our vocabulary

Using the word vocabulary is a lot like using the word diet.  Although some people think of a diet as specialized, really the word just means what you eat every day.  If you eat junk food, your diet consists of junk food.  Whatever words you use in your conversations and your writing, that's your vocabulary.

At the same time, it's true that paying special attention to your diet will probably lead you to make different choices about what you spend money on and put in your face.  A person who drives a Ferrari doesn't put sugar in the gas tank -- that would ruin the engine!  A person who drives a Ferrari puts the best fuel in the machine so that it performs the way it's supposed to.

So it goes with your speaking and writing.  When you speak or write, especially for a professional or academic audience, you want to use the words that get the best results.  You want to be understood, so you need the best tools for the job.

Since we met last Monday, we've used a few terms that are specialized for the study of literature or the use of the internet.  You've also heard and read a few words that may not be familiar from everyday life.  Together, we will build a list of words that are new and/or important to understand, and at the end of the semester we will make sure that we understand them ourselves.

To begin, please comment to this post with any words you've heard in this class that are: new, unfamiliar, specific to literature, specific to culture/technology, or memorable for any other reason.  If you have a reason, definition, or example, please include that too, but if not, just the word is enough.

Here's one of my favorites, and it's not even English: Mahalo. -dp