Adventures in Vocabulary!
Mar. 6th, 2020 03:57 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
conulyWatching TV with the kids, and one character is the Dowager Empress.
Me: She's "dowager" because she's the widow of the previous Emperor.
Eva: Everybody knows that, Connie.
Me: ...no, I'm pretty sure they don't, in fact, know that. I'm not even sure where you learned it, or how, or why.
Eva: Yeah, you could be right. You know, I'm starting to think my friends have a really poor vocabulary. There's a whole lot of words I use that they don't seem to know.
Me: Feel my pain.
But seriously, one of the problems of knowing a lot of words is that you never know what words other people don't know. (Except inchoate. Fuck that word. I'm sure it just appeared out of nowhere one day and suddenly it was everywhere, like some weird practical joke on me.)
Me: She's "dowager" because she's the widow of the previous Emperor.
Eva: Everybody knows that, Connie.
Me: ...no, I'm pretty sure they don't, in fact, know that. I'm not even sure where you learned it, or how, or why.
Eva: Yeah, you could be right. You know, I'm starting to think my friends have a really poor vocabulary. There's a whole lot of words I use that they don't seem to know.
Me: Feel my pain.
But seriously, one of the problems of knowing a lot of words is that you never know what words other people don't know. (Except inchoate. Fuck that word. I'm sure it just appeared out of nowhere one day and suddenly it was everywhere, like some weird practical joke on me.)
no subject
Date: 2020-03-06 09:37 am (UTC)On the other hand, the popularity of Downton Abbey (which as far as I know gets it right) doesn't seem to have stopped the avalanche of Americans who don't know how the nomenclature of British titles of nobility works.
no subject
Date: 2020-03-06 09:46 am (UTC)