When is it ok to include ‘moist’ in an everyday sentence?

My two year old comes out with new words every day, and he (also I) couldn’t be prouder of his increasing chattiness.

The process of learning to talk, and read and write, is fascinating. An average four year old has a vocabulary of 5,000 words. By the time we’re 20, we have 42,000 words and, just like my son is now, we continue to learn a new word every day. Until we hit middle age that is, and then it just… stops. Wait, what?!

As Einstein said, once you stop learning, you start dying and I don’t know about you but the thought of hitting middle age, and my vocabulary coming to a screeching halt, is dire.

The easiest way to keep building your vocabulary is by exposure to new words. So - if you too plan to be entering Scrabble tournaments into your twilight years - read, anything. Listen to podcasts. Do crosswords. Watch Countdown and pay special attention when Susie Dent whips out her dictionary. Stop and think when you discover a new word, put it into context, then include it in conversation, and repeat.

Back in our early twenties my housemates and I used to play a (surprisingly fun) game, that really needs to be bought back into rotation in the interest of keeping our collective word counts alive.

All you need to do is nominate a friend a word outside of your active vocabulary and then subtly weave it into a conversation the next day. Simple, and can be slightly awkward, but an effective way of broadening our vocabularies.

I can still remember 10+ years ago talking to my Marketing Manager about the very “moist” weather we had been having lately 😁

So, let’s give each other permission to encourage a bit of bumfuzzle within our conversation, in the name of increasing our vocabs (look it up).

Inspirational side note - Nigel Roberts, considered to be the greatest Scrabble player of all time, is, in fact, a New Zealander 🏆