Wonderful little item from the Nieman Journalism Lab on which words send New York Times readers to their dictionaries. As a lover and user of great words, this hits pretty close to home: the need to balance a rich vocabulary (and show-off tendencies) with clear communication.

NJL's Zachery Seward compiled this chart:

I have several favorites on this list: laconic, schadenfreude, feckless, hagiography, banal, apoplectic and glut. Glut? Really? I'm also surprised to see swine in the Top 50, though that's probably in combination with flu searches.

I will admit I use some big words consciously; I can't resist apoplectic onomatopoeia, and schadenfreude says a lot in a small package. I don't mind making you work a little.

On the other hand, I always have to look up solipsistic, and epistemological, and I loathe — er, hate — sui generis, for which "original" will work just fine. (I'll bet my pal David Carr single-handedly got this one to the top.) Despite my love of schadenfreude, all but a very few French phrases annoy me.

So I'm a perpetrator and a victim. The nice thing about the web is that writers can have their cake and help readers eat it; simply hot-link your ten-dollar usage to an online dictionary.

Like the Times, MinnPost has a high opinion of its readers, but the Nieman piece is a reminder that appreciation can easily become pretension.