alt Hacker NewsDoes learning/using new words make you a worse writer?
The handful of times I've used a thesaurus is usually 'for aesthetics', in that the word/phrase I have in mind clashes with the flow of the text. I know what I want to say, and I know how I can say it, but I _also_ know that I can jostle the wording around so that the rhythm doesn't deteriorate.
The question is how you acquire the new words. If you learn words from reading, you’ll have a better sense of their nuance than if you learn them from a thesaurus. Thesaurus writing is often easily identifiable thanks to the writer not catching the full meaning of the word. Some authors are better than others for challenging one’s vocabulary, notably Anthony Burgess and Cormac McCarthy. While I enjoy David Foster Wallace, I feel like he had a tendency to abuse medical terminology in an attempt to challenge the reader with unfamiliar vocabulary.
If I were to contemplate using a word I found in a thesaurus in my writing (and it was something that I didn’t already know), I would make sure to (a) read the definition in a dictionary and probably do a search on Google books to see the word in action.