: Re: Effective ways to enrich your active vocabulary? I come across words like rectitude, like laudatory, like indigent, and being an experienced reader with a strong grasp on my native language, I

@Deb2945533

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I can't imagine myself using them in my writing either. And for the simple reason that I never saw them in day-to-day speech.

I may use them as spoken by an overly pretentious gimp in my story, one trying too hard to appear literate. But if there is a simpler synonym which conveys the same meaning without loss of nuances, avoid the obscure alternatives.

One way to enrich your vocabulary is to pick adjective-noun and verb-adverb pairs, and replace all you can with single nouns and verbs that mean just that. There's a controversy about avoiding adverbs ending with -ly. While my stance is more neutral, that's an excellent chance to enrich your vocabulary. Run a global search for "ly" in your text and every time you spot one, think if you can replace its associated verb with one that will let you remove the adverb. Run quickly - dash. Smile cynically - smirk. Try the same with epithets (noun-pronoun pairs) though the search tool won't be so helpful here. Then you may go after your phrasal verbs.

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