Still, if you don't have the more accurate word in your vocabulary, then don't use it. It will sound stilted and unnatural in the context of your sentence.
The whole point of published writing is to put enough effort into one-to-many communication to be clear, concise, and expressive. Finding the right words (not the fanciest or rarest words) helps writing to better transmit intention from author to reader.
Careful revision and editing should be celebrated as expressing appreciation for readers, not sneered at as inauthentic.
> He explains that for him, draft #4 is the draft after the painstaking labor of creation is done, when all that’s left is to punch up the language, to replace shopworn words and phrases with stuff that sings.
None of that suggests the writer is looking to use obscure words. I know the writers you're talking about as well; they're just doing it badly, or mimicking what they think a good writer does.
Compare:
Todd opened the curtains and the room got brighter
with:
Todd parted the curtains and sunlight streamed into the room
Both describe the same thing, and both use ordinary words. But the second one paints a better image in your mind. Of the curtains revealing the window behind them, of the way the room gained illumination, etc. It's livelier.
Or, let's say your marketing team proposes a new slogan: "Our intention is to make sure you're satisfied". A good writer takes a crack at it and comes up with "We aim to please".
First one sounds corporate and boring, the second one is friendly and informal. But both use words that everyday people would understand.
If you've just finished a draft of a few thousand words, a lot of dull phrasing will have made it into the writing. While writing those drafts you were focused on the narrative or plot or whatever. Draft #4 is when you comb through it and look for crusty phrases, replacing them with "stuff that sings". It needn't be garrulous ;)
Most importantly though — this is a tool, and not a replacement for taste and judgment. Seen from that perspective, it’s a much more potent tool than what a traditional dictionary offers.
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.
That being said, for anything that you want to be sure your readers understand, "write like you talk". http://www.paulgraham.com/talk.html
Most people's speech (excluding times where they have carefully written it in a manner different than unprepared speech) not only isn't colorful, it's unclear by words alone, though often helped by tonal, pacing, and, in person, nonverbal cues, and, in interactive contexts, interaction with active audience members, all of which are lost in text.
“Write like you talk” can be good advice for people who are dealing with a couple specific problems (either a form of analysis paralysis stopping them from getting anything written, or habitual overwriting) but otherwise it's just bad advice that ignores the radical differences in medium.
Are you thinking, perhaps, of Mark Twain? I've never heard anyone say he was "painful to read" or "oozes pretentiousness"; you could be the first. Yet it was Twain who wrote, "the difference between the almost right word and the right word is really a large matter—’tis the difference between the lightning-bug and the lightning," which is what this "draft #4" business is all about. (He stole the phrasing from a friend of his, but the sentiment was his own, in a letter in 01888 to George Bainton: https://quoteinvestigator.com/2019/09/02/lightning/)
“Conventional” might’ve been a better choice of word than “traditional”, or something else that better conveys the meaning of “in common usage today”, without the “in the olden days” baggage that comes with “traditional”
One solution - Basic and Advanced dictionaries?
> In promulgating your esoteric cogitations, or articulating your superficial sentimentalities and amicable, philosophical or psychological observations, beware of platitudinous ponderosity. Let your conversational communications possess a clarified conciseness, a compact comprehensibleness, coalescent consistency, and a concatenated cogency... Sedulously avoid all polysyllabic profundity, pompous prolixity, psittaceous vacuity, ventriloquial verbosity and vaniloquent vapidity.
McPhee's essay Somers was commenting on warns against the same danger:
> In the search for words, thesauruses are useful things, but they don't talk about the words they list. They are also dangerous. They can lead you to choose a polysyllabic and fuzzy word when a simple and clear one is better. The value of a thesaurus is not to make a writer seem to have a vast vocabulary of recondite words.
So clearly McPhee was not advocating the unnecessary use of hundred-dollar words [correcting for inflation since Twain's time].
Is it really 'fake' if they're actually using the words appropriately in whatever prose they are creating?
At what point do you address your own hubris when you encounter a word you don't use, or even understand, and rapidly make the conclusion that the writer is pretentious?
Surely the assessment of anothers pretentiousness happens after examining ones own hubris on the subject matter, or perhaps to put it another way - lack of the sophistication observed in others ... ?
I guess someone needs a better dictionary (this was sourced from Dictionary.app on MacOS, btw...)
Are you sure you're not just proposing a form of anti-intellectualism more appropriately aligned with the characters in an Orwell dystopia?
Language is important - it should not be degraded by throwing words away - or, indeed, around.
