Vocabulary lesson

This weekend Rah, Emily, Christa, and I went to Sonoma for some wine tasting. At the last winery we went to our server was talking about how he is part city and part country and he finished off the conversation with "I'm a walking paradigm". Now what he meant to say is that he was a walking paradox (which still doesn't work perfectly for what he was trying to express, but oh well). It reminded me of Rah's experience in her golf class at Stanford where the teacher wanted the class to gather around him so he said "Everyone conjugate around me" (while he meant congregate). Both situations crack me up because these people weren’t stupid but they used a word that they didn't understand in an attempt to sound more intelligent.

I find this funny because often times as I read, I find a word that I don't understand so I have to either ask Rah for the definition or look it up online. While I like learning new words, I usually refrain from using complex words in conversations because (a) I find it annoying when people use big words all the time and (b) the bigger the word, the more likely that the other person will not know what it means.

Lesson: Learn big words, use little words.