: 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

@Goswami879

Vote Up Vote Down

There's a big difference between using a fancier word when a simpler one will do (which can be unnecessarily pretentious, something that commenters have exhorted you to avoid), and using a more precise word that more accurately captures the nuances of what you are trying to say. Based on your edit and your replies, I suspect the words you wish you were using fall into that second category – not necessary rare or convoluted, but rich and exact.

The advice I would give would be to not worry about so much about finding the perfect word in your first draft (go ahead and use a good word, to keep the narrative flowing), but learn to recognize where later substitutions would be apropos (and then replace those "good" words with a more glorious word later).

If this happens more often than you'd like (which is what I suspect prompted the question), then you might try this technique: During your first draft, when you find yourself struggling to find the right word, simply use a suitable one, and then mark that with an asterisk*. That way, you can easily reidentify and locate those words when you're ready to polish your work.

Do this exercise often enough, and it wouldn't surprise me if you became more "fluent" in using those richer words in your first draft.

(0)

Login to post a comment!