Arthur Plotnik

As every writer comes to learn, producing a crop after crop of oeuvres exhausts the loam of expression. Words become sapped by overuse. Sentences, descriptive passages, and lines of poetry go limp. Creative roots cry for infusion.

Have I told you the parable of my potted grapefruit? The plant, which I proudly grew from seed, flourished until the day its foliage sulked, drooped, and entered a state of lassitude. Drenchings and fresh soil prompted only deathbed twitches. Finally, abandoning delusions of having a gardener's thumb, I brought home a sea-blue slosh of nutrients to be administered drop-by-drop --a mere seven drops with each watering. And, lo, within a day the leaf blades snapped to. Jessant shoots erupted like virescent starbursts. An attar of citrus spiced air, and perfumes it even now. And so might it be with those who write--those who would invigorate vocabularies gone creachy: Vitalization by the drop.

Many a writer has resolved to master the dictionary A to Z, or bulk up the brain with vocabulary-building tomes. But such enterprises tend to fizzle, which for readers may not be a bad thing; an inundation of new words can create a garden of monstrous locutions. Eyedropper enrichment--say, at the rate of about seven new words a week--allows one to savor and test each word, to integrate it into one's style before sounding like Buckley-meets-Pynchon on Miracle-Gro.

Writers' Words

The planet groans with word resources, many of them aimed at language hobbyists, or logophiles. In his Dictionary of Misunderstood, Misused, & Mispronounced Words, lexicographer Laurence Urdang wisecracks--and who could disagree?--that an "enchiridion of arcane and recondite sesquipedalian items will appeal to the oniomania of an eximious Gemeinschaft." Translation: Certain exceptional types like to buy collections of big, unusual words.

Writers appreciate recondite words as much as the next language junkie, but they don't want readers gagging on them. After all, an asphyxiating vocabulary flirts with what novelist Jonathan Franzen calls the "status model" of authorship, in which the artiste disdains popularity and holds that "difficulty tends to signal excellence." In Franzen's opposing "contract model," a novelist promises to connect with readers in exchange for their investment of time and attention and to be accountable should any reader "crack a tooth on a hard word." ("Mr. Difficult," The New Yorker)

Those who want to connect, then, stock their journals with writer's words--not always the plainest or best-known words, but those somehow rewarding to the reader. Franzen himself uses words such as solipsistic (self-absorbed) and pemmican (a kind of meat loaf) in his argument, but they turn out to be pretty good chaws in context.

For special purposes, a writer's word can be anything from firkin to floccinaucinihilipilification. But to earn a place in an author's working vocabulary, a word should be at least one of the following:

• Precise: tor (hilltop rock heap)
  
• Concise: mulct (defraud, as of money)
  
• Euphonious: fanfaronade (bluster)
  
• Onomatopoetic: williwaw (violent squall)
  
• Forceful: fulgent (dazzlingly bright)
  
• Evocative: mojo (charmed object)
  
• Fun: cachinnate (laugh immoderately)
  
• Fresh: nimiety (an abundance instead of, say, stale plethora)
  

What if a word is likely to be outside the reader's active or half-known vocabulary? Then even undefined, it should lend some special aura, some majesty or exoticism, to the context. Perhaps the unknown word reveals itself by sound or placement--steam purled (flowed in curls) up from the pavement--or begs to be looked up, like scumble (to soften brilliant color). In my grapefruit parable, I planted what seemed to be three such words: jessant (shooting upward), virescent (tending toward green), and attar (a perfume obtained from flowers). Did they add a certain flavor, or merely squirt in your eye?

Finding Fresh Drops

Where does one find writers' words not yet squeezed to death? Self-help compilations such as the Word Smart series (Princeton Review) can provide a few, but such big lists--many of them geared toward readers preparing for SAT tests--can be daunting. And although word-a-day desk calendars deliver a manageable dosage, the few winners among their 365 offerings often get lost as desks pile up and days fly by. Instead, I favor collections that include droll, well-informed discourse to slow things down; for example, Word Watch (Holt), which features Anne H. Soukhanov's riffs on emerging words such as mamou (something big and important). Another recent favorite is The Oxford American Writer's Thesaurus, rich in word commentary by silver-tongued authors. New resources keep appearing on word-and-language shelves; one simply has to browse the shelves to see just which slosh of nutrients will perk up the old vocabulary.

Some writers like to go looking for words in all the wrong (but of course right) places: pop-culture media, technical handbooks and glossaries, collections of malediction. Compilations of obscure and antiquated words, including old slang dictionaries, house quaint or cocky "foundling"--forgotten terms ready to trampoose through modern contexts. And with Internet sites like the Rap Dictionary, http://www.westlord.com/rapdictionary/, y'all gon be glemmin' (shining up) ya sentences wit dope words, yo.

The freshest items, however, are most likely to surface in the world's active flow of expression--literary, journalistic, ethnic, and subcultural. Prize specimens swim by regularly. And if Sunday pundits and other word mavens seize a few of them, so what? Individual writers with keen eyes, notebooks, and the patience to look up words will still net their share. Anyone is free to snatch isolated words from what they read and hear. Outside of trademarked names, no one owns a word--not even poets associated with, say, darkling or diverged.

My recent pickings from literature include flense (to skin a whale, or figuratively, to flay) from Micheal Chabon; peridot (green, or transparent gemstone) from Sandra McPherson; and camorra (secret society) from Anne Fadiman. I'll keep them handy for some inspired use.

Internet Word-A-Day Sources: A Sampling

Vocabulary sort of spavined (broken down)? You can find revitalizing words each day on sites likes these, some of which (as of this writing) will send word features to your email by free subscription. Sample words (in italics) are from the referenced sites; I've shortened the definitions.

THE WORD SPY [www.wordspy.com]. Paul McFedries' sharp-eyed collection of recent coinages. Includes context, background, sightings, and quotes. Indexed archives.

Invacuate: to hold people in a building for safety.

A DEFINITION A DAY [http://www.vocabula.com/quiz/showDOTD.aspx]. From The Vocabula Review. Selects words with "an aura of fun or majesty." Stellar columns, quizzes, and random words.

Weaning: a newly weaned child or animal.

WORD OF THE DAY FROM LEXICO PUBLISHING [http://dictionary.reference.com/wordoftheday/]. Well organized; includes archives and quotes. Free email delivery.

Wayworn: travel-weary.

WORTHLESS WORD FOR THE DAY [http://home.comcast.net/~wwftd/]. Anything but worthless. Features "obscure, abstruse, and/or recondite words" that are often writers' words. Archive. Free email delivery.

Muzzy: muddled, confused.

A.WORD.A.DAY [www.wordsmith.org/awad]. Free email delivery.

Hobbledehoy: an awkward young fellow.

MERRIAM-WEBSTER'S WORD OF THE DAY [www.m-w.com]. Solid, informative. Features etymology and usage examples. Archive. Free email delivery.

Quidnunc: a busybody.

But once again, the big-mamou question: Should you use a word you fear will stump your readers? Absolutely--if you adore it, haven't used too many puzzlers elsewhere, and believe it to be what Mark Twain would call the "intensely right word." After all, what sweeter lagniappe for readers than a new mot juste for their delectation?

This is an excerpt from Spunk and Bite: A Writer's Guide to Punchier, More Engaging Language and Style by Arthur Plotnik. Reprinted by permission of Random House. All rights reserved - do not copy without permission from the publisher.