Catching Idle Butterflies

The Richness of Words

Someone once said that when faced with choosing a simple word verses a complex word to convey the same meaning, use the simpler one.

For the most part, I agree with this statement. We all want to be understood when we express ourselves.

However, by using this as a rule instead of a guideline cheats us as writers, lovers of words, as well as readers, also lovers of words. Our language is one of the richest out there. English has absorbed many words from other languages including Italian, German, French, Latin, and Greek.

By using only the simplest of words, including in children’s stories, doesn’t give people an opportunity to learn what a rich and even vast language we have. By how a word, no matter how strange or complex, appears in a sentence, the meaning can be discerned.

Over at my Mom’s the other day, I noticed a book called “The Synonym Finder” sitting on a small table. What a resource! I must have spent two hours leafing through it. It’s similar to a thesaurus and contains over 100,000 words with the appropriate synonyms. I found words such as languorous, persnickety, Mortimer Snerd (yep, that’s in there. It’s an archaic term meaning slow-witted).

An even better book I get much use out of is called “Word Menu.” This works very similar to a thesaurus, but the words and their definitions are structured into categories. For instance, if you’re looking for psychological terms, you might find them in the “Character and Behavior” chapter. You can also look up types of knots, human diseases, military weaponry, action and sense words, my does the list go on!

You can buy the paperback or hardcover on Amazon, or they have an electronic version at http://www.wordmenu.com The book is cheaper, but if you spend a lot of time on the computer (or you no longer have room on your bookshelf), the electronic version might be handier. Plus with the electronic version, you can save certain words so you don’t have to keep looking for them.

I’ve found in the last few years my retention of words has degraded. Having these two resources handy will help alleviate some of that frustration when I can’t grasp that one word sneaking in and out of the edge of my consciousness. Plus, when I have a few moments, I can flip through those books and see what new words I can learn, perhaps even come up with a story or article based on it.