Here's today's Word of the Day from Dictionary.com (love!):
Word of the Day for Thursday, April 16, 2009
etiolate \EE-tee-uh-layt\, transitive verb:
1. (Botany) To bleach and alter the natural development of (a green plant) by excluding sunlight.
2. To make pale or sickly.
3. To make weak by stunting the growth or development of.
4. (Botany) To become bleached or whitened, as when grown without sunlight.
This was a new word for me and I love it. Naturally, I immediately began thinking of how I could use it in a future WIP. But, here's the thing: I have a decent vocabulary. I'd like to think I have an above-average vocabulary. So if the word was unfamiliar to me, there's a good chance it will also be unfamiliar to a good portion of my (potential) readers.
What to do, what to do...
What do you guys do if you find a word that's perfect for what you're trying to convey but may not be well known? Do you use it anyway and take the chance that your readers will either glean the meaning from the context of the sentence or look it up in the dictionary? And that raises another question: if they're just gleaning the meaning (rhyming! sweet!) from the context, is it really serving its purpose of conveying the *exact* meaning you originally intended...?
These are the questions plaguing me tonight. Thoughts?
No comments:
Post a Comment