[EDLING:225] Vocabulary: Are we losing our lexicon?

[Francis M. Hult]

Globe and Mail

Vocabulary: Are we losing our lexicon?

The last days of long words! The sunset of syntactical surplusage!

In Chicago, in a downtown courtroom, lawyer Edward Greenspan won't let Conrad 
Black take the stand.

The problem is Mr. Black's fondness for whacking big words: tricoteuses 
(knitters of yarn, used to describe reporters and gossips, augmented by the 
adjective "braying"), planturous(fleshy), poltroon (a coward, a.k.a. former 
Quebec premier Robert Bourassa), spavined (lame), dubiety (doubt: Mr. Black 
rarely uses a simple word where a splashy lemma will do), gasconading 
(blustering) and velleities (distant hopes), to list just a few of his verbal 
smatterings. Mr. Greenspan fears the Lord's lingualism will turn off the jury.

Meanwhile in Toronto, at the Ryerson School of Journalism, Ivor Shapiro is 
teaching his class to write clearly. The decor is Early Modern Factory — flat 
window, false ceiling of black metal grille to make the room seem less 
cavernous, giant TV suspended in a corner like a moody spider.

"One has to tell students in journalism school to express themselves simply, 
because they have been taught in high school to use big words in an effort to 
impress their professors," Mr. Shapiro says.

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