How do you account for words that we know but rarely use?

“Paean” is a noun that means a song of praise or triumph. I often read “paean.” It is not a rare word; transposing it into a verb is a very, very bad an egregious thing to do, however.

Words are words; they are not like the best china, saved only for company.

I use all of the words you listed, both when writing and when speaking.

They’re not at all unusual, but many people don’t use them because they are not confident in how to use them. For instance, marvelous is a marvelous word, but it isn’t a word one uses to describe a budget. Really, did the budget package cause wonder or astonishment?

Of the five words you listed, I have used four of them in the last couple weeks. And I have used escapade to describe some of my son’s adventures; he just hasn’t been on any in about a month.

I don’t know about the rest of you but sometimes I’ll go a few days just looking for the right moment to use fuliginous or bifurcate. Spangew and splanchnic are a lot harder to work into normal conversation.

What @gailcalled said goes for me as well. All of it.

@gailcalled , Thanks for pointing out that paean is a noun. I was not aware of that, but checked the dictionary to confirm.

@zenvelo , Marvelous has another defintion

Okay, for all of you whose working vocabularies exceed mine, surely there must be words that whose meaning you know that you are unlikely to use.

Something else that occurred to me. I do not recall seeing any of the words that I listed being used on Fluther, certainly not very often. I think that it is pretty evident that the group here is better educated than average.

@fundevogel , Of the words that you listed, the only ones that I recognized as words that I have seen before are fuliginous, whose definition I had to look up, and bifurcate, which I know from its use in mathematics.

Well, there are some words, like “ulterior”, that I will probably never use outside of certain phrases: i.e. “ulterior motive”. Same goes for “chagrin” being used outside of “to [my/his/her/X’s] chagrin”.

But as for a word that I know what it means but never use…maybe “vainglorious”? I love that word, but I don’t think I’ve ever used it. Same goes for “jejune”. It’s an awesome word, but to my knowledge, I’ve never used it. Though I know what they mean, I’d have to think about and plan to use those words in advance; it wouldn’t just come naturally to me.

I hate “paean” simply because of the way it’s spelled. Add another vowel, why don’t ya.

I knew lots of dialect words when I was growing up, words like spaver, dreich, haar and gochle. Where I live now they are never used and they may be dying out, which is a pity.

I account for them by looking at the history of languages. Words falling out of common usage seems to be a usual thing – but I wouldn’t say they’re in the process of leaving the language. I’m not sure if that ever happens, actually – are there any words that have left English entirely?

For the record:
“Egregious” has been used 136 times on Fluther;
“Escapade”, 9 times;
“Flamboyant”, 60 times;
“Lest”, 390 times;
and “Muse”, 456 times.

The occasional appearance of less familiar words in text has the effect of engaging the reader’s attention, but it has to be used with moderation. Too many, and the flow is disrupted; the reading becomes laborious.

Thanks @thorninmud. Considering the total number of words, those are pretty small in terms of percentage, but not without significance. I am surprised by the number of uses of lest.

Something else to consider is personal preference. The English language provides different ways for saying things and I imagine we all have preferred word choices. This will mark my one and only use of the word pithy, a term whose use I consider really pretentious.

I use “marvelous”, “escapade” and “flamboyant”, I didn’t think they were uncommon words at all. I do think words disappear from common speech without disappearing from writing, and in particular, formal writing.

Two different people in my office have used “egregious” just today. I use “bifurcate” at work a lot, because we tend to develop quasi-legal documents, and often want to separate issues from each other.

I’m discombobulated at the notion.

One I can think of is “bedraggled.” I don’t know that I have ever used the word even though I do see it used fairly often in books.

Same with “defenestrate” and “penultimate” except I rarely see them while reading.

“Penultimate” and its cousin “antepenultimate’ are useful when you want one word rather than six.

A word I just learned about today is explementary for two angles that add to 360. I am going to have to make a point of using that term just to be annoying. Actually, I am surprised I have not come across the word before.