Dang did not know this would hit this many people.
Because fluency in your native language is a basic human skill that should be a minimum for functional adulthood, maybe? Because it’s not my job to congratulate you for existing?
Damn. People want to be coddled on everything these days.
I hate it when people stop a conversation to talk about a word I used. It doesn’t land as a complement.
Not as a complement to what you were saying, but did it land as a compliment?
I had a friend who would drop a sing-songy “Word point!” after a great word. It was nice because it was a quick interjection that acknowledged the word without derailing the conversation.
Before a compliment is given, it has to hit a very narrow sweet spot between common usage and too obscure. Common equals no compliments.
Too obscure and you don’t know it’s meaning or if it adds anything of value. You spend the time you’d be giving a compliment asking what it means and the conversation train has broken down. The most compliment deserving are word or short phrases that distill complicated ideas into something simpler - more elegant. But let’s face it, for many of us, written and verbal communication is hard.English is a second language for my wife, when she uses an unusual word or idiom I’m genuinely impressed, and tell her so.
I’m very proud of her <3
No one compliments you on your big words because no one likes you.
Also all the intentional malapropisms and misspellings.
I don’t really care for compliments tbh but to each their own. But it has become so rare now a days with the dumbing down of society people need a reminder once in a while you notice their intellect.
Yeah, I’m a word nerd, but a vocabulary isn’t inherently about intellect. It’s about putting the effort in, because even people with severe learning disorders can still amass l arge vocabularies. Now, using them appropriately rather than just collecting them does take a little more effort and thought, but it’s also not some kind of feat of genius. Anyone with reasonable capacity can use fancy words appropriately.
Don’t get me wrong, I fucking despise people that shit on the sheer joy that language can be. We don’t have to limit ourselves to “double plus” thinking or speech, and shouldn’t. And anyone trying to act like having a varied and sizable vocabulary is some kind of flaw can suck the peanuts out of my shit (or whatever varieties of legumes they prefer from my feces, if they feel so inclined).
But the only thing vocabulary really indicates about a person is that they value their vocabulary.
the use of uncommon words is not a sign of intelligence, it just means you know more words
kind of like Malcom X reading the dictionary in prison?
he definitely did know more words if that’s all he did in prison lol
Doc Savage’s pulp adventures inspired Superman, Indiana Jones, and Batman. One of his assistants was Johnny, who loved using polysyllables. “I’ll be superamalgamated!” was his favorite exclamation.
Cartoon legend Jack Kirby created The Newsboy Legion. One of the members was ‘Big Words,’ who tried to live up to his name.
Fats Waller was a singer/song writer. In his comic, “You’re Feets Too Big” he explained that ‘your pedal extremities are too obnoxious.’
These days, any scientific explanation in fiction is apt to be followed by “slower and in English.”
Because 9 times out of 10, using big words doesn’t make you sound smart; it makes you sound pretentious.
They’re often used incorrectly as direct synonyms too, with no nuance as to the subtle differences between them
It absolutely does. Still this act itself is a presumption based on thinking it being so, but it could simply be that that person just has a different vocabulary and word usage.
Yes I am no fun at parties and humans are so complicated it sucks.
Education is frowned upon - has been since the 80s. It used to be that intelligent, educated people drew respect. Now the school heroes are the football players, and the math-heads and other nerds either pretend to be dumb to avoid trouble, or they get trouble.
And that’s why you have Donald Trump as president, who has the vocabulary of a child: he speaks the language of the ignoramus class.
Because education has been used as a class discriminator since forever.
You want people to stop preferring football over books? Then make schools fair and equal, instead of favouring dominant classes and money.
The reason Trump got elected is because he used fascism as a tool (the same kind that you’re using actually, “make America great again” doesn’t convince people who think everything is perfect), not because of education. And it’s not like education prevents propaganda from working (it often helps it actually) so this is just bullshit.
If you want people to be smart, first stop this moronic class discrimination.
It’s 2026, you have Google. There are free apps that teach another language. You can watch a youtube video series that explains accurate molecular biology. The sum of human knowledge is at your fingertips.
When I was living at a homeless shelter, they had a piano. So I taught Myself to play it using the internet on My phone. What’s your excuse for being uneducated?
Wow, I expected filthy messages but yet that went above and beyond.
Maybe instead of piano lessons you should have found morals lessons instead.
Physics teaches us that big things are mostly predetermined but small things are chaotic. The motion of a planet through the cosmos is pretty much inevitable, but a single electron could be anywhere in the probability field of its atom.
Psychology is pretty much the same. Behaviours of populations tend towards the mean as the size increases. The course of a nation can be swayed by propaganda, and it is pretty much inevitable. But small things are chaotic. You and I have choices in our lives that have taken us to where we stand now. We can decide our futures.
