Eclectical thoughts I thought I would do a brief podcast about what I consider Gucci or show off words. Eclectical is one of them. Eclectical means sort of philosophies or thoughts that are broad ranging of different types. In other words, if you are a stoic but you are also interested in other kinds of philosophy, religious thoughts or Buddhism or Romanticism or Hedonism, then if you entertain all these different philosophies then you are Eclectic. In this post I'm going to talk about a variety of different things so to that extent the post will be eclectic. But, the interesting thing of course is the word itself 'eclectic' is a bit of a show off word. You could just as easily say 'varied' or 'diverse' but if you use the word eclectic you are telling people that you are very sophisticated. Before I get any further I will mention the fact that I'm sitting here looking out at a very lovely sunset and have just had a wonderful meal cooked by my wife where we had a delicious salad and then we had a lovely roast pork and we had Hekuma, which is some kind of Latin American vegetable. Oh, and we also had roast corn and we had Chinese Bok Choy. We finished off with some Gorgonzola cheese and we had a phenomenal bottle of wine, not the whole bottle. It was Ostatu which is a Rioja wine from Spain. The year was 2001. So, in a way the meal itself was a bit eclectic because we had a variety of different tastes there.
So, anyway, and my podcast is a bit eclectic because I talk about language and I talk about food and wine. Another word that's often used is Catholic. Now we all know the Catholic religion. But Catholic means universal. So sometimes you'll see sophisticated people use the word Catholic to mean universal when actually the world universal would be just fine. You know, we have, what are some other examples: mundane. Mundane comes from the French modane, but mundane in English means ordinary whereas I think the word mondane in French has more the sense of fashionable so it almost has the opposite meaning than the original meaning of the word. I don't want to make fun of people who use, the reason I call them Gucci words is because people buy Gucci hand bags or Gucci loafers in order to show off. You know, I have enough money to buy this fashionable hand bag or these fashionable shoes. I might have been able to buy other shoes that were equally suitable made in Bangladesh or China with no particular brand, but I didn't. I bought these expensive shoes in order to show off and it's the same with, sometimes with these choices of words. You can deliberately choose words that show off the fact that you are learned.
Another favorite show off word is 'discrete' because we normally think of 'discreet' as meaning being sort of, how would I say, not necessarily polite but to be discreet is to be controlled and to not show off and to not get someone else or put someone else into an embarrassing situation, to be considerate is the way we usually use the word 'discreet'. But, the, you know, prudent, not speaking out at an inopportune time, this is all the way we normally use the word 'discreet'. But there is this other meaning of discrete when it is spelled d-i-s-c-r-e-t-e which means separate, distinct. You'll be reading some book review or some article written by a person who wants to show off and rather than using a word that everyone would understand like distinct, they would use the word discrete. These are two discrete disciplines. In other words, they are very different. So, that's another Gucci word and there are lots of them. I know more of them come to mind but, you know, what should the language learner do with these words?
Now, I normally advise people when, if they are not a native speaker to stick with the most neutral form of the language. I certainly do not think it sounds good for a non-native speaker to use slang or swear words. But, I think Gucci words are different. If you really know the meaning of some of these show off words, to drop these words every now and again is probably a good thing to do. It's a bit like saying, my friend, the famous so and so-it's like name dropping. While we normally criticize people who name drop and again, for a non-native speaker you may not know the word name drop but, to name drop is to say, my friend, the president of such and such, even if you don't know him very well or even if you do know him very well. In other words you are trying to kind of bask in the reflected glory of someone else. That somehow the fact that you know the person or the fact that you are able to kind of tie your name to that person's name somehow reflects favorably on you, and that's name dropping. But it can be effective. Let's be fair, let's be realistic here. Sometimes mentioning some important names at the appropriate time is very helpful to whatever objective you are pursuing.
So, in the same way learning a few of these Gucci words, these adornments, decorations that you put on a Christmas tree, words that you don't need to have to get your meaning across but which decorate your language, make you seem more sophisticated, is not a bad thing to do. But you just have to make very sure that you know what the words mean because if you use them in the wrong way you'll just sound very silly. But, if you can use them correctly and just kind of drop them as if it was the most normal thing for you to do, the most normal word for you to use, then all of a sudden you upgrade your English.
Some of these less frequently used words that imply a certain level of sophistication, we shouldn't necessarily scorn them. At any rate, that will bring my little eclectic talk to an end. As I look out now, the sun has disappeared over the mountain. It was red before, and as we know, red at night sailors' delight, red in the morning, sailors take warning, so I can look forward to good weather tomorrow but right now we just have a bit of a dark blue, almost black sheen on the water and the mountains, which are normally green with the very thick west coast forest, look dark like dark monsters overlooking this shiny, but also dark body of water. I'm still reflecting on the delicious wine and the meal that I had and so I wanted to share it with whoever happens to be listening to this podcast. And, there you have it. The end of an eclectic podcast.
