What's a word worth?

I think my wife is pulchritudinous.  

Just from the look and sound of it, pulchritudinous doesn’t exactly come off as a compliment. In fact, it sounds like it could be an amalgam of rude, puke, and ominous, all wrapped in the sound of a dry heave.  Surprisingly, “pulchritudinous” is a synonym for beautiful.  I wouldn’t recommend trying it out on your partner, though. 

Let’s call “pulchritudinous” a hundred-dollar word at the very least.  In the classroom I assign a dollar amount to words for a distinct purpose. When I taught TOEFL and IELTS courses, giving lower frequency academic words a value became a practical reference point.  I would tell the students that their vocabulary is probably up to $25-$35 words, with a goal of increasing it by a few dollars during the term.   A beginner’s goal is to understand $1-$10 words.  A fluent speaker’s actual average daily use likely only gets up to $25 and not much more unless you’re in an occupation that demands some [cough] abstruse locution.  

This dollar concept became a practical shorthand for students. For example, if we came across the word “abstruse”, I could tell students that it was a $75 word, and the same for “locution.”  Anything over $50 they generally shouldn’t worry about.  Of course, the most studious ones want to write down everything, so the cash equivalent allows them to put a little reference number next to it for their mental hard drive.  My sole purpose is to delineate how much brain space should be utilized. 

George Will columns seem to live for the $50-100 range.  I get it.  I used to think that writing such as his, gilded in fustian as it were, was pretentious, but if your job is to write and your audience can stay with you in that register, then fancy words are an extra color to paint with. However, for language learners, let them get there on their own.  The voracious readers will naturally pick up and retain more.  By the way, “pretentious” I’d give $35. “Gilded” maybe $60. I’ll have to use my credit card for “fustian”.

Last week I used the word “clout” while talking to my 26 year-old niece, who is self-taught in English with a surprisingly expansive vocabulary, but she didn’t know it. I might give “clout” $30.  

A word or expression of the day can be a nice little quick helpful start to a class–if it’s practical.  Just don’t put the dictionary.com word of the day.  The other day it was “exculpatory”.  A few days ago it was “favonian”.  It’s rarely useful. 

There’s no need to get too scientific with word currency.  You could use $1-$10 as your range (They would all sound affordable, though.)   In the big teaching picture, it’s okay to tell students “Don’t worry about that word. It’s $85.”  If you spend time on it, you’re spending time at the expense of something more functional for their success.  

Hopefully you’ll ponder ($40) this exhortation ($70).