Someone recently confused the two (concepts in the title above), and I realized this may be the mysterious source of all the “good vocabulary” compliments I’ve been getting. I am notorious among all I know, from close friends to mere acquaintances, for having the “vocabulary of a chicken.” Now it sounds like I’m bragging about my diction… I’m honestly not, it’s just that a compliment on my diction is far more realistic than a compliment on my vocabulary (heh heh, I wish ._.).

Having a good vocabulary is having a wide range of words at your disposal. Knowing synonyms for words (tchotchke instead of knick-knack), more specific equivalents of words (implode instead of blow up), and yeah. This is generally a good thing, because it allows you to describe a situation/person/thingamabobber more specifically and precisely, and gives your piece a variety of words. That way you won’t end up like Stephanie Meyer in Twilight, who uses the word “murmur” about once every other page.

Good diction (in a literary sense) is being able to take all the words you know, no matter how few, and use both them and their definitions correctly. For example… uh… “thaumaturgic” (one of my favorite words, second after “implode”). Thaumaturgic basically means “magical.” This may lead you to replace it for the word magical, which would probably not end well.

Sentence: “This recipe is absolutely magical.”

New sentence: “This recipe is absolutely thaumaturgic.”

This is incorrect, because magical has more than one definition. In the original sentence, “magical” is not used as literally “possessing unnatural attributes,” but rather “out of this world” or “amazing.” Thaumaturgic, however, is “magical” in the sense that it literally describes things (rarely) or people (99% of the time) with magical abilities. Like Merlin, or Harry Potter.

Keeping yourselves from making mistakes like that is diction, while knowing the word “thaumaturgic” means is part of vocabulary.

I hope this didn’t sound demeaning, I’ve been told I’m like that when explaining things :/

J.Y.J., because I feel weird not using any tags o_O It's funny how the "Soo" part in Xiah's name has the romanization "Soo" as opposed to "Su," but the first character has the romanization "Jun" as opposed to "Joon." This is by far my favorite photo from this promotion period, it's just so... <<"vocabulary of a chicken" kicks in -__-|||>>