*judgments.
I think you did key in on why: “it’s usually adjusting my speech ‘up’ in the proper circumstances”. Adjusting “up” from your default of simpler words really is a different process than catching yourself before you use a word that the particular audience might not understand and frankly if you use several simple words when a less common word which that specific crowd would know would have done better … well no one notices and communication still works fine. Your default state is never “wrong” even if it might sometimes be less than ideal.
Someone who would naturally, by way of default, use words that some audiences would hear as “SAT words”, be intimidated by, or just not understand, has many more opportunities to more significantly and noticeably miss the mark.
To eschew obfuscation.
The word can be spelled either way, even if many Americans (and I am American) claim that it should always be spelled the way you’ve written it. I prefer the extra ‘e’. The word looks much nicer with it than without it. I don’t care if Americans regard it as a uniquely British spelling like “colour”, I think it’s perfectly acceptable, and so does my web browser’s spellchecker (although maybe I added it a long time ago because I was annoyed by it “correcting” me).
I’ve been traumatized by it appearing in AP style tests back when I took journalism classes and copy edited back in the day. I, too, like the way “judgement” looks better, but “judgment” has just been drilled into me.
My father gave me a bad habit. Not on purpose, mind you, just in the regular way that children imitate their parents and take on their affectations and speech patterns. The habit is this - when you are about to say a word, or raise a topic, or state a fact that you’re pretty sure your audience doesn’t know, you first say the thing plainly, then when they say they don’t know what it is, you act a little surprised. You say something like “You don’t know that? Sure you do, it’s when…”
Example vignette:
“Wait, why was that batter called out?”
“Infield fly rule.”
“The what rule?”
“: pause like you’re surprised at the question: The infield fly rule…you know, when there’s a runner on first and second with less that two outs and the batter pops up a ball that in the umpire’s judgment could be caught by an infielder with normal effort, the batter’s out automatically?”
You’d describe it with a tone of voice that suggests they just forgot for a moment and you were just reminding them.
The idea, at least to me, is that you’re showing respect to their intellect by suggesting you thought so highly of them that you assumed they knew what it was. And you non-verbally invite them to pretend like they do, so you don’t embarrass them. You’d express the idea that “you’re just so smart, I figured you knew what the infield fly rule was” and also give them the opportunity to go “oh, yeah, that. I knew that” if they want to.
In actuality, people haaaaaaate that. They take it as an insult because they think you assume everyone knows that, and since they themselves do not, that you think they’re below average intelligence. “Duh, the infield fly rule, which everyone knows except you because you’re an idiot.” Or something like that, I don’t really know. You’d have to ask them.
Seems to me it’s more insulting to assume people don’t know things than to assume they do, but as I’ve aged, matured, and become more wise to the world, it just ain’t so. Can’t explain why.
Is that a real rule in baseball? Sounds like the equivalent of LBW for cricket.
Yup. It’s real: Infield fly rule - Wikipedia. The article does a good job of explaining the whys and wherefores.
This. I’m not even aware that the words I am using are “big”, unless I am talking to a group of kids or those new to my industry. Then, I try to preface my speech with a statement of “If you don’t understand a word I use, please let me know right away.”
Yes. It can happen with runners on first and second, or first, second, and third with less than two outs. It’s basically there so the fielder doesn’t purposely drop the ball to get a cheap double play (or even triple play, I suppose). It’s a rule that seems to confuse a lot of baseball fans, but if you’ve played baseball, it makes sense.
Basically, in baseball, if the ball is caught on a fly, the runners have to tag up on the base before advancing. They cannot just advance to the next base as they could with a fair ball that hits the ground before being fielded (and fair and foul have their own set of somewhat involved rules that I won’t go into.)
I can further explain if you want to get into the nitty gritty, but it will involve a discussion of how runners are allowed to advance on fly outs.
ETA: Actually, that Wikipedia article linked to while I was writing this post outlines all the possible cases and exceptions pretty thoroughly. I totally forgot that there’s also an intentional drop rule, which is related, but can be invoked even with someone not on second base.
Here’s an example of someone trying to get away with an intentional drop on a line drive. This rule is nowhere nearly invoked as often as the infield fly rule.
Generally the use of “big” words is not appropriate in real life situations because you are risking not being understood and generally make your communication less concise because you have to repeat/explain yourself. I find that most people who use them are insecure about their intelligence, whether they are smart or not.
They may be often appropriate in writing or presentation in cases you know your audience and share some common ground, and in this case their use would help with communication. But even in academic papers I feel that it is preferable to avoid technical jargon and present things in the simplest way possible, unless people would be confused by you not using the appropriate term.
But as many people in the thread have said, for them this isn’t the case. It’s just a word they know, and it’s the best word to describe what they are talking about.
The American politicians of the 19th century, although as big as bores as Gladstone ( who could ramble on in Ancient Greek ) used grandiloquent words flowing endlessly in order to solicit votes from the herd and were admired for it even when not understood — plus it impressed the journalists, who were even more important to getting votes the right way — and of course, the bombastic style was geared to inchoate flattery of American Glory which was what the dumbbells had come to hear.
As Johnson put it of wretched old Milton: *‘He who told every man that he was equal to his King could hardly want an audience.’
*It was only in the 20th century that the reverse snobbery took place, and plain-speaking idiocy became the vogue, to cater for the 'Who’s he think he is ?’ resentment.
But that reaction illustrates the quandary. If those people just relax and use the words that come naturally then they risk being seen as “insecure about their intelligence” or pretentious or maybe as an odd egghead, even when the audience understands the meaning just fine.
Oh, no question there are those who do consciously choose to use high falutin words in an attempt to impress, and they often use those word incorrectly to boot, but relatively few. More so there is an anti-intellectualism in this country that labels anyone those who use those words because those are the words they know as “the elites” to be resented.
Again the skill for the most effective communicator is to be smart enough that no one ever thinks you are much smarter than they are: you are just expressing, very clearly in easily understood terms, what they, now that they heard you say it, already know. Even if they only just then realized they already knew that.
Bill Clinton was the master of that. Gore was not. For example.
The oratory of Lincoln is still amazing to me, genuinely inspiring. It wasn’t just people being bores. But he had a ‘folksy’ side too. That’s not entirely different from for example Obama sometimes attempting high rhetoric (no Lincoln IMO, but few could be), other times dropping the ‘g’ from words ending in ‘ing’ or else speaking in a, coming from him to my ears, phony sounding African American dialect.
Somebody probably has written a good book on how and why the hostility to people ‘sounding highly educated’ has increased in US society. Which I agree it seems to have, though anti-intellectualism was a strain in US culture before the 20th century. The current president is a big fan of Andrew Jackson, and they aren’t entirely different figures.
So what? 
It depends on how and if you want to connect with your audience. If you just don’t give a shit, sure, it doesn’t matter.
Yet Lincoln was a special case, unlike the pompous masters of rich meaningless prosying who were his peers in the 1850s: his Gettysburg thing was widely panned all round as a wretched attempt. He seemed inadequate because of that simplicity and economy of words.
I feel sure I saw somewhere recently how US presidents have increasingly dumbed down their messages over the decades.
Yeah…
*Using the Flesch-Kincaid readability test the Guardian has tracked the reading level of every State of the Union
*
Madison hits the best: from 20 to 25.3 Average Education Level needful.
Bush the Elder, Obama and Clinton are under 10; which Bush the Younger and Reagan both got; Grant was 16.6, Jackson 19.7.
It was too early for Trump, but I’m somehow sure he will continue the trend.