The Way of a Wonderful Word

Any English speaker who reads a lot ends up with a fairly large, usable vocabulary. By “usable,” I mean words that can be read and understood even if they don’t readily come to mind in speech. I’ve read that English may just possibly have the largest vocabulary of any language ever (although figuring this out with any certainty would be a Herculean task). It certainly has more words than anyone can master, or would even care to master. Starting life off as a Germanic language, English moved on to absorb French and Latin. Now that it’s the most important international language in the world, it’s a veritable linguistic sponge, busily soaking up words from other languages as if they’re made of water.

But I digress. Here, I’m interested in the idea of “usable” vocabulary — the kind that consists of knowing a substantial number of words merely as a result of reading. “Usable” is odd, though. You can know a word, and recognize it, and use it in your writing, but still not want to ever say it out loud. For example, take the word “adamantine.” This word, which I admit I learned rather easily the first time I encountered it, since it derives from Latin and I studied Latin, is one of those arresting words that works beautifully in print if used sparingly, and at just the right moment and in just the right way.

While reading Piers Brendon’s The Dark Valley, a brilliantly written survey of that most tragic of decades, the 1930s, I ran into “adamantine.” I hadn’t seen the word in quite some time, so it was a pleasure to encounter it again. Brendon, in considering Woodrow Wilson, writes: “His idealism was far from being naive. Nor was it adamantine. He was not bamboozled by the sharp wits of David Lloyd George and Clemenceau…” I admire the way the author waited several pages before he used “adamantine,” and then chose the word “bamboozled” to immediately follow it, as if to say, “Let me now use an ordinary word that will introduce a little raucousness into this discussion.”

In this instance, “adamantine” is the perfect word. Even if the reader has to squeeze his brain for a second to recall its precise meaning, the gentle surprise it brings to the sentence is worth it. Yet it’s by no means an unusual or extraordinary word. It’s one of those words that must be kept tucked away in the back of the mind, since it would ruin everything if used too often. And can you imagine someone dragging it into a spoken sentence? At home it would be ridiculous, at a cocktail party a sure sign of being sotted, and at a faculty meeting incontrovertible proof that the professor you always considered pompous was, in fact, pompous (I almost wrote the word “vainglorious” here, but held back — it seemed so wrong, either said out loud or written, even though it means precisely what I want to say).

Admittedly, “adamantine” would work well in a lecture if used with Brendon’s aplomb. I myself would prefer to find a way to use “bamboozled.” That’s a wonderful word, whether in print or in speech, and it’s hard to figure out how it could ever be overused.

(Brainstorm illustration incorporating images by Flickr users Emborg and Phineas H)