What's with the phobia towards 'big-words'? Are we regressing?

'Speech is a powerful lord that with the smallest and most invisible body accomplished most godlike works. It can banish fear and remove grief, and instil pleasure and enhance pity. Divine sweetness transmitted through words is inductive of pleasure and reductive of pain' - Gorgias.

It's a shame that people are becoming progressively averse to so-called 'big words', and unfortunately the paradigm is showing regression. What constitutes a big word? More syllables? Obscurity? Rather than dismissing or satirising something/someone because of a word that you don't know, why not try to learn more words? Cultivating a wider vocabulary should be one of those lifelong things that we do daily: it will enrich your life, augment your ability to absord knowledge, and help you convey information more effectively and true to intention. It will also facilitate reading and comprehension of all the essential arts, past and present.

Every word signifies something unique; the majority of synonyms are nuanced. Rhetoric is a one of the most resonant, accessible, personal, and beautiful arts of humanity.

To sympathise with some soldiers of anti-intellectualism, I agree that there are always cases when grandiloquence goes too far. Some pieces lose focus, feel laboured, and in the worst cases, lose coherence. But it is always easy to spot the try-hards. The ones who write effectively will always be elevated in cultural circles.

Anyways, despite the propagation of TV shows like T.O.W.I.E and Geordie Shore, it is NOT cool to be dumb: it's not 'cute', hot, or endearing, and it does not benefit you in any worthwhile way. Eloquence is kinda nice sometimes. 

Stop compromising. You tools.