"This seems to me to be a worse problem, not only because people do learn by making mistakes, but because the sphere of “correct,” accessible English will only get smaller and smaller."

The thesaurus is good, valuable, commendable, superb, actually

In defense of the much-maligned reference book.

"But the alternate problem is that people are too afraid to test new words — even words that are correct, but obscure — because they are afraid of seeming foolish and they either stay within the bounds of a safe vocabulary or (if they are a certain business-managerial type) cope by inventing hideous new words. Fear of the thesaurus has unleashed horrors a Chthonic god could only dream of, like synergy and incentivize.

This seems to me to be a worse problem, not only because people do learn by making mistakes, but because the sphere of “correct,” accessible English will only get smaller and smaller. Such a state of affairs will not correct language slippage, but it will make English much more boring. One reason people are drawn to the English language writing of people whose first language isn’t English, like Joseph Conrad or Vladimir Nabokov, is because their approach to the language can feel more excited about its potentials than that of people who have been living inside English all their life."