Word Search, part two

I’ve learned to shop for words like I shop at the grocery store. Some words are exactly what I need and I’ll pay whatever I have to for them. Other words are used as if I saw them on sale, ten for a dollar. If I keep to a reasonable budget in action scenes (short words, short sentences) and splurge on the quality descriptions, my scenes may improve enough to get the message into the reader’s heart without banging her over the head.

Being budget-minded, I oppose using big words in an effort to sound smart. If I must use an unfamiliar word, it had better be valuable for the sentence.

When looking up words, I sometimes see interesting-looking words and get distracted. I try to think of a way to use the word naturally in a sentence. My efforts often end up silly. I saw “grandiloquent” in my Oxford Dictionary of Current English Third Edition and wanted to see how the entry varied from dictionary to dictionary.

Out of five adult dictionaries ( and not counting my kids’ two dictionaries which omitted the word – imagine that!) three entries listed grandiloquent and two listed grandiloquence. Four of the definitions used the word “pompous”, two used “eloquence”, and one used “lofty” twice in the same entry.

The oldest of the dictionaries used the fewest words: “pompous eloquence” (The Merriam-Webster Dictionary 1974). The definition using the most words (nine) was less than “lofty”: “using long or difficult words in order to impress” (Oxford Dictionary of Current English Third Edition 2001).

The newest dictionary I own is a dictionary/thesaurus in one and used big words in hopes we’d all become familiar with their thesaurus pages.

Do you see why I use several dictionaries?

My writing style is simple and I like to use words which are right for the context. However, if a (new to me) big word is exactly the right word to use and nothing else will make the sentence as meaningful, I’ll use it. Either the reader will already know the word or will gather the meaning by the surrounding words. Hopefully, if they look up a (new to them) word, they’ll nod in agreement that it was exactly the right one for that sentence.