[chrispenycate]

I enthusiastically (greek enthusiamos, inspired by a god) join in with your crusade, even if my record shows that my use of vocabulary Careful separation from the use of "words") leaves a number of people, of some of whom I am quite fond, floundering, un-communicated with.
Perchance my support is contraindicated, seeing that I am an example of exactly the difficulties those "lowest common denominator" critics decry.
And the tendency to use romance terms (those derived from The Roman-based languages, nothing to do with courtly love) has been enhanced by decades of expressing myself in French, reducing those anglo-saxon terms to the near servitude achieved by the Norman invasion.
Certainly, I have no expectation of selling my works, and am accustomed to misunderstanding, both verbally and written down.
Yes, avery battered Chambers twentieth century dictionary is my near-constant companion, but I can't use it for words that I haven't already incorporated into my local community. The thesaurus exists to aid my sadly imperfect memory in finding words I did know, but have temporarily mislaid, rather than introducing new ones which I do not yet control.
Unless you are writing for a five-year old (and even then, you might be amazed at how much youngsters work out from context) or newspaper readers (or scientists, although this is more a question of linguistic drift that shortage of vocabulary) encouraging laziness in your readers is not increasing their pleasure in reading, any more than feeding them tasteless, prechewed baby pap is increasing their chances on the gastronomic front.