zlacker

>>cosmoj+(OP)
I couldn't disagree more with this piece, especially the idea of a "draft #4" where you go through what you've written and replace all "pedestrian" words with less common ones from the dictionary. I know these writers, and how they "write" - it's painful to read and oozes pretentiousness. You can always tell when someone tries to fake having a wider vocabulary.

>>suctio+l9
I am so glad to have read your comment. You took the words right out of my mouth. I was very confused by the phrase “diversion of the field” as both “diversion” and “field” can have so many diverse and incompatible meanings.

The author asks: “Who decided that the American public couldn’t handle ‘a soft and fitful luster’?”. I'm gonna go out on a limb and say the correct answer to that question is “research”. Linguists and child psychologists have studied the effect of dictionary definitions on learning and realized that simpler definitions are more useful to school students than the author's dream of “stuff that sings”, and that a clear and succinct definition like “a quality that evokes pity or sadness” is more comprehensible, and hence more useful, than whatever Webster's blurb is trying to express.

It should be ironic that the author would use “fustian” as his prime example — a word which, prior to reading this article, I had never encountered before, but after seeing the paraphrasing, “It’s using fancy language where fancy language isn’t called for”, I now know exactly how to describe this piece.

>>Timwi+9c
Perhaps modern dictionaries' definitions are more accessible to someone with a child's grasp of English, as you say. However JSomers makes an excellent point, that Webster's definitions are more accurate, as well as being examples of great writing.

One solution - Basic and Advanced dictionaries?

>>taylor+1g
One is not a child forever, especially if words old and new carry the years.