Word Pirates

I prize clarity in writing above linguistic cartwheels. But am I straying away from the “big words” (or more accurately, obscure words) out of fear in a way that is slowly homogenizing my writing? Am I ignoring something that could enhance my writing?

In a book otherwise devoted to simple, straightforward writing, the style manual The Complete Plain Words, Sir Ernest Gowers takes a moment to remind us that ostentatiously avoiding long words can be as annoying to readers as over-using them. Winston Churchill, writes Gowers, promoted the virtue of the short and simple phrase; yet it was Churchill, in his account of the second world war, who talked about “flocculent” thinking, instead of “woolly” thinking, “and so conveys to his readers just that extra ounce of contempt that we feel ‘flocculent’ to contain, perhaps because the combination of ‘f’ and ‘l’ so often expresses an invertebrate state, as in ‘flop’, ‘flap’, ‘flaccid’, ‘flimsy’, ‘flabby’ and ‘filleted.’” - From the Guardian

Do people go to a dictionary when they don’t know a word in a piece of writing, or do they just go away period?  Is there a balance between unknown words and the plain language of the everyday? How much is too much?

I guess the bigger question would be … do I even know those wild and crazy words in the first place?

-marcia