What are some intelligent and useful words?

This question has already been answered. dictionary.com

All words are useful. However, a word cannot be intelligent.

@gailcalled Yeah? Can you give me the exact link where it answers the question based on people on Fluther’s opinions?

Therapy.

As of this minute, Fluther has 952 questions on words. I am certain that at least some of them would provide answers for you. http://www.fluther.com/topics/words/

So are you looking for words to drop them into conversation, so that you sound rather intelligent?

Thank you.
What do you think?
Can I help you?
That’s a great idea.

I think this would’ve worked better had you provided an example sentence and asked Fluther to rephrase it in a more eloquent way.

Do you mean words that people without a college education usually don’t know or don’t regularly use? Not that you need a college education to have a large and effective vocabulary. I think the way you worded the question is a little odd. I have a college education and I think my vocabulary is lacking. Especially compared to the majority of my family.

Reading a lot helps expand vocabulary. Also, you can study the dictionary. I know people who purposely try to learn a new word every week. Being around those who have strong vocabularies will help.

An important part of communication is knowing your audience. Keep that in mind as you drop new words into your daily speech. Adding a bunch of what you might consider to be intelligent words can be good and bad.

Tolerance, respect, and love come to mind.

It depends what you want to talk about.

It’s not the words that make you intelligent. It’s how you use them.

For example: Clear concise thoughts sound perfectly intelligent using simple words – “I fear I have eaten too many cookies.”

On the other hand, we’ve all known folks who use “50-cent” words in an attempt to sound intelligent – “I am most perplexed and aghast at the distinct possibility that I may have, in a moment of gluttony, ingested and devoured an enormous, heaping amount of the most delectable baked goods.”

Speak simply and clearly, not as if a thesaurus threw up.

Here are three words for you.

Concupiscence. Strong sexual desire; lust.

*Onomatopoeia.*The formation or use of words such as buzz or murmur that imitate the sounds associated with the objects or actions they refer to.

Chiaroscuro. The treatment of light and shade in drawing or painting.

Now you can add them to your vocabulary. I doubt you could use them all in one sentence. And without fully grasping their place in the language, one will not sound too intelligent.

I’m with @gailcalled in opining that “there are no intelligent words”, and also in large part share her idea that “most” words are useful. Some clearly are not “useful”, even if they are commonly “used”.

If you want to know words that are useful to you and that would make you seem more intelligent, then you really have to arrange the words that you already know to ask that question.

The most useful words I know in this context are: read, write, speak and listen.

Words, simple or polysyllabic, are as useful in isolation as a box of unstrung beads. Uncommon ones (words, not beads) make a conversation or text interesting if used cautiously or rarely. The goal of the writer or speaker is to 1) be understood; 2) be clear and 3) to be interesting.

@illusionlies: You might find it a useful exercise to reframe your question. And these three statements are very unclear.

“Words that a human of intelligence would use… It sounds funny to say it.
If they aren’t almost always used, that’d be great.”

*Ultracrepidarian. It sounds funny when pronounced, possibly, and is rarely used (for good reason. No one will know what you are talking about.) I am intelligent, I am human, I probably wouldn’t use it.

* One who gives opinions about something beyond his or her knowledge.

Instead of saying intelligent words, I would interpret the question to refer to useful words that are not commonly used.

One word that I like that comes from mathematics is isomorphic. It means “having the same form.” For example, an addition table for Roman numerals is isomorphic to an addition table for decimal numbers. The relationship between the numeric symbols is the same in both cases. If f® is a function that maps Roman numerals to decimals, then we can write f(r1 + r2) = f(r1) + f(r2).

I can see the word isomorphic being used in a wider context. It is similar to the word analogous, but whereas the word analogous can be used in a loose sense, with people speaking of an analogy breaking down if carried too far, isomorphism implies a strong one to one correspondence.

I could tell you some German “intelligent” words, but I’m doubting that it’ll help you

One of my faves is ‘dichotomy’ although I don’t use it much.

a division or contrast between two things that are or are represented as being opposed or entirely different.

I like this word:
camaraderie- friendship, amity, companionship, solidarity, company, comradeship

Gregarious- friendly, living communally, growing together
Zealous- full of zeal (actively and unreservedly enthusiastic)

You could try making up your own words with your own definitions. You will then sound so intelligent that no one will know what you are talking about.

@flutherother . . . thank you for the funktacular answer

Try verdant, loquacious, and defenestrate on for size. Here they are used in a sentence:
I defenestrated the loquacious fellow, fortunately the verdant landscaping cushioned his fall.

I hope that helps slake your thirst for new words!

“Bite me.”

Please and thank you are awesome words that need to be said more often.

I’m reminded of Ernest Hemingway, who knew the English language’s big, obscure words but chose to write without them.