Discussion Big Words

What do you prefer?
'Harry's cupidity lead him to steal from others.'
or
'Harry's greed lead him to steal from others.'
I sometimes find text that uses 'big words' instead of just saying them plainly. Is it necessary?

 

This was an unexpected word
At first glance I thought it was a typo for stupidity lol

Or being a cupid

I would prefer the second one

It is nice to learn new words but uhm~ That word usage was really unnecessary~

 

Depends on your motive. Do you want your text to be didactic or free-flowing? No, they don't have to be mutually exclusive, but in the example you gave, "cupidity" sounds out of place, shoehorned in, as if the writer simply used that term because they wanted to appear knowledgeable. It also doesn't fit the tone of the sentence.

 

Big word?

Greed

There, you're welcome.

 

Hahahahha... That's what mr. Google gave me first

I just want to read without looking at the dictionary. It's sometimes a hassle looking for words, especially if I'm reading for leisure.

 

If the character is supposed to be very intellectual, elitest, or snoby it wouldn't be strange to use more complex words they can also be used to distinguish or highlight characters differing social classes.

 

You should use the words your reader's are likely to know (that also most approximately convey what you are trying to say).
The exceptions to this would of course be dialogue.....in which case all bets are off if you have someone saying those lesser known words for whatever reasons (flavor, snobbishness, elitist or perhaps just to denote a 'regional' difference)

 

Dialogues are fine. I actually appreciate that.

 

I’m not really materialistic. I will say that I’m a hopeless romantic. So I choose cupidity

 

Your funny. Lol...

 

The general rule is not to use words that you aren't familiar with. You're not trying to be fancy, you want to be precise.

 

I hate fancy words. Had to deal with them all the time while I was on uni and I hated them.

Why use "ghsiaughwreighwei" when you could use "house"? What do you gain with using the big complex word nobody heard of before? Nothing, that's what you gain, you just annoy your reader by pretending to be smart... Even though you just used thesaurus to find a fancy synonym.

I hate people that use those fancy words.

 

I hate it when they use fancy words to describe stuff like what's that going to change? Although most of the time you can find the meaning of it using context clues but when they use high-sounding nonsense to describe it ticks me off so much. I only accept fancy words when they actually make a difference other than being annoying

 

Yeah, a lot of this is dependent on the effect the writer is trying to generate. Generally speaking the more complex vocabulary should be reserved for dialogue as it's a very good way to convey personality. As such it's an extremely useful tool for writers. It's not so great for narration though as words are meant to communicate and communication is facilitated when the reader has no trouble understanding the vocabulary being used. Overly using fancy words is also something that's pretty easy to misuse if the author is trying to make himself look erudite.

 

It always depends on the situation for me. There are occasions where you prioritize the flow over looking like an intellectual by using big words. It's a common mistake to make things verbose when you could go clean cut instead.

 

I don't mind "big words" at all, but if the author uses big words it's better to use more common ones or words that are easier to figure out based on the origin of the word. If you look at "cupidity" most people who don't already know it would think of love rather than greed.

A big word that would work there if you want to be a little fancy? Avarice.

As an aside, I would also replace "lead" with "led" or "leads" depending on the tense.

 

Agree with this. Diction has to depend on some aspects of writing, like style, tone, context, etc. Even when the writing is written in third person POV, the author has to consider the target audience in their choice of words.