The most important element in building a vocabulary is the desire. When teachers, newscasters, or other adults use some silly academic euphemism, sesquipedalianism, or polysyllabic bit of arcane jargon, a typical response is: "He's just showing off his vocabulary." Rather than admit our ignorance and our need to learn, we often accuse the other person or writer of knowing too much. Now isn't that silly? Yet, that is the way I was at one time. When I graduated from high school, I thought I knew everything—at least everything worth knowing. So when I encountered words that I just knew I had never seen before and wouldn't ever see again, I actually thought the writers were showing off. Now, I may still prefer simple straight forward writing to the academic, but I have learned that at eighteen I didn't know everything that was worth knowing. Once again, I am learning and enjoying learning. Although it seems to be natural to accuse others of showing off when we don't understand them because it protects us from feeling inferior, it isn't right. We shouldn't feel insulted by the usage of a word we don't know. Instead, we should feel challenged. And isn't that the way we react when we encounter a new slang word that pops up out of nowhere but we hear it everywhere. We actually signal our computer brain to figure out what the word means and how to use it. We are just "jiving" ourselves if we think we can learn the meaning of "jive" by looking it up in an ordinary dictionary. This desire—this signaling of the computer brain to learn a word—can be easily accomplished if we read with a pencil. We should underline every word we don't understand. After the fourth or fifth time that we have underlined the same word, one of two things is liable to happen. First, we're quite liable to know the word now because our computer-brain solved the problem for us. Second, we're quite liable to ask somebody what the word means now because we are really sort of mad at ourselves for not figuring out what the word means. Or, heavens to Betsy, we might even use the dictionary. Personally, I eschew dictionaries, because I find their definitions to be more obfuscating than helpful. But, I have been known to be so mad that I have opened mine, and learned because I wanted to learn. And, by the way, remember good writers eschew obfuscation. If a politician says he exchews obfuscation, you know he’s using those big words so that nobody will understand exactly where he stands.

diaphanous dy-AF-uh-nuhs, adjective: 1. Of such fine texture as to allow light to pass through; translucent or transparent. 2. Vague; insubstantial. The curtains are thin, a diaphanous membrane that can't quite contain the light outside. -- Eric Liu, The Accidental Asian ----------------- confute kuhn-FYOOT, transitive verb: To overwhelm by argument; to refute conclusively; to prove or show to be false. Having settled in Rome in 1486, he proposed 900 theses and challenged any scholar to confute them, agreeing to pay his expenses. -- David S. Katz and Richard H. Popkin, Messianic Revolution ------------------ flagitious fluh-JISH-uhs, adjective: 1. Disgracefully or shamefully criminal; grossly wicked; scandalous; -- said of acts, crimes, etc. 2. Guilty of enormous crimes; corrupt; profligate; -- said of persons. 3. Characterized by enormous crimes or scandalous vices; as, "flagitious times." However flagitious may be the crime of conspiring to subvert by force the government of our country, such conspiracy is not treason. -- Ex parte Bollman & Swartwout, 4 Cranch 126 (1807) ----------------- frac·tious /ˈfrækʃəs/–adjective 1.refractory or unruly: a fractious animal that would not submit to the harness. 2.readily angered; peevish; irritable; quarrelsome: an incorrigibly fractious young man. [Origin: 1715–25; fracti(on) + -ous] —Related forms frac·tious·ly, adverb frac·tious·ness, noun —Synonyms 1. stubborn, difficult. 2. testy, captious, petulant, snappish, pettish, waspish, touchy. --------------- de·scrip·tor /dɪˈskrɪptÉ™r/ –noun 1.a significant word or phrase used to categorize or describe text or other material, esp. when indexing or in an information retrieval system. 2.Computers. a data item that stores the attributes of some other datum: a task descriptor. [Origin: 1930–35, for an earlier sense; describe + -tor, with vowel change and devoicing by analogy with similar L derivatives]

Doctrinaire--the attitude that a fact can't be true because it contradict's one's doctrine. Example: Communists are doctrinaire; though it's failed everywhere it's been tried, they insist that the next time it's tried it will work without mass murder, slave labor camps, corruption, aggression and a poor dull life for everyone outside of the Party.

floccinaucinihilipilification the action or habit of estimating something as worthless.(often used chiefly as curiosity) ORIGIN:mid 18th century.:from Latin flocci, nauci,nihil,pili (words meaning "at little value")+-fication. The Latinelements were listed in a well-known rule of the Latin Grammar used atEton College, an English public school.

I possess a small vocabulary so please don't inquire me to post esoteric verbiage to bemuse mediocre people in brusque conversation. I have an iota of words to display but this flagrant exacerbation of a ask.com topic possesses no palpable excuse but I struggle with the importunate conundrum of wanting to vocalize with voluble, loquacious circomlocution on a very high echelon but find myself acting much like a garrulous, vociferous senile with a capricious quantity of platitude who doesn't know a jot of what he's talking about. The only advanced vocabulary words in my english vernacular I can envisage are jump and run. My sophomoric and puerille english is my hubris which I hope to extirpate.

pneumonoultramicroscopicsilicovolcanoconiosis - a disease coal miners get when they breathe volcanic dust AKA black lung. You could also use this word as anything you want to in an argument because the other guy probably doesn't know what it means.

knick-knack-paddy-whack!; auto czar! micro management!