It’s time for another story from my college days. I had to take some summer courses one year to knock out some general electives that I had put off during my time inside the Educational Industrial Complex. My goal of graduating focused mostly on the hard sciences, so my general humanities fell by the wayside. I had signed up for a public speaking class. The instructor was an old man who had lived quite a life; a baseball prospect turned Army Intelligence Officer who then took to the streets as a cop. I didn’t mind his long-winded rants as they just oozed wisdom; the kind of wisdom that can’t be gathered from a life solely lived inside academia.
His best quip ever was don’t ever use a $200 word when you can use a fifty-cent word. This cigarette-flick hit me like a freight train. Deep down, I knew he was right; the phrase was so simple yet universally correct. For those who are still unenlightened, a fifty-cent word is one that is commonly used (such as printed) whereas a $200 word is one that is rarely used (such as emblazoned). He gave us this advice in the context of delivering a speech, but his advice carries over into so much more than that, and any self proclaimed writer who ignores this advice is an utter fool.
Think about it; we start our verbal journeys learning fifty-cent words, and only upon their mastery do we then graduate to $200 words (assuming we ever get to that level at all!). Immigrants who come to the United States and need to learn English quickly sure as hell aren’t starting off with words such as conundrum; they are far more likely to learn the word problem.
Andrew Tate (aka Ms. Piggy’s new boyfriend) circa summer 2022 was at the height of his fame. Videos of him were strewn all over the internet, mostly of him driving expensive cars or demeaning women. In a moment where he took to flaunt his intelligence over the rest of us mere mortals, he used $200 words when fifty cent words would’ve worked just fine. The result was an entirely predictable one; nobody understood him (no seriously, no one understood him). Knowing Tate, this was likely his goal, as he thrives off of separating himself from the commoner as much as possible. However, unless you’re driving a Bugatti, the goal of your words should be to aid communication, and not to hinder it.
“But Dan, I have an IQ of 200, and my cognitive horsepower is just yearning to be set free!” you might say. Assuming that I believe you (hint: I don’t), allow me to fill you in on something that your alleged cognitive horsepower apparently missed; the average American has a middle-school reading level. Sharpen your pitchfork if you’d like, but even Drunk Uncle Sam needs to take this into account when crafting announcements. Therefore, you’ll have to spend your life communicating with people who are below your claimed level of intelligence, so you need to accept this reality and plan for it. The fifty-cent word beats the $200 word.
Besides, oh mighty mental V8 engine block, the sign of true intelligence isn’t dazzling everyone around you with the depth of your vocabulary. Instead, it’s being able to phrase your explanations and to design systems that anyone can understand. Even Einstein was an advocate for simplicity. Unless your new claim is that you’re smarter than Einstein? Where’s your Nobel Prize, then? Yeah, I thought so…
This is why I’m not a big fan of the SAT’s (something that I share in common with the Ivy League), specifically their verbal section. Back in my day, the exam contained a lot of questions in which it would give an obscure word and then ask you it’s definition (or even it’s secondary definition). The problem with this is that nobody actually communicates like this. These are words that basically nobody uses in daily conversations, manuals do not use them, authors do not publish them, nor do Presidents use them at the podium. The exam, therefore, prepares students for a world that fundamentally doesn’t exist.
Life happens in fifty cent words, not $200 words.
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