Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="Ruin Explorer" data-source="post: 4294349" data-attributes="member: 18">Well exactly, and I'm quite sure Mistwell does think they're being elitist, as he's so strange that he thinks lawyers using technical terminology amongst themselves are being elitist.As someone with an unusually broad vocabulary myself, I've always found it extremely irritating that there are some people in the world, inevitably the ones who do know what the words you're using mean, who demand that you not use them because it's possible that someone might not. Even though, nine times out of ten, the potentially-confused person knows what you mean via context or because they've got a larger vocabulary than the self-proclaimed anti-elistist judged them to have.Frankly, it's rude and condescending behaviour on the part of the "anti-elistists". If you're never exposed to unusual vocabulary, your vocabulary will never grow, and you will never learn the words which have more precise meanings which are appropriate to their particular use, nor can you judge what words someone knows the meaning of particularly easily or reliably. Many people know the meaning of words they can't spell, others ones they can't pronounce, but recognize when others say them.Versimilitude IS the right word, and it's really, truly absurd to suggest that it's "elitist" to use it amongst generally well-educated people with access to the internet. At worst, one can find out exactly what it means in under five seconds via Google <a href="http://www.websters-online-dictionary.org/definition/verisimilitude" target="_blank">http://www.websters-online-dictionary.org/definition/verisimilitude</a> and even that "bad" situation means you vocabulary has increased.Keltheos - Have you ever listened to sports commentory in your life? I know D&D players are (inaccurately) legendarily sports-phobic, but "dropping in" a word so that they can avoid repeating a particular word over and over again is precisely what most commentators do. Which sometimes leads to some hilarious misuses of words, but is typically fine. Their audience doesn't seem to object to their kind of behaviour.In the end, obsessive hounding of "elitism" is just another form of aggressive exclusionary behaviour, and this is something we see often in Britain with the class problems British society still suffers from. I'd be interested to hear what Mistwell though of people who speak dialects (much more common in the UK than US, of course). Are the "obscure" words they use attempts to keep people out or merely the appropriate words to them?</blockquote>

Verification