At What Point is the Thesaurus overused?

[Dream Walker]

I think that it is shortsighted to hamstring yourself in not using effective language. Good literature educates as well as entertains. Dumbing language down is simply no way to deliver a story.
That said, the thesaurus can easily lead you astray also. I prefer encyclopedic dictionarys.
And should you avail yourself of the SAT vocabulary list, which contains those two words you were uncertain of Jordan, then you should be fine.

 

[Teresa Edgerton]

Jordan, I would say learn the words first -- from the Thesaurus, a dictionary, a vocabulary list, whatever or wherever -- but then look for them in the books you read, see how they are used, in what context and with what nuances. Only when you know them well and feel confident using them should you put them in your writing.

The best way to increase your vocabulary is through reading, but to do that you have to reads books by authors who have a mastery of the language. If those aren't books that appeal to you, if books that tell a story in unembellished, everyday language are the ones that you like to read, then stick with what you already know. No one should ever write a book that they wouldn't want to read.

 

[The Judge]

So say I looked at the thread you pointed to and put all those words in a document. If throughout my text I found a good place for them that fit contextually, you think that would be a good addition for my writing.

I agree with Teresa that the best thing is to use words you already know, because otherwise the risk of using the word incorrectly is too great.**

Having said that, I do jot down odd words I come across and I try to see if I can fit them into my work. Whether it would be a good thing for your writing though, is another question, since a great deal depends on your personal style and voice. A plain basic style might actually be harmed if a few arcane words are stuck into it at random intervals. You also need to think about your characters. For instance, I have used "egregious" more than once in my work, but almost always in the mouth of a well-educated, intelligent person. I wouldn't have it used by a village yokel.

For example to me panacea and zenith aren't oftenly used in my conversation

Nor in mine!!

To you, you said they don't necessarily impress you, so if they are used correct contextually, then you would be okay with them?

It isn't they don't impress me, it's they wouldn't faze me if I met them, provided they were used correctly.

What would be your recommendation moving forward? Double check context, and make sure the word flows and fits?

Read, read, read! And if you find a word you like and you want to use it, check and check and check. An online dictionary I use also gives examples of use, which is handy eg for recondite http://www.collinsdictionary.com/dictionary/english/recondite?showCookiePolicy=true (But it's not infallible -- the other day I checked "patten", which is a kind of raised overshoe, and two examples were mis-spellings of "pattern" and the third a mis-spelling (?variant spelling -- it was Hilary Mantel, and I can't think she'd get it wrong) of "paten", the plate used at the Eucharist. )


While writing this post, I remembered a clip from Friends I saw the other day, where Joey had used a thesaurus to write a letter:
Monica: All right, what was this sentence, originally?
Joey: Oh. "They're warm, nice people with big hearts."
Chandler: And that became, "They're humid, pre-possessing homo sapiens with full-sized aortic pumps?"


** Incidentally, just to make it clear I'm no paragon of word-smithery, and it's possible to make mistakes even when you've come across a word a good deal and think you know it, I blithely used "diffident" to describe a kind of off-hand attitude displayed by someone. I can't recall now what made me check, but the dictionary definition (and I looked at several, determined to find one which agreed with me ) is shy, timid. Back to the drawing board... er... the thesaurus!

 

[Ursa major]

We really should be more (consciously) familiar with the concept of a panacea, if only because we are offered (false) ones all the time, in adverts and by politicians.

 

[Venusian Broon]

I agree with Teresa that the best thing is to use words you already know, because otherwise the risk of using the word incorrectly is too great.

Having said that, I do jot down odd words I come across and I try to see if I can fit them into my work. Whether it would be a good thing for your writing though, is another question, since a great deal depends on your personal style and voice. A plain basic style might actually be harmed if a few arcane words are stuck into it at random intervals.

Completely agree with the above TJ, the use of a fancy outlier word can knock readers out of the text and ruin the reading experience.

It happened to me last night - admitedly my commute read is an academic non-fiction book at the moment...and yes, I was going through the theory section...and yes, it's written by Europeans, who love to construct very wordy post-modern theories...and yes, I'm supposed to chew through the sentences and extract every morsel of meaning, but the experience is the same with works of fiction with rare words.

I came across the word praxis and was completely floored by it. Had no idea what they were talking about. Broke my concentration and barely managed a few paragraphs till the end of the journey after coming across it.

I'm all for a sophisticated and rich vocabulary, and I'm trying my best to learn, but if a work of fiction requires me to look up a dictionary to understand it, it's a big negative for the reading experience unfortunately.