People get caught up in the gravity of writing. I've seen amazing pub storytellers churn out unreadable dross because they think they need to be "literary". It's true that there are differences in the mediums, but they're not as great as people make out. Unless it's High Art (in which case everything is up for interpretation), it's all just transferring information from my brain to yours with as little spillage as possible.
Writers "speak" to us most directly when we "hear" their "voice" as we read. And some of the most atrocious nonsense I have read is by people who claimed to have "found their voice". You don't need to look for it. You use it every day. Follow that and you will avoid writing ridiculous, ambiguous things like "diversion of the field" when you really mean "sport".
>
> I guess someone needs a better dictionary (this was sourced from Dictionary.app on MacOS, btw...)
I think you are reinforcing the authors point. That definition most certainly does not present a mental image of prose in which the best word is 'facile'. Instead it makes me think that 'facile' is almost indistinguishable from 'ignorant'.
Compare that definition to the one from Websters 1913-1928 definition:
Fac"ile (?) a. [L. facilis, prop., capable of being done or made, hence, facile, easy, fr. facere to make, do: cf. F. facile. Srr Fact, and cf. Faculty.] 1. Easy to be done or performed: not difficult; performable or attainable with little labor.
*Order . . . will render the work facile and delightful.*
Evelyn.
2. Easy to be surmounted or removed; easily conquerable; readily mastered.
*The facile gates of hell too slightly barred.*
Milton.
3. Easy of access or converse; mild; courteous; not haughty, austere, or distant; affable; complaisant.
*I meant she should be courteous, facile, sweet.*
B. Jonson.
4. Easily persuaded to good or bad; yielding; ductile to a fault; pliant; flexible.
*Since Adam, and his facile consort Eve,
Lost Paradise, deceived by me.*
Milton.
*This is treating Burns like a child, a person of so facile a disposition as not to be trusted without a keeper on the king's highway.*
Prof. Wilson.
5. Ready; quick; expert; as, he is facile in expedients; he wields a facile pen.
The modern (english) dictionary aims to serve as a list of definitions and meanings of words for someone who requires a list of definitions of words. This means that the explanations and example usages have to be short and simple because the person using it may not have a full command of the language.
The original Websters dictionary, as far as I can tell, serves to document the language for existing native-language users. This lets it be more expressive in the words definition (because you can use more expressive language), with the expectation that the user of the dictionary already has some sort of mastery with the language.
We can certainly compare definitions and arrive at our own conclusions about the effectiveness of communication their usage imbues - but an omitted definition? We cannot argue over words that are not defined, whether by omission in literature (dictionaries) or by virtue of the reader being, to put it blunt, simply too lazy to check another dictionary ..
Some apparently less common senses that Merriam Webster gave me:
- archaic : mild or pleasing in manner or disposition
- ready, fluent
- poised, assured
So what’s a “facile piece of writing”? Something that was easy to write? Maybe too easy to write? Or easy to read? (Or too easy to read…)
Well, something being easy is definitely an insult in the minds of pretentious people.
There's a place for plain, utilitarian writing, but your complaint is a bit like saying Vermeer is a pretentious wanker because he paid more attention to colour and symbolism than the illustrator who did the images for my microwave's instruction manual.
This only goes for young kids in their native language.
In the other cases, it would just take too much time to get better at it, without that minimum of effort. (Which you might not be forced to do after high school.)
Not to mention that language is not just for communicating, but also for thinking.
But he doesn't really give any writing advice in his essay. He doesn't recommend that you write fustian or that you write like Hemingway or indeed that you write at all; instead, he recommends that you read the dictionary because it will be fun. So, if we're talking about writing advice, we need to look at McPhee's essay, not Somers's.
Technical writing needs to be simple, to the point, short sentences, same word for the same concept, always.
Literature has a priviledge of poetic entertainment. It may indulge on linguistic expression and the readers will vote with their feet what they love and what they hate.
Miss Adebayo visited and said something about grief, something nice-sounding and facile: Grief was the celebration of love, those who could feel real grief were lucky to have loved. —Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Half of a Yellow Sun
“Joker” takes off from a facile premise and descends into incoherent political trolling as a result of scattershot plotting and antics—its director, Todd Phillips, appears not to see what he’s doing. —The New York Times
Unless you read a lot into definition 4 of Webster's, the app dictionary, or even the word 'shallow,' gives a result much more accurate to how I've seen the word actually used. With more than a century and a half since the dictionary was first published, seems like plenty of time for a shift in meaning to happen.
facile, a.
(ˈfæsaɪl, -ɪl)
Forms: 5–6 facyl(l)e, 6–8 facil(l, 5– facile.
