ten-dollar word
- noun
- /ˈtɛnˌdɑːlər wɜrd/
- Informal
:
palabra complicada
- Avoid using ten-dollar words in your essay if you want to convey your ideas clearly.
Examples
-
She tends to use ten-dollar words when a simple term would do.
-
The professor's lecture was filled with ten-dollar words, making it hard for students to understand.
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Using all those ten-dollar words?
Fiction book (2000)
Synonyms
4
7.7
A long word or phrase that is hard to say
1
9.9
Very long words that are often unnecessary and used to impress
Antonyms
How Pretentious
- Informal
1
2.9
Surface Forms
Morphology
ten-dollar + word
The phrase composes 'ten-dollar' (literally indicating monetary value) with 'word', so learners can partly infer an evaluative sense like an "expensive" or "fancy" word from the constituents. However, the specific conventional meaning — a long or needlessly complex word used to sound impressive — is a figurative, culturally conventionalized extension of the monetary metaphor and is not fully predictable from the parts, so it is only partially transparent.
Etymology
Ten-dollar word comes from a simple image: imagine a ten-dollar item, something expensive, and picture a word so fancy it must cost that much. That's why a ten-dollar word means a long or complex word used to 'show off' or try to impress people instead of speaking plainly.