Use embiggened words

“Ideas above your station.”

“That life wasn’t meant for people like us.”

“You can’t say things like that.”

“You’re white, you can’t say that word.”

The number of people and groups wanting to control what you say is increasing every day.

When a group wants to ban the use of a word, either universally or only by a part of the population, the group is really saying “We want to control how you think.”

Remove a word from the language and you can no longer think that thought.

Add a word to a language and you suddenly can think new thoughts.

Extending your vocabulary forces you to think new thoughts and think in new ways.

Semi-cohesive tribes (like the village I grew up in) insist on having parochial (narrow minded) individuals of parsimonious (frugal) and niggardly (stingy) vocabularies that keep the tribe together.

If you share a common and private vocabulary, you have group cohesion, e.g. hunters, doctors, engineers and even people who play video games.

When you remove the private vocabulary and have only a limited way to express yourself, you keep the group cohesion (to an extent) but it is no longer a benefit to the group as a whole, only to certain individuals in the group, i.e. those in power and those that police the group.

So go ahead, broaden your vocabulary.

Stop being part of a parochial group.