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| Hemingway (above) and Faulkner (below) may have disagreed about each other's writing, but both believed that the right word is always best, even if readers have to look it up in the dictionary. |
On Facebook recently, a writer friend recalled an exchange of insults between Ernest Hemingway and William Faulkner. Apparently Faulkner claimed, disparagingly, that Hemingway “has never been known to use a word that might send a reader to the dictionary.” In reply, Hemingway said, “Poor Faulkner. Does he really think big emotions come from big words?”
I don’t know if either writer actually said either of those things. If he did, I’m surprised. As great prose stylists, they both practiced the following rule of good writing:
It doesn’t matter if a writer uses a word that is universally known or one that most readers have to look up. The object is to use the right word, however common or uncommon it is.
(For affirmation of this idea, see the Mark Twain quote on the right side at the top of this blog page.)
As E.B. White puts it in The Elements of Style, and many others have echoed, it is, generally, best to use “plain” words instead of “fancy” words. Don’t write “utilize,” for example, if “use” will do; don’t write “prevaricate” if “lie” will do; don’t “perambulate” where you can just as well “walk.”
Hemingway was famous for his “plain” style; Faulkner, for his “fancy” one. In fact, however, if you turn to any page in Faulkner, you’re unlikely to find a word you’ll have to look up.* Both Hemingway and Faulkner are wonderful examples of writers who used the right word, and most of their words are familiar to most readers.
Occasionally, though, any good writer will use words that are uncommon—that he knows many readers, even educated ones, will have to look up. This blog post is a defense of the uncommon word.
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| Corelli's Mandolin, a beautifully written novel that uses many uncommon words. |
Consider the opening paragraph of one of my all-time favorite novels, Corelli’s Mandolin, by Louis de Bernieres:
Dr. Iannis had enjoyed a satisfactory day in which none of his patients had died or got any worse. He had attended a surprisingly easy calving, lanced one abscess, extracted a molar, dosed one lady of easy virtue with Salvarsan, performed an unpleasant but spectacularly fruitful enema, and had produced a miracle by a feat of medical prestidigitation.
This paragraph is an example of delightful writing, although it uses several uncommon words and phrases: “calving,” “lanced,” “dosed,” “lady of easy virtue,” “Salvarsan,” and—the fanciest—“prestidigitation.” A reader with a good vocabulary would not have to look up any of these words (except for “Salvarsan,” obviously a medicine), but the words are, nonetheless, uncommon. Even the word “fruitful” is used here in an uncommon way; that’s exactly what makes it funny. Are these words and phrases bad because they're unusual? Of course not. In fact, I would claim they are just about perfect here.
In the two pages that follow the paragraph that starts his novel, de Bernieres uses the following words: “stalagmitic,” “effulgent,” “importunate,” “luminous,” “epiphany,” “exfoliated,” “scurf,” “cankerous,” “obdurate,” “recalcitrant,” “exorbitant,” and “iatric.” I have a pretty good vocabulary, but even I had to look up “iatric” (having to do with healing) and “scurf” (a scaly crust), and none of the other words here are exactly common. De Bernieres uses all these “fancy” words to describe the removal of a dried pea from an old man’s ear. The two pages are hilarious and memorable. We know we are in the company of a first-rate writer; his every “uncommon” and “fancy” word is exactly right.
Let me repeat: Uncommon words are fine if they are the right words.
I have some personal experience with this subject. For ten years I wrote a monthly 1,000-word column for the last page of Memphis magazine. The column was supposed to be humorous, and occasionally it was. I managed to syndicate the columns to a few other newspapers and magazines around the country, so I guess they were well enough written. But one column—actually one word in one column—nearly brought my boss and me to blows.
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| My boss at Memphis magazine, who made me change a word. The result was tragic. |
My boss, the publisher of Memphis magazine, was a Yale graduate, a brilliant editor, a terrific writer, and a nice man. He read everything that went into the magazine before it was published, but he customarily left my columns alone, unchanged. When he read the draft of the column in question, however, he came to me and said, more or less kindly, “You have to change this word.”
“Which word?” I asked.
“This one,” he said, pointing to my manuscript.
“No,” I said.
“Yes,” he said.
“Why?” I asked.
“Because I didn’t know what it meant,” he said.
“But it’s the right word,” I said.
“I don’t care,” he said. “I didn’t know what it meant. I had to look it up. Our readers won’t know what it means. They’ll have to look it up.”
“So what?” I said. “It’s the right word.”
The discussion deteriorated from there. Before it was over, my publisher had polled our entire staff, indeed our entire building, to see if anyone knew what the word meant. No one did. My boss claimed that that proved I had to change the word. I disagreed. In the end, however, I changed it, rather than have my boss murdered.
Here’s the word that caused this brouhaha: “kine.” That’s it. “Kine.” It occurred in a paragraph describing a drive through Vermont. I had written, “Here and there were smatterings of sad-eyed Vermont kine, looking eternally disappointed that they hadn’t been born in Kansas.” To avoid executive homicide, I was obliged to change “kine” to “bovines.” Ugh. “Kine” was the right word. It is an old-fashioned plural for “cow” just as “swine” is a plural for “sow.” “Kine” suggests (to me, at least) an early Flemish landscape painting. That was just what I wanted. “Bovines” was just wrong; “cows” would have been not much better. For 25 years now, I’ve regretted killing “kine,” and I would still argue for keeping it even if only ten people on earth know what it means. It’s the right word. That’s all that matters. Nevertheless, coward that I am, I murdered “kine” to keep my boss alive.
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| A painting with kine, which is a better word here than "cows." |
Even popular magazines, which must appeal to a wide audience, occasionally employ the uncommon word, knowing the majority of their readers will have to look it up. I happily remember a Time magazine article that described the speeches of a famously wordy and gravel-voiced politician as “borborygmic.” I couldn’t find “borborygmic” even in my collegiate dictionary; I had to go to the unabridged. There it was: “borborygmic” means “having to do with the sound made by intestinal gas.” Fantastic! What a beautifully onomatopoeic word for a gassy, growly speechifier! I try to use “borborygmic” at least once a year.
There is, by the way, an epilogue to my “kine” story. About two weeks after the issue of the magazine came out that, tragically, did not contain the word “kine,” our associate editor went on vacation in Hawaii. When she came back, she called my boss and me to her cubicle, grinning ferociously. There she showed us a photo that she had taken on a Hawaiian back road. The photo showed a roadside sign. Illustrated with the silhouette of a cow, the sign read, “Caution: Kine crossing.”
So, writers, fear not the unusual word, the word that your readers will have to look up. Just make sure that your every word is the best word. That’s what Hemingway, Faulkner, and every other great writer before and since have done.
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| A kine sign. |
*It was Faulkner’s syntax—his sentence architecture—that was often “fancy,” not so much his vocabulary. More on syntax in a future post.
