“What does parsimonious mean?” my highly-educated husband
asked. He was reading Eisenhower In War and Peace, by Jean Edward Smith.
Parsimonious. I’d known of the word most of my life. It
always reminded me of parsnips. But did I know what it meant?
Um… No, I didn’t. Neither did Dave, and we felt embarrassed.
I felt so embarrassed that I stood up, walked to my desk,
and opened my thesaurus. Here’s what I found:
not enough
retentive
mean
selfish
self-restrained
Dave was still puzzled so I asked him to read me the sentence
with parsimonious in it.
“Eisenhower…was parsimonious with the lives of the troops
entrusted to his command….”
Eisenhower was not enough with the lives of the troops?
Eisenhower was retentive with the lives of his troops?
Eisenhower was mean with the lives of his troops?
Eisenhower was selfish with the lives of his troops?
Eisenhower was self-restrained with the lives of his troops?
That last meaning, self-restrained, had potential, so I checked
that out in the thesaurus: self-controlled, self-disciplined, restrained. Self-restraint
also has to do with being frugal, temperate, not excessive, moderate, measured,
limited.
So Dave and I concluded Ike valued his troops’ lives and was
frugal when it came to endangering them. He practiced self-restraint when it
came to sending troops into harm’s way: He recognized the danger he could put
them in but exercised restraint so no one would suffer or die unnecessarily.
OK, that’s enough about parsimonious. My point is this: When
you write your memoir, use words your readers will understand.
No one appreciates having to stand up, walk over to the
bookshelf, take down the dictionary or thesaurus, and look up a word.
In fact, I suspect most readers simply won’t do it.
Your goal is to make it easy for everyone to read your
memoir.
Many years ago, journalism instructors taught us to write
for an eighth grade audience. That’s not a typo. Eighth graders!
Recently I ran across that same advice.*
And it’s good advice. It yields benefits:
“We shouldn’t discount simple writing,
but instead embrace it.
We should aim to reduce complexity in our writing
as much as possible.
We won’t lose credibility in doing so.
Our readers will comprehend and retain
our ideas more reliably.
And we’ll have a higher likelihood
of reaching more people.”
Shane Snow,
Will Change the Way You Write; emphasis mine
You can still use interesting, expressive, musical, graphic,
textured, dazzling words—words that zing—as long as they’re familiar to your
readers, effective words like:
skedaddle
befuddle
jolly
jovial
harrumph
hooligan
ruffian
rascal
scaliwag
scoundrel
a blowhard
paunchy
tattered
merry
beguiling
spirited
whimsical
Dear William Zinsser wrote about the importance of choosing
words: “Banality is the enemy of good writing. The challenge is to not write
like everybody else.” Writers should avoid a word that’s merely serviceable—useful,
practical—or dull, he said, and instead strive for freshness.
I jotted down of a few simple yet vivid words penned by
Zinsser in his Writing About Your Life:
a sea of codgers, codging the time away
a courtly man
a lofty wicker chair
he listened…with exquisite courtesy
a cultivated man
a rangy, easygoing man
a compact man
he had a scholar’s face: intelligent and quizzical
A word of caution: Use your dictionary and thesaurus wisely.
Janice Hardy blogged about “an episode of Friends where the dumb-yet-lovable
Joey wrote a letter of recommendation. To sound smart, he used the thesaurus
and replaced all his ‘dumb’ words with ‘smart ones.’” Janice continued, “‘They’re warm, nice people
with big hearts’ became ‘They’re humid, pre-possessing homosapiens with
full-sized aortic pumps.’”
So go ahead and use words with sparkle and pizzazz—just choose
words that most people understand.
*Additional resources:
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