p. 67 | Big words

The Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Jan 26, 1864

Big words.

Big words are great favorites with people of small ideas and weak conceptions. They are often employed by men of mind, when they wish to use language that may best conceal their thoughts. With few exceptions, however, illiterate and half educated persons use more "big words" than people of thorough education.

It is a very common but very egregious mistake to suppose that long words are more genteel than short ones—just as the same sort of people imagine high colors and flashy figures improve the styles of dress. They are the kind of folks who don't begin, but always "commence." They don't live, but "reside." They don't go to bed, but mysteriously "retire." They don't eat and drink, but "partake of refreshments." They are never sick, but "extremely indisposed." And instead of dying, at last, they "decease."

The strength of the English language is in the short words—chiefly monosyllables of Saxon derivation—and people who are in earnest seldom use any other. Love, hate, anger, grief, joy, express themselves in short words and direct sentences; while cunning, falsehood and affectation delight in what Horace calls verba sesquipedalia—words a "foot and a half long."—Journal of Education.