I really want to know what people think. As dalehiliman says, there are different levels of language, but I don't agree with his point that the third tier, the absolute rarest words, are necessarily "snooty." My point is that words can always be used inappropriately, but there is definitely a place in writing for "cachinnation"--it shouldn't always be relegated to the ghetto of snootiness. "Nattering nabobs of negativity" is a classic phrase even if nobody knows that "nabob" is a derivation from the Bengali pronunciation of the Indian royal title nawwab. But in that phrase it's the sound that's most important, I think. "Nay-bob" has built into it a feeling of "nay-saying" or something like that so you don't have to know what it means for it to work rhetorically.
But take "yaud," which is a great word meaning "worn out mare." It's a dialect word, North English and Scottish (as I learned when I looked it up in the OED), and apparently rare. So what standard would you use to decide whether to drop that word into your writing? Besides that "yaud" always fits in a discussion on rare words, it's hard to think of a rule to follow. (It reminds me of that fact that in Sanskrit there's a particular sound that's a long-vocalic 'l'--don't ask what that sounds like--which appears in exactly one place in Classical Sanskrit and that's in a entry in a grammar that says basically "no word uses the long-vocalic 'l'.") What I'm trying to understand is when "yaud" becomes a word we can use in writing that's not about words. It's not a question of snootiness but something else that I can't put my finger on. Is there an answer?
And I should add that if Hydra is offended by what he/she sees as self promotion (and shmuckiness) then he/she should suggest to an administrator that this post be deleted.
OP
