| Re: The Demise of English? (A Call to Arms!)
When I feel I must pick a word that is rarely used, it is because, as Teresa says, it is the best (or even the only) word that describes the object, the emotion, or the donkey required by the story. Well, sometimes I choose that particular word because it makes the sentence sing--I am attentive to the sound of a string of words.
In this case, I manage to set the word in a context that allows the reader to understand even though she doesn't know the mysterious one. There are various techniques to achieve this.
After all, I say to myself, that is how I learned new words when I was little: by their context.
And I believe that the writer has a triple obligation: of precision, beauty, and respect of the language (I could even say "promotion"). |