How is a verbose vocabulary best exercised in day to day speech?

If communication is the goal, you should use language that the listener understands.

Block also that metaphor. LItanies do not brim.

(And do you mean verbose?)

Do what comes most naturally to you and see what effect it has on your hearer. Then if needed, modify your language if you are not being understood.

I think about this quite often and actually did a wikihow article on exactly that. Of course, it’s a Wiki so other people went and screwed it all up.

I feel that the key is to ensure that those words which might be unfamiliar to your audience be used in a manner that allows context to fill in the blanks.

For starters, make sure you use those words correctly. Verbosity has nothing to do with the size of ones’ vocabulary. Verbose = wordy or prolix; one can have a 6th-grade vocabulary and still be verbose.

@submariner That’s exactly what everybody screwed up in my wiki article. They kept shortening the introduction where I made the case that “if you’re going to be verbose, you might as well do it well”. That defined the whole freaking article but the mods deleted it.

Why? They said it was too verbose…

Listen to @gailcalled and @submariner. Knowing a word means understanding it and knowing how to use it properly.

@submariner: one’s

It is appropriate to use a word appropriately.

@gailcalled I don’t know about litanies, but vocabularies brim.

@morphail: That doesn’t work either literally or figuratively.

He was brimming with ideas, and he had a large vocabulary.

I use the word that I feel best expresses what I’m trying to say to the person I’m talking to and otherwise don’t think about it. Occasionally someone will remark about it in a “I didn’t know that word could be used in an actual spoken sentence!” way, but my vocabulary is large because I read a lot.

@gailcalled sure, vocabularies brim. why not?

the poets vocabulary brims with terms and metaphors…

Ah, but you cite as an example a phrase that uses “brims” as a transitive verb with a direct object. That’s a different kettle of fish.

@gailcalled Why would you have fish in a kettle?

He didn’t say a litany brims. He said a vocabulary brims with a litany. x can’t brim with y unless x contains y because “to brim with something” (which is not transitive, by the way) means “to be full to the brim with something,” and you can’t have a container that’s full to the brim with something unless the something is in the container.

A vocabulary is filled with words, and so it can brim with them. A vocabulary is not filled with one litany or even with many litanies, and so a vocabulary cannot brim with litanies. A litany is not a component of a vocabulary.

Firstly, let me say that my unintended misspelling of verbose, which I fully believed to be verbos, was just a poor spelling choice. I used to think subtle was spelled suddle ten years ago. Whose falt is that?

Anyway, lets dig into litanies. The definition of litany has progressed down to a meaning that projects a prolonged, droll, recitation. Almost like the original meaning.

A good idea to check its close meaning to other words is a thisaurus. Whereat you will see a litany is not antonymous to a list.

A brimming vocabulary can certainly betray a litany of words that their audience is repulsed by.

saying

@gailcalled my example is “X brims with Y” which is the same structure as @Ltryptophan‘s example. Whether you think X can contain Y is a different issue… but since this is a metaphor, I don’t see the problem.

@Ltryptophan I can’t look at your last post without wanting to take a red pen to my monitor!!!

@Ltryptophan: Thisaurus or thatsaurus?

@morphail: Try reversing metaphors sometimes. Anything does not always go.

“The fog creeps in on little cat feet.” The cat creeps in on little fog feet?

However, I do concede the floor. To the spoils goes the victor.