And we can steer nations by our actions. One day a quantum probability in Earth’s primordial soup created a strand of RNA that would one day change the composition of the whole atmosphere and send robots to Mars. One day the children of that little RNA strand might turn the whole solar system on its course. We can make important choices that change the world. A shitpost on 4chan can elect a president.
You’ve got the power. And Donald Trump is the one who wants you to be uneducated, afraid of knowledge, convinced that you don’t matter.
Is this an answer from an LLM or something? I’m confused.
Also saying things like that implies that everyone having shit lives are in their situation by choice. It’s typically something that only people with nice lives say, because they want to delude themselves into thinking that they deserve it, and that people with shit lives deserve it too; it’s obviously easier than to admit that you are lucky and privileged and that the world is an unfair place filled with undeserved suffering.
Bruh, did you not see the part where I said I was homeless? I’m unemployed due to AI, estranged from parents due to being trans, living on government benefits in shared accommodation, and My partner lives in the USA where Trump is president and wants to send trans people to concentration camps. You want to say I’m lucky and privileged and have a great life and no idea about the world’s unfairness?
But education? There’s free education on your phone. I know you have an internet device; you’re shitposting on Lemmy. And there are free computers you can use at the library in most of the English speaking world. Education isn’t like a house or a job or food or parents anymore. If you know how to read and you have an internet device, you can learn anything.
Are you trying to make it into a competition? Most people can list hardships like that, and sure, I do not doubt that you have a hard life. But as a matter of fact, you are able to read and write, to have the internet and to know how to use it, to have been educated enough to know how to learn things from the internet (and not fall into sects and conspiracy theories), to be in a country that supports you and doesn’t just kick you in the street, to be openly trans without being killed, to speak the language of your country (I assume), to be in a legal situation in your country, etc. Pretending like you have no privileges while you are writing posts online to say that it’s people’s fault if they have a shit life is not working.
Also, according to your logic, your situation is also your fault. If education is so easy to get and everything is in your control, why don’t you have an expertise in a subject that cannot be done by AI, and get a job?
Saying that people’s shitty situation comes from them being lazy or whatever is just allowing the world to stay a shit place by refusing to admit that things are unfair from the start. Education is not something obvious, for most people and in a lot of countries. And the fact that you’re trying to focus on either your situation or mine (I never said I was not privileged, and unlike you I’m not going to start listing all the weird shit I had and have to go through, so I don’t see why you felt the need to say that I have an internet device) while being unable to think about people who are in very different situations from yours is a bit alarming.
I complimented my doctor the other day for an interesting word choice.
He blushed.
Cool dude too
In case anyone was wondering, that interesting word choice was “rectal laceration”.
They do!
But it’s rare for multiple reasons.
First, both the listener and the speaker have to know the word, because otherwise there’s no reason to compliment it
Second, the listener (or reader, but I’m too lazy to type both every damn time) has to care about word usage, and it’s kinda niche.
Third, there’s a significant degree of anti-intellectual belief out in the world, so that segment is going to have the opposite response, and they’re prone to being obnoxious about it.
Fourth, giving compliments is not something everyone is good at, so there’s a segment that might appreciate it, but not know how to express it.
Fifth, a corollary to the fourth, it can feel awkward to give compliments, so it gets shoved avoided, which is partly due to sixth:
Sixth, as a culture, complimenting someone is a complicated social action. There’s all kinds of little unspoken rules around it, and that makes a lot of people just nope out entirely.
But if you hang around people that enjoy word play and vocabulary, you’ll see a lot more compliments :)
My friends and I do this all the time. Someone used “deliquesce” properly the other day and we all nearly lost it!
Maybe your friends are shit?
Not to be a smart ass or something but if you and your friends talk like that then they deserve to be your friends. Hell just not your friends everyone’s friends.
I would say truly good word usage should go unnoticed. If the fact that you’re using a lot of big words sticks out, that means you’re using too many.
People are more likely to get compliments on proper word play than simply being able to use a thesaurus and dictionary.
There’s nothing wrong with using “ecclesiastical” when it’s the right word. The problem starts when every sentence arrives dressed for high mass.
;)
I just meant out of the blue in a conversation. Like I would say, “good word usage” on said word than give my continuation of the conversation.
Because using a big word alone isn’t good word usage.
But you didn’t compliment my clever wordplay, so poop on you!
No offense mate I kind of treat it like a parlor trick. But on the net. I do not want to catch a shit storm because apparently I am popular or infamous.
No one knows who you are in life or on the internet. No one is impressed by your memorized words.
I’ve been complimented on my word choices before, and I’ve complimented others as well. But it doesn’t come up often. Even when an interesting word is used, it’s not always the right time or place to explicitly compliment the speaker on it.
Hey, great use of the word “How”. You really nailed it!
😛
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