On the one hand, a broad vocabulary is a delight in that you can get nearer the shade of meaning you want. On the other hand, too many people with a broad vocabulary use it to obfuscate their meaning from their interlocutors (Q.E.D.).
My master’s work in communication taught me about the varying levels of communication and the dangers of getting stuck at one. Fifteen years in journalism taught me that the point of mass communication is to communicate to the masses, and that means using common words in common ways. I still have quite a good vocabulary, but I’ve learned not to use it in most settings. I don’t feel in the least that I’ve dumbed down my conversation or my writing; rather, I’ve improved my clarity of reception.
Some folks at The New York Times put together a (PDF) list of the top 50 words their readers don’t seem to have a solid grasp of. The methodology is well explained in the article. Some I actually could define; others … not so much but I’d be likely to read over most of those words without going to a dictionary and let the context enlighten me. See how you fare.
A note to those who teach: pay particular attention to word number 13. That this is unknown by a large segment of some of the nation’s better-educated newspaper readers is a grave problem. Do your part with your students to fix it.
I thought it was going to be words like “notwithstanding,” “moreover,” and “synthesis.” Some of my students don’t know those words, and because they don’t customarily look up words that stump them, they simply despair at understanding the most straightforward prose unless written within the last three months by people who live in the same language culture. The word “Kristallnacht,” once learned, has an ironically beautiful poetry — the very word sounds like breaking glass — that makes it unforgettable, so the only explanation for their not knowing it is that they haven’t read or heard modern history. Yikes!
And Santayana warned us about the fate of those who do not learn from history.