this post was submitted on 14 Sep 2024
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Milquetoast, vice versa, vice-sa versa (sic), erudite, illucidate, confusing size for importance (saying big meeting instead of important meeting), commensurate, je no se qua, anything in Latin, anything in another language, latent space, probability space. We use lots of techniques to try to punch-up our perceived intelligence, neurotypical people do it sometimes because they have a tendancy to associate station in a hierarchy with "good traits" like intelligence and use these smart sounding words to try to project authority... ? Maybe? Sometimes I use smart sounding words to talk over/around people when I don't want to engage them for whatever reason. People after weird. I think it's easy to see when people are dumber than you, and much harder to see when people are smarter that you; especially the degree to which (to which, being another smart sounding word particle. Particle when used to ike this, another smartness showing phrase.) they are smarter than you. My rule of thumb is that if someone's dumb, that's easy for you to tell, but if you can't tell that they are blatantly dumb, they are likely to be at least close to you in intelligence. If they seem smart, they are likely smarter than your best case scenario guess (they are likely smarter than you think). Everything goes out the window when you start talking about people who learned English as not their first language. Also acronyms.
Interesting that you list vice versa. What do you typically use instead?
If I needed to say something in a two item list and wanted to say that the list could work either way, I would say something like,"meat and potatoes or potatoes and meat, either way" so I would be restating the list in the opposite order. But I also use the words vice versa. I just noticed that people say it when they want to sound smart. It's not like it's only said in order to sound smart. There are lots of phrases that are short, succinct, and have a very specific situation where they are applicable. These are the phrases that people have a tendency to use to punch up their sentences.