vocab list

I was initially concerned when I read this post and realized that there were several words on the list that I had never heard, let alone spelled. I thought, “I knew it; I’m getting stupid. If only those jealous SAT rivals from high school could see how the mighty have fallen!”

A few clicks on Dictionary.com later, I discovered that the unfamiliar words were archaic terms or period costume jargon. (Then I enjoyed a moment of, “Thank God I write contemporary. I already know what a hoodie and a thong are!”)

But the experience reminded me of one of the best reasons to read: to learn. A recent critique from a CP I think the world of asked me, “Do you *really* want your readers to have to look up a word on every third page?” No, I want them to do what I’ve been doing since I was seven: figure the meaning out through context. Had I been reading Joyce’s manuscript, I’d probably have gotten the general gist of cicisbeo when her heroine accused her rake hero (or whatever) of being one.

Read a book and learn something. Imagine that.

I was clear on this as early as first grade. We got our weekly vocabulary lists, then one of our asisignments was to write sentences using the words. I wrote stories, natch. My mom still has them in my old black-and-white ocmposition books (woman is determined to make a mint off my juvenilia). It’s fun to use stories to learn words. More fun than flashcards.

So yeah, if it means using the right word for the right story, I’ll risk some reader thinking about picking up her dictionary. Most likely she won’t bother. That’s the beauty part of context.

Of course, this easily expands into the ongoing debate about people who assume that fun and educational are mutually exclusive. I think that a book that teaches you something is more likely to take up residence in your heart than one that lets you turn off your brain for the duration. And if that means learning something about history, about language, or about the human experience, it means you come away a bigger and better person than you were before.

But before I go about getting too deep here, let’s talk about a few words that contest judges and others have had issue with in the past year:

pique (don’t get me started)
formication (used as a pun)
plausibility
legerdemain
preternaturally

And that’s just in the first three chapters. However, I think few of these are even SAT worthy. (Either way, they are staying. ) Strange, I never thought I peppered my writing with difficult terms. I just try to be precise in my usage, and the right word does wonders.