Some big words are arcane, abstruse and frankly annoying—not-so-subtle attempts on the part of the writer to aggrandize an otherwise simple concept into a bombastic string of braggadocio.
Such conflated speech shows self-confidence that is more bumptious than sincere. A writer who expatiates on a topic with such a stuffy vocabulary comes off as callow rather than experienced, vague instead of cogent.
But I am willing to throw caution to the wind and hold my usual preference for brevity in abeyance to demonstrate that even the biggest of words can serve the most amusing of purposes. What follows is an incomplete, rather inchoate example of some capital ways to incorporate advanced vocabulary into everyday usage. Try to keep apace in your reading or you may get left behind.
Take the college party, for example. At any one of the bacchanalian university festivities on any given weekend, it is easy to spot some of the more notorious female students in all of their bedizened, overly-made-up glory, carousing with their libertine male counterparts. The typical hoydenish female animal, known for her excessive and ritualistic ablutions in preparation for such parties, may not be as innocuously frivolous as she appears.
Some stereotype her as glib—claiming that she prefers to ramble on and on about just about anything but never reaches any depth of meaning in her speech. She reportedly culls her gossip from a variety of sources and is ever so eager to decant such calumny to just about anyone who will listen. Cosseted by her parents since youth and benighted through an insular lack of exposure, she is apt to practice endogamy by seeing, dating and marrying strictly within her own social circle, which is, if I might add, minutely exiguous.
The juvenile louts that populate such scenes are stereotyped equally severely. Such a young man must certainly be rich, set for life by a trust fund that will carry him from cradle to dotage very comfortably. Too indolent to pay attention to his education and too impolitic to care, he copies and pastes sheer doggerel from Wikipedia and turns it in as his own. He finds himself in a violent fracas almost every night at the bar, causing contusions to be inexorable mementos every morning after. He is toned and slim now but will undoubtedly be hirsute, hoary and corpulent later due to the insidious effects of his gluttony and poor personal hygiene. He malingers his way out of obligations, pretending to have a fever or cold or broken bone. These mendacious antics are notorious in and outside of the classroom. He will leave college without even a modicum of knowledge but rather a finely honed vocabulary for his ribald locker-room talk.
Are the ladies and gentlemen of the Hilltop (or hummock, if you will) really so fatuously air-headed?
I think not. Although some are more apt to partake in libations than others, I sincerely doubt anyone begins their night with the aim of having their friends hold back their hair while they engage in emesis. While some may be more esurient for knowledge than others, there is a paucity of students who come to college with no desire to learn. Students could use to hone their moral thinking a little further, but there is no gross and sweeping lack of probity among us when it comes down to it.
In this prolix article, consisting of a veritable gallimaufry of words, concepts and perhaps a bit of criticism, I hope I have not been too sententious in my critiques nor too optimistic in my hopes. I hope, too, that you have learned just enough to pedantically get your way through the rest of the semester with a few new locutionary tricks in your bag.
Rebecca Quinn is a senior art history, Spanish and French triple major. She can be reached for comment at [email protected].
