Hit the nail on the head.

WTB "like" button.

 

[IamLEAM1983]

Snipz.

Thanks! I seriously snorted Pepsi through my nose when I saw Kratos as a Best Buy associate. XD

"LOOK AT THE 1080p RESOLUTION! LOOK AT IT!!!!!"

 

[Woodsey]

Your post reads like you're trying too hard. If I have to read everything twice, in spite of knowing the meaning of every word, you're doing something wrong; your sentence structure is a mess in places.

If that's how you speak - or try to speak - in real life then I would imagine the condescension is what annoys them, not the fact that you use big/fancy words.

Don't make the mistake of thinking that speaking in a certain way makes you more dynamic or intelligent than a person who knows the best way in which to speak to various groups of people. For example: if the writer of The Very Hungry Caterpillar had written it in the style of a Shakespeare play, would you consider him clever? Or would you think he was a fucking idiot, because it was supposed to be a book aimed at young children?

We speak to make ourselves understood, not to try and sound clever(er than we are, as it would seem in your case).

[sub]And to clarify: I'm not saying you're anywhere near as talented a writer as the author of The Very Hungry Caterpillar.[/sub]

 

[Abengoshis]

If you can say almost exactly what you mean in the least and smallest words possible, in my eyes that makes you appear more intelligent than someone who has to use several longer words to get what they mean across. n_n