Dr. Wordsmith

The other day I heard one of our nurse's aides use the word "parsimonious" correctly in a sentence and I was stopped in my tracks.

What does it say about American culture that months go by in Rural County with nary a three-dollar word in use? Not that three-dollar words are better than the discount variety, but I miss the wonderful surprise of hearing an ordinary statement expressed in extraordinary words.

Maybe this is why I enjoy the works of Shakespeare. When Falstaff says "I am the veriest varlet that ever chewed with a tooth," oh, how I know how he feels.

Comments

[Jabulani]

Excellent! I am often accused of using BIG words that no-one understands; I guess that's a result of reading posh literature (shock horror - do folk still do that??!!Jane Austen and Shakespeare are too little appreciated).
At school, we used to have competitions to see who could find the most interesting word in the dictionary. I still love doing that with my kids, although kids' dictionaries don't have treasures like nihilipilification. Mind you, our dictionary didn't have google or internet in either ... ;)

[Gillian Chan]

As an ex-English teacher something such as you describe always gives me a huge kick. A while back your little bro added egregious to his everyday vocab. It makes me smile.

[pat]

You have educated nurse's aides......probably the result of poor employment opportunities in rural and that college up the road.

[Theresa]

In reference to the free employee lunch given by the hospital for those of us working on Independence Day. I commented on how good the lunch looked (fried chicken, macaroni salad, corn on the cob), and the aide said: "But they're being very parsimonious with the portions." I loved it.

[James]

Do you remeber how it was used?

[rlbates]

And we miss you here and on Twitter. Hope you come to the meet up in October at Blog World Expo. Bongi, Sid, maybe Vijay, Rob, Val, etc will be there. Would love to see you.