At Preply there is an article by Matt Zajechowski on March 9, 2022 titled Words that make you sound smarter, according to Americans. It reports results from a survey of 1,916 Americans done on October 14 and 15 of 2021. There are three Top Twenty lists: A] Which words make someone sound smarter? B] Which words do people use the most to seem smarter? and C] Which words most make someone sound pretentious?
Results from all three lists are collected above in a single table. Ten words you should consider using (listed on B] but not on C]) are: adept, adequate, amicable, anomaly, charisma, coincide, condone, contemplate, exacerbate, and impeccable. The other ten pretentious ones (listed on both B] and C]) are: aesthetic, ambiguous, articulate, audacious, bonafide, brevity, candor, capitalize, caveat, and concur. Why do all these words begin with a letter in the first half of the alphabet?
Five things that people feel about complex vocabulary are shown above via a bar chart. Nearly equal percentages were either annoyed (36%) or impressed (35%). An infographic in the article collects some other negatives from fancy talk. 54% have actively tried to end a conversation with someone who used unnecessarily complex vocabulary. 43% believe someone with a complex vocabulary is trying to sound smarter than they are, and 28% assume that someone with a complex vocabulary is insecure.
A cartoon image was modified from this at Openclipart.
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