Zapped for loving books, bonus zaps for using erudite in a sentence claiming to not be well read. Well played sir.
Discussion
Maximum verbosity ! People's vocab sucks. People act like words are poison. They hate how they sound when they articulate their thoughts precisely , they would rather hide behind the ambiguity of base language. In fairness , they have been taught that the nail that sticks out, gets hammered.
I know men who articulate themselves above and beyond academics with very simple words , so perhaps I'm being unfair.
I think in general, the average vocabulary has shrunk. It’s rather unfortunate. A strong vocabulary if essential to clear thinking. Many psychologists believe that we must have words for a thing to think about it (Russel T. Hurlburt).
I also know from personal experience that having more words with which to express lends helps me feel better understood. Feeling understood by others is very important to me and I imagine it is for others.
I often think about 1984 by George Orwell and the “newspeak” dictionary. They were trying to reduce the number of words with each edition as a method of controlling the population. I think he was on to something there.
I've read of something similar to newspeak called the whole-word method
https://mises.org/library/why-do-students-regard-reading-torture