There are those who use their vocabularies for the forces of evil. I’ve worked on two different occasions with two different men who have taken great pleasure in using words to intimidate. One liked using overly academic language to describe simple tasks, the other liked to speak only in marketing jargon and buzz words. Both made my blood boil. I don’t like to see words used that way.

My vocabulary is the result of learning words in context. Growing up, my father would read books out loud to me; books above my reading level, but with great plots I could easily follow. Lots of science fiction and fantasy. He’s stop on certain words to make sure I knew them, and if I didn’t, he’d give me an on-the-spot definition. The hardest thing about learning new words is knowing their context, and since I would first hear the word in a sentence, and then learn the casual definition, I sucked them up like a verbal leech.

My daily conversational speech is a lot like what you read here, combining chatty father-infuriating “likes” and exclamation points with big words that, since I can’t remember learning them, don’t seem so big to me. I assume everyone knows them, and it gives me chills to think that there may be people who think that I’m behaving like those two men I worked with — dropping overly large words in an effort to make those around me feel stupid. Why would I do that? When you make somebody feel stupid, they’re less likely to laugh at your stories! And we can’t have that. My communication manifesto is accessible expression necessary to evolution.

When I was in Seattle, I was introduced to a friend’s boyfriend. He was a sharp, funny guy, and we stood out on a balcony and shared bits of cigarettes and chatted about stealing from workplaces, IEG, and other randomata. I was describing a certain situaton, huffing and puffing about how “…at that point, I knew I just had to placate the manager, and—”

“What’s placate mean?” the friend’s boyfriend asked, showing his intelligence. Yes, intelligence. A stupid person would have assumed I was using the word to intimidate, instead of seeing the conversation as an opportunity to learn a new term.

In that moment, I learned to envy my father’s ability to define words on the spot. When you’re thinking context, it’s hard to think straight definition.

“Um, placate,” I said. “It’s like appeasing someone, or just, like, sticking your tail between your legs and saying, ‘Ok, ok, sure!’” I guess that’s the general idea, but naturally there’s a better way to say it. (At least I got the word appease in there!)

During the conversation, he asked me to define several more words, and it was I think more educational for me than for him. Sometimes I feel like I have to use smaller words so as not to be mistaken for a member of the verbal dark side, but meeting people like this one restored my faith in the world’s verbivores.