[a. Fr. facile, ad. L. facil-is easy to do; also of persons, easy of access, courteous, easy to deal with, pliant, f. facĕre to do.]
1.1 That can be accomplished with little effort; = easy 11. Now with somewhat disparaging sense. †Formerly used as predicate with inf. phrase as subject, and in phrase facile and easy.
1483 Caxton Æsop 97 It is facyle to scape out of the handes of the blynd. 1538 Starkey England i. iv. 133 As the one ys ful of hardnes and dyffyculty‥so the other ys facyle and esy. 1577 Holinshed Scot. Chron. I. 449/1 They‥thought it easie and facile to be concluded. 1641 Prynne Antip. Epist. 4, I gathered with no facil labour, the most of those Materials. 1676 Worlidge Cyder (1691) 236 The more facile making of the linnen manufacture. a 1703 Beveridge Serm. xci. Wks. 1729 II. 126 All other acts of piety will be facile and easy to him. 1856 Froude Hist. Eng. I. 357 Having won, as he supposed, his facile victory. 1876 C. M. Davies Unorth. Lond. 250 The work appears facile.
1559 W. Cuningham Cosmogr. Glasse 109 The waye is very facile, and without great laboure. 1607 Topsell Four-f. Beasts (1673) 152 Yet have they found out this facile and ready course. 1639 Fuller Holy War iii. ii. (1647) 112 His Holinesse hath a facile and cheap way both to gratifie and engage ambitious spirits. a 1718 Penn Tracts Wks. 1726 I. 703 It will render the Magistrates Province more facil. 1807 Vancouver Agric. Devon (1813) 463 Baiting‥in the manner performed on the continent, is an infinitely more economical and facile mode of administering refreshment to a jaded animal. 1860 Tyndall Glac. ii. ix. 271 The facile modes of measurement which we now employ.
1531 Elyot Gov. i. v, As touchynge grammere there is at this day better introductions and more facile, than euer before were made. 1579 Digges Stratiot. ii. vii. 47 We have by the former Rules produced this playne and facile Aequation. 1633 Sc. Acts Chas. I, c. 34 The short and facile grammer. 1644 Milton Educ. 100 Those poets which are now counted most hard, will be both facil and pleasant. 1676 Worlidge Cyder (1691) 103 To make this curious Machine more useful and facile. 1786 T. Woolston Let. in Fenning Yng. Algebraists' Comp. (1787) p. v, It having been long considered as a most facile Introduction to Algebra. 1797 A. M. Bennett Beggar Girl (1813) II. 24 The harp and the piano-forte were equally facile to Rosa.
1605 B. Jonson Volpone iii. ii, This author‥has so modern and facile a vein Fitting the time and catching the court⁓ear. 1657 Austen Fruit Trees ii. 204 One man excells‥in a facile and ready expression. 1796 Ld. Sheffield in Ld. Auckland's Corr. (1862) III. 371 Your‥happy facile expression in writing. 1820 L. Hunt Indicator No. 31 (1822) I. 246 On the facile wings of our sympathy. 1865 Swinburne Atalanta 1641 Deaths‥with facile feet avenged. 1873 Symonds Grk. Poets v. 144 Stesichorus was one of those facile and abundant natures who excel in many branches of art. 1886 Stubbs Med. & Mod. Hist. iii. 57 To the facile pen of an Oxford man we owe the production of the most popular manual of our history.
c 1590 Greene Fr. Bacon i. iii, Facile and debonair in all his deeds. 1638 Featly Transubt. 219 A young Gentleman of a facile and affable disposition. 1782 F. Burney Diary 12 Aug., My father is all himself—gay, facile, and sweet. 1844 Disraeli Coningsby iii. v, Manners, though facile, sufficiently finished. 1876 Holland Sev. Oaks x. 134 He was positive, facile, amiable.
1541 Elyot Image Gov. 88 Your proper nature is mylde, facile, gentyll, and wytty. 1631 Weever Anc. Fun. Mon. 116 She was of a more facile and better inclined disposition. 1655 Fuller Ch. Hist. v. v. §7 Q. Elizabeth‥A Princesse most facil to forgive injuries. 1670 Milton Hist. Eng. Wks. 1738 II. 80 However he were facil to his Son, and seditious Nobles‥yet his Queen he treated not the less honourably. 1851 Sir F. Palgrave Norm. & Eng. I. 297 The guilty sons were too happy to avail themselves of his facile tenderness.
