Language of the Day: Specific

The Language of the Day Blog is a weekly blog post by our instructor. Each week will introduce a useful phrase in English and tell a story about life in Vancouver. Tune in every Tuesday for another Language of the Day post!

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Specific: Clearly defined or identified

Examples:
- Could you specify what if it is that you want me to do?
- Mr. Jones gave very specific instructions for us to follow. 
- The money is to be used for specific purposes. 
- There was no specific plan in my mind. 
- What's the specific time of his arrival? 

When learning a language, it is easy to fall into ruts. Some words that have a lot of meanings, such as interesting or nice, get overused because its easy. But being specific can be very helpful; better than it's opposite to be vague or unclear.

So what exactly is the the problem with words like “do” “make” “have” or “go?” Why “walk” when you can “saunter?” Why “talk” when you can “gab” or “chat” or  “dialogue?”

I may be taking it too far (talk and walk are perfectly adequate words), and English is known too many words - over 450,000!

Using specific words though, is like painting with a full pallet of colours. Like all good painters who mix their paints for a certain lightness, hue, or texture, letters can do the same. They can be rearranged to paint a word canvas. For example, it wasn't just confusing, the task itself was nebulous.

Now I've drawn clouds in your mind (or made you look up a word) but those specific words give the sentence a more concrete form, and voila! Suddenly there are so many more language avenues than there were before.