I’ve always been interested in expanding my vocabulary. I think I’ve alluded to this in this space before. The dictionary sucks me in like an adolescent girl and daytime t.v. I go from entry to entry, oblivious to time, discovering new words and their etymologies, chortling over the date (!) that a word came into use, delighting in shades of meaning and parts of speech.
We don’t even need to begin to talk about how sad this is.
But reading new words only goes so far. Anybody can read new words, but impressing them on one’s mind so as to make them an active part of one’s vocabulary, making their use facile enough to be drawn without thought into daily conversation– that’s a trick.
It took me quite a while, for example, to learn the difference between being obtuse and oblique. The difference is an essential one, a delightful one, and I get Great Pleasure from using these words in their appropriate context. But it took me a while to get it.
And then there’s obfuscate, and I don’t know where I picked that one up, but I relish it. To confuse, to darken, to render obscure. And why say obscure when you can bandy about a word like obfuscate with its shady shade of meaning, of darkening, as opposed to simply hiding? And the thrill, really, when that word lodged itself in my brain, when its use was so natural that I threw it without thinking into a talk I was giving last fall and got, for my efforts, briefly muddled expressions and comments, later on, about what-in-the-heck-does-that-word mean?
No, that’s not a pleasure, that last. It is No Pleasure to use words that leave people scratching their heads. That’s useless. And cocky. Speaking is, in the end, about communicating, and if the words one uses render one, say, oblique, and serve only to make one’s audience feel obtuse, well, then, you’d best not use words like that.
Still, obfuscate is a Great Word. A long word, an interesting word, a definitely grown-up word that one learns when one is Grown Up, and Knows Things.
Unless, of course, one is studying Latin in the fifth grade. Because if one is doing that, then obfuscate might be one of those words that one has to know for next week’s quiz. It might be one of those words that shows up on this week’s vocabulary list. And when you know a word like this, you might find it delightful to use. Yes, you might delight in it every bit as much as your dorky mother, who from time to time can be caught reading the dictionary. Yes, you might know this word when you are only Ten, and you might spring it on your parents– the father and that dorky mother of yours– who are sitting innocently on the living room sofa, talking over the events of the day.
You might think you are funny, and tell your parents that you know this word like this: “I can enhance my parents’ obfuscation.”
Yes, you might know the word and use it in its Noun Form.
Except that he didn’t enhance my obfuscation. I know that word. I definitely know what that word means.
