V is for vocabulary

V is for vocabulary, something that I tend not to exercise as much as I should. I am proud of my inner vocabulary. From the wide variety of reading I have done, I have a fairly broad vocabulary and I love it. I also have put some years into studying Latin, in both high school and college. Yes, I am a geek and proud of it!

However, I find myself choosing the simple words, the short and easy to spell words rather than those that are just fun to say or less familiar to others for a variety of reasons. Never because I doubt the intelligence of my readers, because I trust that if they are interested enough to read my writing and run across a word they do not know that they will have the ability to figure the word out though the context or by looking it up. Most of the the time it is sheer laziness on my part, I do not deny it. Sometime it is out of the sheer desire not to look like a snide know it all, others just to keep things as simple as possible. Often times it is not even on purpose, just because I find one word that 'does the job' and do not pause to think about a better word. Do you find yourself failing to flex your vocabulary chops?