New Perspective on Words, Writing,
and the English Language
The Power of a Single Word * The Men Who Ruined English Spelling
Why You Should Journal Your Life * Insightful English Language Quotations
As Barbara ceases publication of her Brabec Bulletin after 25 years, she ends with a Bulletin for all those who write for pleasure or profit, love words, and are fascinated by the wonderment of our beloved English language.
The Power of a Single Word
A post from literary agent Steve Laube titled “The Power of a Single Word” hit my hot button. He said his sources indicate there are about a million words in the English language, and some 750,000 are technical or scientific, which leaves us with 250,000 words to use in our verbal or written communications. He linked his readers to TestYourVocab.com, a popular website where you can check your English vocabulary by taking an interesting and fun test to see how many words you can define or at least understand their meaning.
Laube said that the average English-speaking person knows about 20,000 of them but uses only half of them in their communications with others. As a lifelong professional writer of many words, I felt challenged to take the test. On the scoring page, it states that an “adult fluent English speaker knows between 20,000-35,000 words,” so I was relieved to get a score of “Proficient” (knowing a definition or having an understanding of 29,106 words). But I’ll bet I’ve never used more than 10,000 different words in all forms of my communications.
As a writer, I have always used simple language to communicate, believing that if I used words that required my readers to consult the dictionary more than once, they might think I was trying to show off and would soon tire of reading what I wrote.
In 1977, when I first began to study how to become a professional writer, I discovered William Zinsser’s life-changing book, On Writing Well—The Classic Guide to Writing Nonfiction. I took to heart his advice on how to become a good writer: “Use short words and short sentences.” My sentences have grown longer now, but when I began my writing career, I wasn’t trying to build a vocabulary, only trying to make the average reader understand what I was saying. I remember being advised to write for readers who could read at the level of a 6th grader, and little seems to have changed since then. In checking today’s reading statistics, I see that only 13% of adults in the U.S. are considered proficient readers.
On page 2 of the vocabulary test, I ran into many words I’d never heard and had fun looking up their definitions. How many of these do you know? And where would you use them if you do?
cenacle (formal discussion group); verdue (lush green vegetation); chivvy (British for badger); bugbear (archaic word); maladroit (clumsy) person); williwaw (violent sudden squall); regnant (reigning/ruling); fuliginous (sooty); portmanteau (large trunk or suitcase; or combination of words), and opsimath (one who begins to study late in life—a word I can relate to but will never use).
I felt better about my test results when I remembered that Steve Laube said Shakespeare used about 29,000 different words in his works, but 12,000 of them were used only once.
Of William Shakespeare, American literary historian and author Stephen Greenblatt said, “Perhaps his greatest feat … was finding the right words to describe it all—or simply making up new English words when the ones he wanted didn’t exist. Shakespeare is credited with adding thousands of words to the English language throughout his life and career, including common phrases that are still in use today. “ (From the article 'Five Compelling Quotes about the English Language' on Renaissance Translations.com.) If you're trying to learn English as a second language, this website links to classes that will help you expand your vocabulary.
If you’re a writer interested in publishing a book, I urge you to subscribe to Steve Laube’s blog. His “Fun Fridays” posts are the highlight of my week, and this link will take you to his post, “The Power of a Single Word,” and his subscribe page.
The Men Who Ruined English Spelling
Why is there a B in DOUBT? Why does RECEIPT have a P in it? And what’s with the B in DEBT? You’ll find the answers in this educational language video with Rob Words. Thanks again to Steve Laube for sharing this video on his “Fun Fridays” page. I tip my hat to narrator Rob Words, whose YouTube channel will be a delightful find for every writer, word lover, and anyone who's trying to learn our often confusing English language. He has many other videos I have enjoyed watching, and a sampling of them is listed below. Have fun picking the ones of most interest to you.
• Grammar rules you can stop sticking to (It’s okay to split an infinitive and other archaic rules)
• Are you getting these phrases wrong, too? (All about EGGCORNS—another word I didn’t know)
• How to translate French words without knowing French (3 clever tricks).
• The Alphabet Explained (the origin of every letter)
• Why do we say “as mad as a hatter”? (Idiom origins)
Why You Should Journal Your Life
As I push forward to finish my new book in process, I’ve been reading my writing, poring through journals, letters, and published and unpublished writing in search of good material I can put in this book or one of my future writings.
It sounds egotistic to say it, but I’m one of my favorite writers. That’s because I’ve documented my unusual life in writing from age 18 and forgotten all the details in between my memories of the most memorable times of my life. Sometimes when I read something I wrote decades ago in one of my journals or my “old letters book” (copies of typed letters sent between 1961 and 1990), it suddenly seems so profound or prophetic that I’m amazed, or so funny in retrospect that I find myself laughing aloud. And I ask myself, “How could I have forgotten something as important as this?”
If you need some good reasons why you should journal your life, I published a definitive Bulletin on that topic last year that you might have missed: “The Benefits and Power of Journaling.”
I recall one evening, when I was around 65 years old, writing by hand in one of my journals. Harry asked what I was doing, and I said, “Just writing in my journal so I’ll have something interesting to read when I get old.”
Without missing a beat, he gave me an amused husbandly look and said, “My dear, you’re already old.”
Guess that makes me almost ancient now.
Insightful English Language Quotations
• “Language is very powerful. Language does not just describe reality. Language creates the reality it describes.” – Desmond Tutu (Reminds me of what I hear on the news every day.)
• “Words are the passkeys to our souls. Without them, we can’t share our thoughts.” – Virginia Woolf
• “The English language is so elastic that you can find another word to say the same thing.” – Mahatma Gandhi
• “Our language is funny—a ‘fat chance’ and a ‘slim chance’ are the same thing.” – J. Gustav White
First published as a Brabec Bulletin on June 9, 2025.
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