On Losing Words and the Language We Keep

My boyfriend and I often joke that we lose one vocabulary word every day. We don’t forget them exactly—more like watch them quietly slip out of use and disappear from daily conversation. Words now replaced by vaguer stand-ins, like good, nice, vibe, thing. Entire shades of meaning flattened into convenience.

Vocabulary loss isn’t necessarily a sign of less intelligence—we actually continue learning new words well into our sixties. Retention, though, is another story. A study published in Perspectives on Psychological Science found that since the mid-2000s, we’ve been losing around 338 spoken words per year. Between shrinking attention spans, digital shorthand, and the speed of modern communication, precision often loses to convenience.

It’s no surprise that convenience has shaped our communication styles. Instant messaging and texting are to blame for building almost a complete new language of shorthand, humorously showcased in the infamous 2007 AT&T (then Cingular) commercial: IDK, my BFF Jill? Not only did our words become abbreviated, but this textese carried over into our daily conversation, condensing our spoken language as well.

Still, apart from the shift into the digital era, our vocabulary is also impacted by our environment and attention—possibly also due to the internet. Today, even when we do use our words, they lack the depth and descriptive power that “forgotten” ones have.

My sister and I, who grew up watching the classic Disney movies, have a running joke that Disney used “big” words for its children’s songs. In Aladdin, the Genie sings, “Show some respect, boy, genuflect, down on one knee,” as if kids have any idea what genuflecting is. Never mind the French words like éclat and savoir-faire peppered into the catchy tunes of The Aristocats and Oliver and Company—terms you’d assume too advanced for any elementary schooler singing along to animated films. Yet, these words add an extra level of richness to these songs. When did we stop using them?

We are familiar with words from other languages, often untranslatable, that capture a specific feeling or situation, like hygge or schadenfreude. Another word that my German family often talks about not having an acceptable translation is gemütlichkeit: it doesn’t just mean being cozy, it has a warmth, a contentment that no single word in English fully encapsulates. And we have these words in English, too, but I fear we’ve deserted them in favor, again, of convenience. Or maybe we’ve gotten lazy, leaning on “very” to give a little more emphasis to otherwise bland words. Superb becomes very good. Dreadful turns to very bad. These days, everything is “aesthetic,” but why not use words with more precise meanings? Ornate, austere, romantic, brutalist, sparse. Too often I hear, “It’s a total vibe” when asking about a new restaurant or bar—but what does that even mean? We’ve traded vibes for details. Descriptive terms don’t just illustrate a moment, a place, or a thing, they are rooted in emotion. And when we can name a feeling, a room, a city, a season, then we can understand it better.

As someone who is, admittedly, a full-fledged logophile (a lover of words) myself—what can I say, I am a writer—I can’t help but think that when we stop using these words, we stop honoring the history of these words, too. Etymology so quietly haunts the meaning of modern words. Did you know your paycheck is linguistically tied to seasoning? The word salary stems from the Latin salarium, an allowance paid to Roman soldiers specifically for the purchase of salt, which was once a vital and highly sought-after commodity. Or that nostalgia comes from the Greek roots nostos (return home) + algos (pain)? It literally means the pain of wanting to return home, which makes the feeling that much sadder and more beautiful. Continuing to fold these words into daily use preserves their history.

Apart from the usuals like petrichor (the smell of rain on dry earth) and nincompoop (a silly person or fool), here are a few of my favorite words that I think desperately need a comeback:

• Mellifluous – smooth, sweet, honey-like sound
• Liminal – the in-between, transitional state
• Insouciant – effortless, unconcerned in an elegant way
• Sanguine – confidently optimistic
• Wistful – full of yearning or desire tinged with melancholy

In other words—

I remain cautiously sanguine that we can rescue our collective vocabulary from becoming a vague, insouciant wasteland of “literally” and “it’s a vibe,” and return instead to a more mellifluous world where feelings are wistful, rooms are liminal, and a good rainy afternoon can still be described—correctly—as full of petrichor.

Suggested further reading if you’re a logophile or lexiphile (someone who loves wordplay) like me:

• The Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows by John Koenig – A poetic collection of invented words for feelings and experiences we all recognize but rarely know how to name.
• The Dictionary People by Sarah Ogilvie – A nonfiction look at the overlooked contributors behind the Oxford English Dictionary and the fascinating lives behind the words.
• The Dictionary of Lost Words by Pip Williams – A historical novel about language, gender, and the words women’s lives leave behind during the creation of the Oxford English Dictionary.
• Ella Minnow Pea by Mark Dunn – A clever satirical novel told through letters in which language itself begins disappearing—quite literally—one letter at a time.