Have I grabbed your attention? Unless you already know the meaning of logophile, you may have all sorts running through your mind. Most will know the ‘phile’ part of this word as lover but lover of what? Words. I am a lover of words.
Let us look at the word vo-ca-bu-lar-y.
1. the body of words used in a particular language.
2. words used on a particular occasion or in a particular sphere.
3. the body of words known to an individual person.
And holy cats on sticks look at these synonyms: language, lexicon, lexis, words, diction, terminology, phraseology, nomenclature, terms, expressions, parlance, idiom, jargon, vernacular, argot, cant. How can you not find a word or two in there that is just wonderfully pleasant to say?
I like to read and have been known to become attached to some words, as my friends can attest. Once I hear I word I like, I feel it is my duty to use it many times in the span of a week to make it mine. I love multi-syllabled words, because of the cadence needed in saying them. I often put the em-PHA-sis on the wrong syl-LA-ble by mistake or just because I prefer the pronunciation that way.
I tend to combine words to make the ultimate fantasamarifical word (see what I did there?) which has become almost second nature to me that I am surprised when the words I use are not actually legitimate words. It leads to a, “hmm, really”, moment or two. My family also uses some words that are completely our own, like tweezot, foofoo, and reon.
Although it is difficult to measure the average person’s vocabulary because it can vary from person to person, people typically will use around 5,000 words in their speech and possibly as much as double in their writing. People who read fiction may use a wider range of vocabulary because fiction, as opposed to nonfiction, tends to use a wider range of differing words. A college-educated native English speaking person may use a vocabulary of upwards of 80,000 words. Most people stop adding words to their lexicon at middle age. Shakespeare, one of the greatest writers, was known to have used more than 30,000 words within the body of his work. (Quite extraordinary when you consider he penned these works over 400 years ago.)
I think one of the reasons why I decided to get into the medical field is because of the words. Working day to day and being able to use all these Latin and Greek based words. Who wouldn’t enjoy that? Medical terminology was one of my favourite subjects. Occipital, supraclavicular, interscapular, enucleation, cystitis glandularis, myorrhaphy, visceromegaly, bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE, mad cow…I really do love this one even though I am not a fan of what it does to our cattle friends). I could really go on and on.
In the world of chemistry, the names of many things are so long, that the acronyms and/or chemical formulas are more commonly used, such as: IPA (isopropyl alcohol), H2O (water), CTAB (cetyl trimethyl ammonium bromide), MeOH (methanol) and BFM (this one you will have to figure out for yourself). My favourite from working with my chemist friends is tetraphenylporphyrin and acetonitrile.
My list of most favoured words is long but some of the best are the following: philanthropist (this was such a hard word for me to pronounce that I had my Mom repeat it over and over until I could say it), Rastafarian, decrepitude, catawampus, odoriferous, egalitarian, extraneous, malevolent, epiphany, evisceration, bombastic, omnipotent, petrichor (this is a new one for me…the pleasant earthy smell after a rainfall), defenestration (the act of throwing someone out of a window), and clipboard. What, wait, clipboard? Yes. I worked in a fast food restaurant many years ago and everything was put on a clipboard; stock lists, staff lists, waste, etc. So when you say a word as many times in a day that we did, you would either learn to love or hate it. I am a lover not a hater.
If you are happy with your 5,000 words in your common usage, use them and feel fine about it. If you want to add to your total keep reading. When you see a word you are not familiar with, take the time to look it up, learn how it is pronounced (or pronounce incorrectly like I do often, yikes), and use it. There are so many very interesting and fun-to-say words out there why wouldn’t you want to try some of them out? Hey, make some up too. If you use is with authority, people will think it is a real word and will go home to look it up. 😉
–Janice Willson
Thank you