Discussion Main / AuthorVocabularyCalendar

...Think we're misusing "egregious" a bit.

I'm reading, and egregious means shockingly bad. (No, it does no longer mean shockingly good.)

So there are some parts that stand out. Whatever do you mean, students include shockingly bad phalli in tests? How is that an example?! I can't edit it because I'd have to either delete it or post this on the editing board... (hey, I could do that.) Anywho, just drawing phalli on tests (which can be "shockingly bad" according to many) is not using sesquipadelian vocabulary. Maybe if they slipped in sesquipadelian, obscure synonyms for "penis" would be that. Is that what is meant?

Also, first use of word "egregious" in this paragraph:

This is mostly a literary trope. Although there are, indubitably, egregious examples wherever a single author has a distinguishable voice (or is just plain loquacious), shows and movies are usually expensive enough to produce that this kind of writer egregiousness gets filtered out, not to mention that TV and movie audiences supposedly have tiny vocabularies anyhow.

...is rather questionable. (Are we trying to say there are outrageously horrible examples in which a single author has a voice with a lot of vocab? *cough* Dostoyovsky *cough* Or are we trying to say there are exceptional examples in which (ditto)? Also, loquacious means "talkative", not verbose! You can be very loquacious, but never say any word longer than 6 letters, nor any word less common than what you see on the average billboard.

Next, Writer egregiousness is so vague (we're trying to say writer's vice, or something along those lines, right? It makes more sense to say the writer's egregious tendency to use big words. -unfortunately, subsequedelian is an adjective, and subsequedelianess does not exist, so we're out of luck here.-