Ever since the pseudo-intellectual adopted uncommon words as a part of his vocabulary in an attempt to emulate the intelligent characters on their favourite television programmes, many people have begun sweeping everyone who uses uncommon words under the same rug. This seems to be a common problem on the Internet, especially since the Internet provides you with a chance to use a thesaurus without anyone knowing. Since I noticed that there were absolutely no articles on how to know when someone is using a thesaurus on Googl(probably because nobody cares), I decided that I could make one.
Emotional Connotations are not present in every word.
If a stranger bumped into you and said, "Hey stupid, watch where you're going", would you be offended? More than likely, yes! Now, if the same person bumped into you and said, "Hey nincompoop, watch where you're going", the first thought you'll probably have is, "Did he just call me 'nincompoop'? Who says that these days"? So why would you respond differently in each scenario when both of these words mean the same thing? It turns out that while both of these words mean "cognitively challenged", they have different connotations, or in other words, there is an emotional attachment to one of the words and not the other.
To help you comprehend this, let's look at how other, more offensive words that would normally anger a person compare to their lesser known counterparts (warning: vulgar language is used in the following examples) .
- "Hey fag, what are you doing" vs "Hey homosexual, what are you doing"
- "You suck some hard dick" vs "You fellate a phallus"
- "You stupid bitch" vs "You doltish vixen"
- "Cock-sucking motherfucker" vs "Phallus vacuum matriarch copulater"
- "Whore" vs "Strumpet"
- "You're such a virgin" vs "You're such a celibate"
Do you see how one word or phrase is more offensive because it has an emotional attachment to it?
There's a Difference Between Similar and Exact.
The Thesaurus is meant to show the user words that have a similar meaning to the primary word, but not an exact meaning. Some words are more precise than others, and other words may only apply to people instead of objects (lying down (people) versus laying down (objects)). In the case of "The tree is at an idiosyncratic angle", this doesn't make an sense because the word idiosyncratic only applies to a person's odd behaviour. What's pathetic about thesaurus users who make the mistake of misusing these words is that they can easily find out the exact definition by searching it on Google.
Not all words are created equally.
Let's say you were looking for another way to call a girl a slut and
you used a thesaurus. You would then have a choice between many words including, but not limited to: prostitute, hustler, cheater, hooker, and escort. So which one do you choose? You probably chose "escort" to sound more polite. So now you're on Facebook telling a girl wearing a provocative version of a military escort uniform, "Wow, you look like such an escort in this picture! LOL!!11!!1!". Guess what her response is? No, it's not her tearfully deleting the photo, it's more than likely, "Thanks, that's what I was going for <3! You're the first person to recognise the uniform". Now you probably have a venereal disease from having penitential sex with her even though you had initially meant to offend her.
So that's it. That was all it takes to spot out a thesaurus user; frequent misuse of words. Now, do everyone a favour and stop sweeping everyone under the same rug; it's making it difficult for anyone to want to expand their vocabulary to do so without being called stupid or ostentatious.
Next Week: My Little Brony: Fetishism is Magic