A major concern for me is sounding pretentious. Maybe that in itself sounds pretentious, but I know I write sentences that may as well be paragraphs, throw jargon around, though I try not to do this outside its proper setting, and use some words straight out of an SAT Study Guide. Those are the reasons I’d ascribe to being called pretentious (I do it in writing, but the last bit is true for my speech and texting as well, I think my friends are just used to it). I’ve had coworkers ask me to rephrase or define something, but again, I think they’re just used to me (promise this bit is somewhat relevant!).
I think it’s easy to discount that people living in the 17th century had their own conception of pretension. I think it’s easy to do this, kind of depersonalizing everyday folks from time periods before ours. When we think of the 16th and 17th century, we think of Marlowe and Shakespeare, commonly lauded as masters of the English language and associated with high school English class. Of course, with a moment’s thought, we all know that not everybody was Shakespeare. Hell, a significant amount of people weren’t literate.¹ Even those within academia were divided about the significant amount of language change that was taking place during the Early Modern English period: the Restoration saw the end of the aversion for “ideas and social ideals” from outside England reemergence of cultural contact, particurly with French culture.² Predictably, this shift in attitude toward France led to the introduction of another swathe of French borrowings into the English language.³ We also see a preference for classic languages in academic writing, leading to the introduction of numerous Latin and Greek borrowings, as well, particularly in the semantic domain of science.⁴
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There was a negative reaction toward the proliferation of borrowings, with some referring to them as “inkhorn terms” and deeming them, essentially, pretentious (Gramley says “obscure, affected, or pompous”).⁵ The phrase “inkhorn terms” refers to the metaphorical nature of the inkhorn, a writer’s tool that, in time, came to be associated with those pretentious and contemptible academics who use these controversial words. We can see this disdain for the writer-cum-instrument in phrases like “to smell of the ink-horn,” that is, to be pedantic.⁶ While some of these words have fallen into disuse, like “temulent” for “drunk” or “deruncinate” for “weed (verb),” others, like “penetrate,” “skeleton,” “crisis,” and “democracy,” I would argue are known to most native English speakers.⁷
Notably, some scholars took an approach reminiscent of the Anglish movement, wherein Latinate terms were replaced with words based on Old English morphology, like “endsay” for “conclusion” and “saywhat” for definition.⁸ It’s both interesting and unsurprising to me that the notion of linguistic purity and attempt to seek a creative means of word-formation from language’s “untouched” roots.
This brings us to today, where it seems the modern argument for pretentious language is less so aimed at lexical borrowings than it is at “hard words,” which Gramley also mentions. The name itself gives away the issue many people take with these words: they’re hard to figure out or remember. Some of them, though, are quite old and would have been accepted by critics of inkhorn terms. For example, a friend and I discussed the use of words like “thus,” “hence,” and “henceforth” and how they feel out of place and highfalutin in a non-academic context. Several people that I asked generally described pretentious words rather than giving examples, though, mostly saying that pretentious words are those that the speaker has to define due to their obscurity. It’s a decent qualifier that resonates with me, and its subjectivity is to its gain rather than its detriment because I’d say that pretension does vary based on the people you’re with! Hence⁹ my friends not thinking less of me every time I use some fifty-cent word I picked up in like, middle school.
Upon searching “pretentious words,” I found several opinions, but I’ll stick with looking at one, a list of “17 Pretentious Words & What to Use Instead.” I found this source interesting because not only are we getting the author’s perspective on what words are unacceptable, but we’re given their acceptable alternatives. Honestly, I wouldn’t have known half of these words were considered pretentious (which might say something about me). Like the original inkhorn terms, many of these words are borrowings (from French and Latin even): “ergo,” “coiffure,” “modus operandi,” “apropos”… ten of these seventeen terms are loan words, illustrative of the author’s opinion on what sort of words are undesirable and elitist. Perhaps, then, things haven’t changed so much. The author’s suggestions for the list given, by the way, include “therefore,” “hairstyle/hairdo,” “approach/manner” (unless one works in law enforcement, then they’re allowed to say M.O.), and “appropriate.” The justification for the inclusion of these words is that those who use them, “like to use French words to appeal cultured.” So far, our reasoning for considering these terms pretentious (and what the terms are) parallel those used in the Early Modern English period.
I’m interested in a closer look at how real people that I can ask for clarification. Like I said in that paragraph up there, I asked a couple people about what they considered pretentious in addition to consulting the internet. A few themes emerged:
- “Academese”: Words that are just too much. Many of the people I reached out to said that pretentious words are characterized by their association with academia, with one friend saying that “anything Google says is ‘literary’ in it” could be pretentious, continuing to say that “if you’re practically goading someone into needing a dictionary when talking to them it’s pretty lame.” I myself when discussing the issue with friends refer to pretentious language as consisting of “SAT words” and “50¢ words.”
- Context matters: multiple people mentioned to me that “pretentious” language isn’t pretentious if it’s used in the right context, like a textbook or a research paper. For example, a friend who described pretentious words as those which can be redefined with a simpler, easier word said “but yeah like if someones like ‘he committed regicide’ outside of being a history textbook im like shut the hell your mouth he killed a king.”
- Attitude of the speakers: One of my coworkers gave me an example sentence with no SAT words, then repeated it, adopting a mocking tone. While this didn’t necessarily give me the answer I was looking for, it did reveal a common attitude about pretentious language that other respondents displayed. Another friend said that a person is using pretentious language “when [they] know full well a more widely known synonym exists.”
The common argument against using pretentious words both now and hundreds of years ago boils down to one of accessibility and flaunting intellectualism. I can always get behind accessibility, both in the form of removal of paywalls and in the incorporation of understandable, interesting language. I think that’s why I personally am so scared of coming off as pretentious, and hopefully I’ve succeeded thus far in avoiding it.
Endnotes
¹Cressy, 147-158
²Gramley, 126.
³Ibid.
⁴Gramley, 144.
⁵Gramley, 136.
⁶OED, “ink-horn, n.”.
⁷Rhode Island College, “Texts from the Inkhorn Debate, c. 1560-1640.”
⁸Gramley, 144.
⁹I can’t restrain myself. I really, truly use hence in casual written conversation.
Works Cited
Cressy, D. (1977). Cressy, D. (1977). Literacy in Seventeenth-Century England: More Evidence. Journal of Interdisciplinary History, Vol. 8(1), 141-150. DOI:10.2307/202599.
Frost, J. (2019, Aug 19). “17 Pretentious Words & What to Use Instead (Infographic),” Web.
Gramley, S. (2012). The History of English: An Introduction. London, U.K.: Taylor & Frances Ltd.
“ink-horn, n.”. (2020). OED Online. Oxford University Press. Web.
[Rhode Island College]. (n.d.). “Texts from the Inkhorn Debate, c. 1560-1640,” Web.
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