bitch at pulpculture.org wrote:
>
> it's just that users
> are taught to see a 25 cent word and whine about how it is unecessary and
> people should use 'easier' words. whatev.
Yes, but an interesting curiosity, and perhaps more than that.
I've been browsing through Shakespeare, who of course was not at all afraid to use $25 and not just 25 cent words, but an amazing number of the lines (or sets of 3 or four lines) in S that reach out and grab one consist of (say in a two-line passage) 18 monosyllables and one bisyllable. And if you check the lines that Doug has occasionally quoted from Stevens or Ashberry they often exhibit the same phenomenon: one two- or three-syllable word to 17 or 18 monosyllables. S's " multitudinous seas incarnadine making the green one red,' the schoolroom instance of this contrasting, is simply a more flamboyant instance of the practice.
This is impressionistic & may be wrong. There should be two or three dissertations in though. With computerized text it would be easier to check than in the past.
Carrol