Photo courtesy of Dave Thomson

VOCABULARY

In homes where the near friends and visitors are mainly literary people--lawyers, judges, professors and clergymen--the children's ears become early familiarized with wide vocabularies. It is natural for them to pick up any words that fall their way; it is natural for them to pick up big and little ones indiscriminately; it is natural for them to use without fear any word that comes to their net, no matter how formidable it may be as to size. As a result, their talk is a curious and funny musketry clatter of little words, interrupted at intervals by the heavy-artillery crash of a word of such imposing sound and size that it seems to shake the ground and rattle the windows. Sometimes the child gets a wrong idea of a word which it has picked up by chance, and attaches to it a meaning which impairs its usefulness--but this does not happen as often as one might expect it would. Indeed, it happens with an infrequency which may be regarded as remarkable.
- Mark Twain's Autobiography