![]() If you must use big, at least stay far away from its illiterate brother, bigly. Like, don’t you love that Ben & Jerry’s ice cream is chock-full of mix-ins! Homespun words and phrases can hit the mark, like the deliciously descriptive chock-full, from the Middle English chokkeful (literally crammed from cheek to cheek). It’s fun to say and read. And you don’t need to be a classics major for effective vocab. You know something is really big when it’s colossal. But why settle there? Going back to our Greek roots, there’s the word colossal. ![]() We even throw them together sometimes and say “great big” when we really want to emphasize something. Rowling has prodigious talent when it comes to writing books.” And why don’t people consider herculean more often? You get a strong visual when you use this word–imagine the herculean effort of moving a boulder up a hill, or getting people to try insects as a source of protein. You know what else is a great word? Prodigious. As in, “J.K. Great is a great word, no doubt about it. But, oozing with hyperbole, it can quickly lose its effect. So, in an effort to preserve and enhance the nation’s vocabulary, we present to you six of the most overly used words on social media (and in real life) and explain how, with an expanded use of vocabulary, the essence of meaning could be so much richer. At MarketSmiths we love language, in all its nuanced, multisyllabic, synonym-rich glory. (Did we do well on the language portion of our own exams back in the day? Well, we don’t want to brag…) We are ever the perfectionists when it comes to wordsmithing that is, searching for the word that crystallizes the exact meaning and feeling of what our clients want to convey. You see, we copywriters are always searching for that perfect word. ![]() But it also makes us worry that future generations of copywriters won’t share our fondness for winsome words, superior syntax, and grandiloquent grammar. ![]() On the one hand, this changing landscape of language is fascinating to watch. And while mastering these modern disciplines might boost your follower count, it’s unlikely to win over examiners. We’ve written before about how character limits and short attention spans have helped proliferate a loose relationship with grammar, not to mention the widespread use of emojis, memes, and acronyms (#ICYMI, here’s another post we wrote about social media and language, FTW). Since the explosion of social media, there’s been no shortage of criticism leveled at sites like Twitter for diluting the English language, particularly among young people. Whether it’s the SATs, ACTs, LSATs, or GREs, standardized testing is a terrifying part of the academic year for most students, and the vocabulary and reading comprehension sections can be particularly daunting. Students all around the country are either in the process of cramming for or breathing a sigh of relief after taking their standardized tests. ![]()
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