Tuesday, September 19, 2006

Comic Book Vocabulary

Often I have been accused of using an a big vocabulary. Once at work a person was upset that they had to use a dictionary to understand what I meant. While my college education helped I always said comics were the real reason that I had a wider then normal vocabulary. This was truer in older comics (I believe) then today's books.

I present as examples two words used in a J.M. DeMatteis scripted Legion of Super Heroes story from 1980 (issue #268 with Steve Ditko art).

Stentorian:

sten·to·ri·an
adjective
Definition:
loud: loud, powerful, or declamatory in tone

Lucubration:

lu·cu·bra·tion
noun
Definition:
1. piece of learned writing: a written work resulting from prolonged study, often having a scholarly or pedantic style ( usually used in the plural )
2. long study: long hard study, especially at night

Now to try to use these in a sentence at work tomorrow.

5 comments:

  1. I agree that your vocabulary is immense, thank you Stan Lee, but I've always been amazed at your grammar. You very often use the wrong form of there(their, they're) and too(to, two) but I guess the sesquipedalian nature of your vocabulary can make up for that. Love live the Lexicon League of Linguistics!!

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  2. Jeff - You're absolute right on about my grammar, my biggest mistake is usually then and than. I had a wonderful secretary at one time who used to always correct my grammar, but had to look up some of my words. What she laughed about the most was that my grammactical errors were usually consistently wrong the same way. Must be a wiring issue.

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  3. You told me when I was a kid that you're biggest problem was brought and bought. Then and than aren't too bad... ever since Kelli explained them to me I haven't had much of an issue. Just remember to use than when it's a comparison of sorts - greater than, lesser than and such.

    I know for a fact that the entire reason I passed my vocab quiz in 4th grade with a 100% (higher than anyone else in the class) was because I read comic books - the word I got right that everyone else missed was flexibility - and I remember learning that word from a comic book.

    Now days comics aren't always as helpful... I find grammatical errors frequently, as well as spelling errors. It makes me sad.

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  4. Also, one should never forget Star Trek vocabulary

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  5. Cshiana - Brought and bought are a huge verbal faux pas.

    I agree that today's comics are not as big on big words as they used to be and I miss most grammatical errors, because I suck at grammar.

    Star Trek vocabulary is fun also.

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