Word of the Day

[Chase]

How about discombobulate. An author I like to read uses this word a lot in his books. I'd never heard of it before then, and this wasn't too long ago. It certainly discombobulated me, that's for sure! 

That's actually kind of funny. In my main go-to guides for writing, "The Elements of Style" by William Strunk Jr. and E.B. White, and "On Writing" by Stephen King, both warn about using long, unknown words, and both use "discombobulated" as an example. I'm not sure if King used it directly, although he referred to The Elements of Style a lot and discombobulated was a total no-no.

Myself, I like big words and find it hard to constrain myself. I don't follow all of Strunk's and King's rules, but whenever I use big words, I try to think if it will have my readers running to the dictionary or not. I like Edgar Allen Poe but I hate how he has me constantly googling words. I have a YA Sci-Fi I'm trying to get published, and it's written in 3rd limited. My main character isn't as articulate, so I often use my own voice instead of his (hence my choice of 3rd over 1st). One word I'm unsure about is "incandescence" - it just refers to the light of incandescent light bulbs, which are the regular light bulbs people use (not the new LEDs that are supposed to last forever).

I once studied to be an electrician, so incandescence just came naturally to me. So let me know if it's a word that'd have you scrambling to the dictionary or not