Let’s start with the largest numbers and work our way down:
- Linguists (who, up until writing this post, I thought were people who love linguini) estimate there are perhaps one million words used in the English language – although that mind-boggling assessment includes words and phrases from other languages in common use by English speakers (such as, perhaps, linguini) and other archaic and no longer relevant words and expressions, such as “thee,” “thou,” and “honest politician.”
- The Oxford English Dictionary (OED) contains over 500,000 words and phrases, with slightly over 171,000 of them, at latest count, in current use. Although I don’t think anyone has a claim on “piquant” at the moment.
- The average English speaker utilizes a vocabulary of anywhere between 25,000 – 40,000 words, depending upon education, profession, and obnoxiousness.
I consider myself to be toward the uppity… er, upper end of that 25k-to-40k range, even though the ravages of aging may have cost me a few thou (not the archaic “thou”) from my memory banks. Regardless – I often come across a word that I just never, ever heard of before. I keep a list to reference when looking for precisely the right word when engaged in a discussion with an otherwise banal conversational partner.
Therefore, let me further ostracize myself from you with this brief selection from my collection, along with my best guesses as to what they actually mean:
Calumny. This means “slander.” The OED cites its use by Lord Byron, the famed poet of the early 1800s and with whose work I am intimately unfamiliar.
Mendicant. A synonym for “beggar,” as in, “When I heard Al Pacino became a father at age 81, well… that just mendicants the imagination.”
Echt. Meaning “genuine” – as in, “I genuinely don’t know how to pronounce echt.”
Costive. This is another word for “constipated,” and according to the OED is now largely historical. As is some of the detritus stuck in my intestinal tract.
Aleatoric. Random, chance; such as depending upon the throw of dice. Imagine if Robert Frost had concluded his famous poem “The Road Not Taken” with these lines: “Two roads diverged in a wood, and I / I took the one less traveled by / A choice some might deem aleatoric / This poem’s getting metaphoric.” I imagine he would not have ended up so famous if he’d done so.
Précis. The abridgement of a longer statement; to summarize. Rhymes with “hazy,” and used in context: “I would like to provide a précis of this tract, but I’m too lécis to put in the effort.”
Sometimes words such as these are used to delight or inform; other times they are used in an attempt to impress or gasconade (as I just did there). But any time we can elevate the level of discourse from the mundane to the revelatory – that’s a good thing. I am echt-ly sorry I was unable to do so here.
