Out of Curiosity

[HareBrain]

His problem, I would guess, is that it does sound as if it should mean what he thought it did. But it doesn't.

Good point - like pulchritude, which means beauty but actually sounds pretty gross.

Is there a term for when the "feel" of a word matches its meaning? Sort of semantic onomatopoeia?

 

[Sapheron]

Sympathetic spelling?

 

[Teresa Edgerton]

I'm simply comfortable with my vocabulary being at the level it's at.

I would never use a word out of a Thesaurus unless it was already in my vocabulary. (And I suspect this is true of others who use the Thesaurus to remind them of words they can't lay hands on at the moment).

I sometimes have trouble remembering names that I should know perfectly well -- then a day or two later they'll surface in my mind, just bang! out of nowhere since I'm not thinking about anything that could possibly relate. If it's a name that my husband and I were trying to think of together, I'll shout it out, right in the middle of something else. Fortunately, he makes the connection with our previous conversation, and doesn't think I'm losing my mind. Once, it took me several days to remember the name of a show that I watch every single episode during its season. As middle age helplessly plummets toward old age, this is how the mind increasingly works (or ... well, refuses to work when you want it to).

Anyway, when I'm writing, I'm not going to wait that many days to grab hold of a word that I already know, so out comes the Thesaurus. Which is quite a different thing than using it to look like I have a better vocabulary than I actually do.

On the other hand, I'm always happy to expand my vocabulary through reading and familiarizing myself with new words. I'm comfortable with my vocabulary at the level it's at, but I wouldn't say I'm satisfied, because I always want more.

 

[Commonmind]

When I first began writing -- with the intention of finishing a story -- I used the thesaurus to colorize my speech far, far too often. I wasn't confident expressing my characters' emotions by explaining they were "happy," or "sad." I had to make sure they were "elated," or "morose." After a while of living happily this way, and shortly after finishing said story, I decided to read through my work and realized, fairly quickly, that it began sounding like stilted speech.

I'd been so concerned with impressing the reader that my writing had become disingenuous. Not only did I fail to impress anyone (or would have failed to, had I allowed anyone to actually read that travesty), but I learned my biggest flaw was not my lack of vocabulary, but my lack of understanding how to use the one I'd already had. From that point forward, characters weren't just happy or sad; sometimes they lit up with bright, toothy grins, or moped, shoulders slouched, as they left the room. And as my vocabulary naturally grew, my writing improved without sounding unnatural.

 

[The Judge]

I sometimes have trouble remembering names that I should know perfectly well -- then a day or two later they'll surface in my mind, just bang! out of nowhere since I'm not thinking about anything that could possibly relate. If it's a name that my husband and I were trying to think of together, I'll shout it out, right in the middle of something else.

I'm glad I'm not the only one this happens to. I've actually stood in a bookshop trying to find a novel by someone, unable to remember either novel or author, only to return from shopping book-less and have both names hit me just as I reached home. The worst of it is - I'd deliberately gone out looking for the book.

As to the thesaurus use, like nearly everyone I tend to use it when I've written an OK word in a draft, but I know there's a better word that just isn't coming to me. But just occasionally I'll find a word which I haven't come across before which I do use, albeit with some trepidation. For instance the other day I was re-vamping a scene in a bar when I needed to use the word 'glass' twice in successive sentences, which read badly. I found 'pony' in the thesaurus which I'd never seen or heard used in connection with glassware, but having checked it out in my own dictionary and a couple of on-line sites it seemed acceptable, and the kind of thing the character might use, so it's in there. For the moment at least.

J

 

[Ursa major]

Having looked in the online Encarta dictionary, J - as luck would have it, I was looking up a word that wasn't in my Concise OED - I think you should know that in the US a pony is also a small (7 ounce) bottle; so take care that the reader knows that your hero or heroine is not swigging from a bottle while the other guests (for example) are tastefully sipping from their liqueur glasses.

.

 

[mygoditsraining]

I use one to make sure the word I'm thinking of is contextually correct, or (as previous posters have also said) to find a word that is on the absolute tip of my tongue and I just cannot for the life of me think of it (but hey! I know some synonyms so off to the bookshelves).

It's amazing how many subtle differences you can inject into a line using synonyms or words with similar but not exactly the same meaning, and to that end I sometimes juggle around words or go hunting in the reference books for another one because the line I've written doesn't feel right yet.

With respect to actively avoiding them, I think it's a matter of balance. Certainly you shouldn't have to use a thesaurus as a crutch when writing, but is eschewing all the resources available to you the right way? I guess there are people lucky enough to not need to dip in and out as required, but for an absent-minded bimbler like me it'd do more harm than good.

 

[The Judge]

Having looked in the online Encarta dictionary, J - as luck would have it, I was looking up a word that wasn't in my Concise OED - I think you should know that in the US a pony is also a small (7 ounce) bottle; so take care that the reader knows that your hero or heroine is not swigging from a bottle while the other guests (for example) are tastefully sipping from their liqueur glasses.

Thanks Ursa - in fact there's no problem as I have the barman pouring the drink out for him. My difficulty is that every time I read it back, I have a mental image of a small horse in the bar with them (mind you, it's that kind of place...)

J

 

[Ursa major]

* Imagines a new proverb: You can take a pony to water, so that you can dilute your drink. *


Ooh, look! Italics!

 

[The Judge]

Actually in this particular bar, that might well be an improvement on the liquor.

And to try to drag this back on thread before we get spanked by the moderators... this perhaps highlights one of the dangers of using a thesaurus to find words in that a word might seem suitable, but because you haven't seen it in context or researched it fully enough, it is in fact used inappropriately or it gives a misleading impression. (Of course, a worse problem is that it allows Ursa to unleash his puns...)

J

 

[KESpires]

I think The Judge and Ursa Major have just illustrated precisely why it is so dangerous to use a thesaurus to colorize your prose.

Using it to help jog your memory is different. Substituting words without full knowledge of how that word is going to be used by people who know what it means is dangerous.

Interesting stuff though. A pony is a small bottle. Didn't know that.