In Defense of Exactly the Right Word

There’s a holiday for everything now, which is fitting—because naming things is one of humanity’s oldest tricks. Today, January 9, happens to be International Word Nerd Day, and if that makes you smile a little too knowingly, welcome. You’re among friends who get unreasonably excited about etymology, who pause mid-sentence to swap almost right for precisely right, who know that a single syllable can tilt meaning like a compass needle.

Words didn’t start as ornaments. They were tools. Early language grew from gesture and grunt into sound systems that could warn, woo, organize, and remember. As societies layered complexity onto daily life, language followed suit—branching, borrowing, mutating. We stole shamelessly (thank you, Latin and Greek), compressed ruthlessly (hello, slang), and invented joyfully (because sometimes the word simply didn’t exist yet). Every new word was a small act of rebellion against silence.

Writing, then, was the long game. When marks on clay and ink on vellum began to outlast breath, words stopped being momentary sparks and became vessels. They carried laws, prayers, recipes, gossip, poetry. They made it possible for a thought to travel across centuries and still land intact—or at least recognizable—on the other side.

And here’s where things get interesting for writers.

Because if words are vessels, some leak.

Anyone who writes knows the feeling: the sentence is fine, but it isn’t right. The meaning arrives, but the tone limps. The reader understands, but not in the way you intended. This is where word nerds earn their keep. We chase nuance not to be precious, but to be accurate. Angry is not incensed. Quiet is not still. Healing is not forgetting. Each substitution shifts weight, direction, implication.

My own drive to write has always been less about saying more and more about saying truer. I’m interested in the exact intersection where meaning, emotion, and integrity meet. The right word doesn’t just inform—it calibrates. It tells the reader how to hold the idea. It prevents misunderstanding. It respects complexity without drowning in it.

In a world that rewards speed and hot takes, choosing words carefully can look like overthinking. I see it as an act of care. Language shapes perception. Labels can liberate or flatten. Definitions can clarify or dismiss. When we’re sloppy with words, we’re often careless with people. When we’re precise, something steadies.

That’s why drafts exist. That’s why writers circle sentences like cats before sitting down. That’s why thesauruses aren’t about fancy replacements but about directional choices. This word, not that one. This verb, not the weaker cousin. This phrase because it carries the right amount of heat.

So yes—today I’ll happily celebrate being a word nerd. I’ll raise a quiet toast to dead languages that still whisper in our syntax, to living languages that keep reinventing themselves, and to the writers who refuse to settle for “close enough.”

Because sometimes the difference between being understood and being heard is just one brave, stubborn, exactly right word.