We are currently reading The Dumbest Generation: How the Digital Age Stupefies Young Americans and Jeopardizes Our Future (Or, Don’t Trust Anyone Under 30) by Mark Bauerlein in my Revolutions in Communication class. It’s an excellent book, even though a) I spend hours each day blogging and thus using the very technologies that Bauerlein despises, and b) I am most definitely under the age of 30. I don’t agree with everything that he says, but his arguments are clearly articulated and I am of a similar mind with much of what he discusses. Bauerlein writes in a controversial manner and isn’t at all apologetic in his biases, which makes for an intriguing read. He is also well-educated, writes beautifully, and refers to research studies and countless academic journals.
Now that we have established his ethos, I would like to discuss something particular in his book that inspired me to create a new section of posts here at Living Rhetorically in the Real World. Under the category The Practical Guide, this new sub-category is Random Rare Word. Every so often I’ll share a word with its definition, looked up at random in my beloved Canadian Oxford Dictionary, so that we might have a new word to add to our lexicon.
Bauerlein says that rare words are those words which we do not encounter on a daily basis. He fears that our ability to learn new rare words is rapidly decreasing, because we spend less time reading and more time in front of a computer reading “dumbed-down” articles or watching the TV (in which the characters all use common words). Rare words are words that aren’t frequently used, but they are important to learn because they challenge our brains.
Interestingly, Bauerlein found that there are 68 rare words per 1,000 words found in newspapers; 23 rare words per 1,000 words found in primetime adult television, 17 rare words per 1,000 words found in college graduate conversation, and only 2 rare words per 1,000 words in the popular Sesame Street (or Sesame Park, as I suppose we must now refer to it).
Parents, take heed: Sesame Street is a form of entertainment, not a substitute for a learning environment!
Although we best learn words when we encounter them informally (that is, within contextual basis rather than looking them up in a dictionary), I still think that we can benefit from looking words up in a dictionary on occasion. Hence, the Random Rare Words posts.
Today’s Random Rare Word
Dolorous (adjective)
1. distressing, painful; doleful, dismal.
2. distressed, sad.
See also dolorously (adverb) and dolour (noun).
Dolour is Old French and comes from the Latin word for pain or grief.
What interesting rare words have you come across lately? Had you heard of the word “dolorous” before? Is it something you’ll be able to “slip in” to conversation or writing?