I don't normally conflate a desire to eschew euphuistic/aureate or archaic language and 'shrinking' vocabulary.
'
Anent' is neither aureate, nor archaic, it's simply rare.
That makes three native-speaking teachers of English. Perhaps you, ems and I should take a vocabulary-building course.
Nah. I'll stick with natural language.
I wonder where you'd draw a rather arbitrary line as to what is natural language.
My view is that if almost nobody understands the meaning of a word you use, that's a very good reason not to use it!
Now that everyone who's read this thread understands it, can I use it?
On top of that there's a rather profound difference between the written and spoken word: one doesn't have the luxury of pulling out a dictionary in the middle of a conversation, nor would it be terribly useful, hence a subconscious desire to conform to the style of one's interlocutor, to get to a lowest common denominator (i.e. 'shrink' one's vocabulary, as it were). The written word, however, gives one an opportunity to enjoy more intellectual and linguistic leeway, where one can easily introduce an unusual word, expecting one's readers to expand, rather than 'shrink', their vocabulary. Just like Mervyn Peake laid bare the word '
gamboge' to me at one time. I simply took it, never complaining once, forever grateful for being given a chance to add another nugget into my 'uncommonly flowery language' bag. But given the fact that popularity of '
anent' is '
bottom 40% of words' and that of '
gamboge' is '
bottom 20% of words' (according to
www.merriam-webster.com) should we berate Mervyn Peake for his 'florid' language at times? I have some sincere misgivings about that.
