A long while ago, a colleague of mine quipped, "what's the use of big words if nobody can understand you?" I agree that words are meant for communication and there is little use in obscuring meaning with "fancy words". However, I do refuse to dumb things down because that seems to me to be a race to the bottom.
Thinking about my co-workers' comment and being truly adversarial at heart I subscribed to the Merriam Webster's word-of-the-day service. https://www.merriam-webster.com/word-of-the-day/calendar
I was a little disappointed. This week there was only one word that I had never seen before: freegan. Not surprisingly, it refers to someone who only eats free or recycled food.
I didn't realize that I would get to use the word the same day that I made its acquaintance courtesy of Miriam, or rather Merriam. (Yes, I am having fun anthropomorphizing words and books.) Last night, I was in a Spanish restaurant where they are testing new recipes for a February launch. I was offered a bowl of quail soup. It was excellent– a great combination of creamed onions, quail and Vallencia oranges. In turn, I offered a taste to a friend of mine. His response was "no thank you, I've become a vegan". I couldn't resist saying that what I had become was a freegan. (Yay!).
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