Gary Brown: Boosting a bad vocabulary

I don't want to sound disingenuous about the prodigiousness of my vocabulary. So, to prevent you from getting a fallacious idea about its magnitude I need to repudiate any idea that I was able to transcribe some of the most consequential words in this sentence with any other methodology than by scrutinizing the dictionary and thesaurus and other sesquipedalian volumes.

In smaller words, I looked a lot of them up.

Truthfully, I look up a lot of words. My vocabulary has suffered greatly from almost five decades in the newspaper business. I was trained early on to write at essentially a grade school level − sixth or eighth grade, as I recall − to ensure that the articles would be easily understood by the largest number of readers.

Please don't take offense. It's a lowest common denominator type of thing. Leave no reader behind, shaking his head and leafing through a dictionary to try to understand an article about a fire that used the word "incendiary," a story about inflation that talked about prices increasing "exponentially," or a report of a meeting in which arguments between board members turn "acrimonious."

Personally, I have great respect for the vocabularies of readers, which I long have believed to be up there in high school or college level and many even into the learned status of post-graduate degree. A lot of your vocabularies include such words as progeny, paragon, pejoratively, promulgate, prerogative, perfunctory and pulchritudinous − and that's just from the longer "P" words.

And, the propensity for writing more intellectually has increased in journalism through the years, if only because writers sometimes enjoy showing off what they know. Call it self-erudition.

It's just that I take instruction well. And, from listening to my early journalism professors, and taking their advice to heart, I've written simply during my career. Which is why, over the years of writing my vocabulary has suffered a bit. My "P" words have ended up being pen, pet, pal, pass, paper, point, print, partner and please.

When I want to sound really intelligent, I throw in papaya.

Building a vocabulary

Which is why, in retirement, when I started to have more time to read, I began to copy down words on a piece of paper as I encountered them. I figured if I looked them up in the dictionary, and studied their spelling, I could increase my vocabulary over whatever time I have left. Quickly. At my age, there's a sense of urgency here. You might say I'm in a race with my own "quietus."

Hey, what else have I got to do? I could play golf instead, I suppose, but most of the words I hear or use during a typical round of that sport are only four letters in length. That's not going to expand my vocabulary, although admittedly it might make it more colorful.

So, I read on, or I perdure in my perusal, as some of the writers of the books might say. I read books by academic writers I perceive to be intelligent − professors and Ph.Ds and other people who get paid to be smart.

And, each time I came across a word − a word that might make me sound intellectual if I later wrote something with it − I listed it and then looked it up.

The list quickly became very long. It took several pages to transcribe all the words. Which means I am very accurate in my perception of my vocabulary. In fact, I might be more stupid than I thought.

I'm almost analphabetic when it comes to long words.

Summing up in a few words

OK, I'll admit, some of the words I copied down only because I liked the sound of them. Flimflammery. Flummoxed. Harangued. Loggerheads. Pettifogging. Cockamamie. Cacophony. Such words could make my new vocabulary seem cantankerous.

A few words seemed interesting in their derivation. Fortuitous. Farcical. Granularity. Stoicism. If I use those words it will show that I know the words from which they came, as well. It's kind of like a "write one and get one free" vocabulary sale.

Some of the words I recognized and actually knew the meaning of, but I never think to use the words in my writing. Commensurate. Ameliorated. Ephemeral. Ingratiate. Tremulous. In the latter case, I usually just write something like "things were shaking."

And, some of the words I merely didn't know. Obsequious is an example. According to an online dictionary, that means obedient or attentive to an excessive or servile degree. According to the definition, it might have something to do with waiting on tables in a restaurant.

I looked many of the words up online, by the way, because googling is easier than paging through a dictionary. Such is the labor-saving world in which we live.

That's how I stumbled upon a page at the site for Merriam-Webster, which listed among "Unusually Long English Words" such words as "consanguineous," "psychotomimetic," "omphaloskepsis," "myrmecophilous," "embourgeoisement," and "polyphiloprogenitive."

I may never write them again, but the first one and the last one really upped my vocabulary game for "P" words.

Reach Gary at gary.brown.rep@gmail.com. On Twitter: @gbrownREP

This article originally appeared on The Alliance Review: Gary Brown: Boosting a bad vocabulary