1511 Colet Serm. Conf. & Ref. in Phenix (1708) II. 8 Those canons‥that do learn you‥not to be too facile in admitting into holy orders. 1556 Lauder Tractate 251 Be nocht ouir facill for to trow Quhill that ȝe try the mater throw. c 1610 Sir J. Melvil Mem. (1683) 103 Facil Princes‥promote them [Flatterers] above faithful Friends. 1648 J. Beaumont Psyche xvii. cxcvii, Alas, That facil Hearts should to themselves be foes. 1671 Milton P.R. i. 51 Adam and his facil consort Eve Lost Paradise. 1805 Foster Ess. ii. vi. 192 The tame security of facile friendly coincidence.
1887 Grierson Dickson's Tract. Evidence §35 Proof that the granter of a deed was naturally weak and facile‥has been held to reflect the burden of proving that [etc.].
1667 Milton P.L. iv. 967 Henceforth not to scorne The facil gates of hell too slightly barrd.
c 1523 Wolsey in Fiddes Life ii. (1726) 114 His countries, whose parts non of the Lords or Commons would soe facile inclyne unto. 1548 Hall Chron. (1809) 316 Whatsoever were purposed to hym they‥might easely se and facile heare the same. 1560 Rolland Crt. Venus ii. 80 The Muses‥mair facill ȝour mater will consaif, Fra time that thay heir ȝour enarratiue.When used derogatorily it also carries an implication that something is 'pretending to be easy' while not actually being so. It might also tie in with Facsimile, but that might be a false etymology on my part. Which I guess ties this back to pretentiousness, but not quite in the way you meant to :).
https://longnow.org/ideas/02013/12/31/long-now-years-five-di...
-- William Faulkner, of Ernest Hemmingway
"Poor Faulkner. Does he really think big emotions come from big words? He thinks I don’t know the ten-dollar words. I know them all right. But there are older and simpler and better words, and those are the ones I use."
-- Hemmingway, of Faulkner
Sometimes I come across those articles, trying way too hard to add flourish to their writing, but they only achieve a veneer. It does not improve their communication and as you say, it's entirely pretentious. But these are not the same types of writing, one is genuine, the other mimicry.
Thinking ambiguity can be removed if you only use common words is misguided. You will get writing that is bland and lacks nuance and you may limit the palette of what you can convey, but even then without a fixed exhaustive definition for every word there is ambiguity in shades of meaning.
For example, what exactly does “common” mean above? “bland”? (writing is not a food, is it?) what precisely does it mean for writing to have “nuance”? and so on.
It depends on overall style, but I generally enjoy writing that thoughtfully sprinkles around less common or even invented (DFW) words. It keeps me on my toes—human memory is not perfect, if I haven’t had to consult the dictionary in a while then my vocabulary must be degrading.
You, on the other hand, are veering directly into ad-hom and that's not nice. We can talk about how we like to use language without calling out other peoples' language choices.
Doubt it. I know I've been accused of using a thesaurus when I was just compulsively and thoughtlessly posting stream of consciousness on social media.
I think people who think such things just have small vocabularies. They can't imagine others have any fluency with words they don't know.
Further writing is about the goal, describing a hallucination using stilted language for example can actually make things more vivid. Todd opened the curtains and the room got brighter. Was the room illuminated by the sun, moon, streetlights, or did the walls suddenly glow? We don’t know as things have been abstracted to show effects rather than a clear causal chain. The important bit is to be making stylistic choices not simply imitating competence and hoping nobody noticed the difference.
A thesaurus is a tool like any other. A good writer knows how to wield it, poor ones will just cut themselves.
The “Draft #4” methodology doesn’t in itself suggest that the writer is good or bad.
This meaning has diverged from French/Spanish, where the word still just means "easy".
Your own usage of “dags” is frustrating because as a reader from Australasia, “dag” has a common meaning. Example usages: “You’re a dag”, “Fred Dagg”, “rattle your dags”, “clean up those daggy sheep”. And back on topic, the common meaning in Australasia is not mentioned in the online American Merriam-Webster dictionary!
I recommend Oranges but they're all quite good.
Overall, based on all of the comments in this subthread, it seems that “facile” is most often meant simply mean “shallow”… don’t use a fancy word where a simple one will suffice.
It is pretty common for words to diverge in meaning and drop old connotations as they find distinct niches.
Nicely put. Sums up entire paragraphs worth of information in a single simple sentence that effectively conveys the idea.
chippy
ADJECTIVE
informal
1. resentful or oversensitive about being perceived as inferior
In Latin (and thence English) facultas meant ability, while facilitas meant easiness.
The adjective facilis comes from the verb facio (to make or do; from the same PIE root as the English verb 'do'), and meant something that can be done/made; something easy, ready, or quick; or someone friendly, courteous, or compliant.
> getting a feel for how it's naturally being used.