My Incredible Shrinking Vocabulary

As someone who values intelligence (translation: nerd), I get a kick out of hearing my sons use a new word, especially when they use it properly. The fact that they have listened to people in such an observational way as to pick up new words and understand their meaning based on context is exciting. To think that they learned them in school or from reading makes me even more proud.

But as my sons’ vocabulary expands, I find that mine is atrophying. When I speak now, I feel like a lesser version of my college self. I can rarely seem to choose the right word to describe exactly what I want to say. When I was in college, I never seemed to have this problem. Maybe I just had a cocky, misplaced confidence in what I was saying.

Either way, my conversations suffer debilitating bouts of, “Uh,” and, “Er,” that stop them in their tracks and derail good ideas that had been barreling through my mind (although I must admit I am smugly pleased by my consistent use of railroad metaphors in that last sentence). I find myself less willing to speak up with my ideas because while what I’m thinking might have value, I’m afraid I’ll strip it clean with my wounded vocabulary.

My writing suffers as well. Time that was once spent (I paused a long time here to think of the right adverb) rapidly (and I’m not even happy with the one I chose) typing my thoughts is now often wasted staring at the screen while I deliberate over a single word.

There are still moments when I say something in front of my sons and they ask what the word I just used meant. I like those moments. I feel like I’m not talking down to them. I feel like they appreciate that and use me as a resource to help their vocabularies grow. I want to be a consistent resource for them, not an outdated reference that they have grown beyond.

I’d like to hear my sons say things like, “I felt highly motivated in school today. Our discussion of current societal norms and our willingness to adopt them as a survival strategy was interesting,” and know that they picked up this manner of speaking from me.

At this point, it’s more likely that I would cringe after I overhear them tell my wife, “I gotta drop a deuce,” knowing that little gem was picked up from me. My bad.

I suppose it’s time to put down the comic books and pick up a thesaurus.

Before long, my lexicon will be so hefty, it shall position you all in a situation of intense dishonor exhibiting your idiocy for all to perceive.

There’s even a thesaurus built in to Microsoft Word! I just used it on that last paragraph and you probably totally couldn’t tell (though I decidedly didn’t use it on that one). I’m back in the game!