Wondering what this is? You're not alone. Actually maybe you are. But don't feel lonely, because I will gladly edify you concerning the purpose of this blog.
I have a modest vocabulary--I generally am able to effectively communicate what I need to say in a fairly efficient manner. But some of my favorite writers (namely William F. Buckley) are far superior. My vocabulary has, unfortunately, largely stagnated over the past few years. What was once a prodigious vocabulary (10th grade) has become merely routine (college graduate). And I don't like it.
So, I want to learn 1,000 new words. That's a little less than 3 a day (I was not a math major). I'm figuring on taking three a day. I will paste their definition, and use them in a paragraph. It may be a microfiction, it may be a personal aside, it may be...well, a miscellaneous other. But in some way I will use three new words. Every day.
This is, of course, not the new year quite yet. This is a dry run, starting tomorrow. We'll see how three a day works. I will be grabbing them from a variety of sources, including dictionary.com's word of the day archive and William F. Buckley's The Lexicon. I have a few guidelines for selection:
1) I must not be familiar enough with the definition to comfortably use the word in speech. So, I will skip over some arcane words that I know, and include a few words that many others may know.
2) The words will be useful. Triskaidekaphobia comes up regularly in Word of the Day. It's also a useless word. I doubt I will have be compelled to use it in speech. Similar words exist. I'm trying to expand my functional vocabulary, which I define as my every day lingo. My every day lingo ought not include the fear of the number thirteen.
That's it for now.
