Five dollar words

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Originally Posted by Uncle Bill

. As a beer drinking rowdy teen, however, we thought it was kool to litter the ditches in that manner.

UB

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for my mates and I, mail boxes and road signs were in our ken. ;-)

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Originally Posted by murral stark

Why do some of you among us speak with what I call "Five dollar words"? By throwing out those fancy words, does that make you feel superior to others without the vocabulary you have aquired? Just curious is all.

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It is not so much the value of the words as it is the economy of their dispatch!!!!!:cool:

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Originally Posted by Ken Bora

todays word "pertinacious" is a good un!
I enjoy the word of the day email.
Murral, sign up for it and you'll be talkin with so many $5 words your work force will be needing a debit card to know what you are telling them to do!!!!! click http://www.merriam-webster.com/word-of-the-day/ scroll to bottom and add email address

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The majority of the people that work for me, barely speak english, let alone understand the words that I would learn. Kinda like when they are trying to tell me something in broken english. they get frustrated because they can't tell me what they want to say and I look at them with that "deer in the headlights" look. Luckily, my fellow supervisor is fluent in both languages. I am glad that I finally started a thread that everyone enjoys. It has been some interesting reading to say the least.

We talk about the value of words. We may subscribe to MW word-a-day websites. We may endeavor to learn a new word every day and use it in a sentence. What do we really know about the loom of language? The origins of the words we use every day as opposed to those that we use infrequently?
To know the origin of words is to know how men think.
Our language is truly international. The American speech, like the American people, comes from all over the world. Not two percent of our English words first rose in the British Isles.

(Which may dispute the English only argument so favored by many.)

Somewhere in the Near East they seem to have started, in that Garden of Eden of earliest man, brought home by the three restless mingler’s, the soldier, the trader, and the priest.
So we have our modern American language. It includes Greek, Latin, and other Indo-Asian, as well as Germanic, and Celtic words.

G’night, JD

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Originally Posted by HPL

This IS a fun thread, and even though I suspect that it may have been started with at least a little malicious intent it has turned out to be convivial and pretty informative.

Sequacious is just a mean word, but pertinacious can swing either way. I would not expect anyone using either one to be particularly servile (another somewhat mean word).

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I'm Out!!:confused:

See,, Simple words!:):)

Gooser

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Originally Posted by JDogger

We talk about the value of words. We may subscribe to MW word-a-day websites. We may endeavor to learn a new word every day and use it in a sentence. What do we really know about the loom of language? The origins of the words we use every day as opposed to those that we use infrequently?
To know the origin of words is to know how men think.
Our language is truly international. The American speech, like the American people, comes from all over the world. Not two percent of our English words first rose in the British Isles.

(Which may dispute the English only argument so favored by many.)

Somewhere in the Near East they seem to have started, in that Garden of Eden of earliest man, brought home by the three restless mingler’s, the soldier, the trader, and the priest.
So we have our modern American language. It includes Greek, Latin, and other Indo-Asian, as well as Germanic, and Celtic words.

G’night, JD

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Although I don't know the origin of any of the words in this sentence, I would bet that many of those with more extensive vocabularies are aware of the roots and origins of many of the words they use. I think that I can often recognize latin and greek origins; not so much middle eastern or germanic. The latin and greek root recognition comes from all the taxonomic stuff in biology. These days, one has to wonder how many "English" words have infiltrated their way back into their tongues of origin since not only do soldiers, traders, and priests pick up words, they must surely leave some behind.

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Originally Posted by HPL

Although I don't know the origin of any of the words in this sentence, I would bet that many of those with more extensive vocabularies are aware of the roots and origins of many of the words they use. I think that I can often recognize latin and greek origins; not so much middle eastern or germanic. The latin and greek root recognition comes from all the taxonomic stuff in biology. These days, one has to wonder how many "English" words have infiltrated their way back into their tongues of origin since not only do soldiers, traders, and priests pick up words, they must surely leave some behind.

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Really?.... when did you speak last to a phone center in another country?

"Blows my mind regards," JD

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Originally Posted by JDogger

Really?.... when did you speak last to a phone center in another country?

"Blows my mind regards," JD

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Not exactly what I meant. Certainly I am aware that English has in many ways become the lingua franca. I was really referring more to words that started out as latin, greek, arabic, etc., were picked up and Anglicized, and may have now wended their way back into either their language of origin or some other language.

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Originally Posted by HPL

Not exactly what I meant. Certainly I am aware that English has in many ways become the lingua franca. I was really referring more to words that started out as latin, greek, arabic, etc., were picked up and Anglicized, and may have now wended their way back into either their language of origin or some other language.

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Ok... Gotcha...;)

And now the language of the text or the forum post has added another dimension... God help us.

I signed up for it. Could turn out to be very interesting. At least now, possibly I will have an idea of what people are saying when they throw out these "5 dollar words". LOL