Maudlin. It's a recent word I learned that sparked what faint joy I had when expanding my vocabulary. I used to spend 5 minutes daily memorizing some words out of leisure but lost the habit at some point.
This small discovery was enough to trigger other words love and missed:
Effervescent
Ephemeral
Vivacious
Taciturn
Portmanteau
Tomfoolery
And so much more.
Learning more English words takes me back to a time when I was reading a dictionary and sipping on hot coffee. A window continuous tapped by raindrops in a bed weather. Those were the days~
You'll know how intelligent someone is based on their vocabulary. How one articulates what they need to convey is skill and there power in that. If someone spontaneously uses the appropriate yet uncommon terms used when they are describing something, that immediately gets my attention. They probably end up being the most interesting person in the room in my eyes.
If someone were to claim they are a professional at this particular field, try asking them about terms unique about their work. And you don't need to play it like you understood it, you can play the fool and ask them for the simpler explanation to confirm they understood what they're talking about.
I'm a doctor. There's a lot of medical jargons thrown around that can confuse the patient. It's good if they can Google the terms, but from my experience working in public health care where patients come from a deprived socioeconomic class, trying to simplify something complex so that patients can understand is an art itself.
It's common to see patients following up at the later stages of their disease because of miscommunication. But this has nothing to do with English but more about one's mastery in conveying the information.
Don't you find it amazing that a string of letters can build a word with one or multiple meanings? and these meanings can change depending on the context of the sentence and setting of the conversation?
Since I can't expect some of my peers to be as enthusiastic about the study, I try to be more specific about what I want to say so as not to be misunderstood but it usually does the opposite effect.
Have you ever talked to women? do you know how frustrating it is to figure out the meta messages they give off?
English is my primary language. I'm more confident about using it than my national language or dialects. It's brought by consuming a large amount of English media during the formative years. The drive was from trying to understand what the moving cartoons were saying. What the words meant to describe the illustration.
It's the joy of discovering something new. It's coining the right term for describing something. It's the ability to be specific and never be misunderstood.
The thing that killed my motivation to learn English literature was how my public English teachers taught it. They'd be technical with the details and less about the art. They report to work to teach with no intention to hide the dull passion.
I know I made some enemies correcting spellings here and there. Even go as far as the class fool for asking whether the teacher was sure about the terms used.
There's also intelligent shaming where the stereotype nerd gets bullied. It's frustrating to have a lot of words on your arsenal but you could only muster "fuck you" because casting words they can't understand is a waste of breath.
And throughout the ordeal, I managed to graduate but didn't get smart.
Share your favorite English words in a comment below.
Thanks for your time.
