Wonderful old vocabularies
Why is that that vocabularies seemed so much better way back when? When could be a hundred years, two hundred, a thousand, it doesn't matter. Yesterday I finished reading a biography of William Tecumseh Sherman, who, like many of his day, corresponded regularly with letters to a large number of people. It's because of those letters, and a memoir he wrote, we can see his broad and impressive variety of words.
I have no such vocabulary, nor do most people I know, but some certainly use big words with more regularity. Of course, there are a lot of words that I use today that didn't exist back then (Sherman was a general of the Civil War), although I still feel somewhat inferior. Maybe it's because we don't write as much. Maybe it's because of TV or a greater selection of books, most of which are familiar and not written by Shakespeare or a Greek philosopher. I don't know.
One of the things I love about the Kindle is the ability not only to look up words but also that it records those words I looked up. Later, when there's a great word that I know will fit perfectly, but I just can't remember what it was, I can go back and find it. I can't help but a feel an irony with technology like that.
Something I'd love to do is analyze a book like Sherman's memoir or biography and chart its use of big words. I'll need a dictionary and access to something like Dictionary.com's "Difficulty Index." Then I think I could write a little program to tease out those wonderful words and maybe compare them to more recent memoirs, or even just books.
I've never read Moby Dick (I started once or twice), but I hear it unleashes an impressive vocabulary on the reader. Now I'm rambling, but if I ever get that analysis going, I'll share what I find.