Vocabulary

In English we can refer to a house as a home, a property, a residence, a dwelling, a domicile, an address, or we can say ‘come back to mine’. 

We can refer to money as cash, payment, amount, emolument, premium, salary, wage, instalment, deposit, rebate, bonus, lump sum, or accrual. Or dosh, lolly, dough, bread...

Plain language principles call for common words. But how do we know which words are most common? Large-scale studies of language databases (corpora) can tell us the relative frequency of words, and show them in context so that we can see how they’re used.¹ Nowadays, dictionaries are built using corpora to provide evidence of the current meaning of words.²  

In English, common words tend to be of Germanic origin, while technical words often come from French or Latin, the languages of the church and the ruling classes several centuries ago. But we can’t assume that Germanic words are always clearest.

English uses a lot of verb phrases such as ‘look up’, ‘take on’, or ‘take off’ which can appear clearer because they are made from short words. For example, we might say ‘work out’ rather than ‘calculate’. But ‘work out’ also means to go to the gym, or someone could think it means to work outside.

So ‘calculate’ is better for people who are not native-speakers of English. And words of Latin origin can be much clearer for people whose first language is Latin-based – Spanish, Italian or French, for example.

1. Most English language corpora can be accessed via www.english-corpora.org, and other languages have equivalent corpora. Be aware that each corpus will be biased by the kinds of texts that were collected in the first place. For example, some are historic, or regional (for example, US English, British English). 

2. Collins COBUILD Advanced Learner’s Dictionary: The Source of Authentic English, Ninth edition 2018