There is a border collie who has a vocabulary of about 1200 words. While these are mostly the names and descriptions of her toys, those are all the words she needs. Trump is probably getting by on a vocabulary that's not much bigger, if at all. He doesn't read anything besides media articles about himself. If his vocabulary is the same size as a dog's, that works for him because his target audience is people who are not educated and don't read.

+1,000

that he speaks with a low middle school, perhaps even an elementary school level.

And yes, one of the tells is that he uses a rather short list of adjectives, many of which are of the non-specific types like very, huge, good, best, etc. He rarely describes anything with any specifity. You could probably confuse him with a question like: What color is the green shitcan?

Most people get by with fewer than 1000 different words per day.

High school gets you around 3000 in your active vocab.

4-years of college, up to 7000. Sort of depends on major and school--this was back when most students learned a lot in college.

PhD, 8-10k. Which is one reason for many PhDs being a bit more dysfluent than working-class people: They have to choose between more close synonyms. It's also one reason people sound "wrong" when they're out of place: they have to work to maintain different registers or styles if they're downshifting, and if they're upshifting they start making bad mistakes. It also accounts for hypercorrection. It's been argued it's why women tend to speak more clearly and grammatically than men--they're more aware of the value of class and tend not to want to be in solidarity with the working class, simply because they want their kids to be higher class, while men want to be "one of the boys" (this probably doesn't work in some social settings any more, but it does apply very well in others).

"You are not comprehending my actual ratiocination and cognition." =/= "You don't understand what I'm really thinking," but was overheard by a dumb guy who'd read too many "increase your vocabulary" books when arguing with his girlfriend by phone and wanting to show how much more "cognitively endowed" he was. She was apparently impressed by his blinding stupidity, which speaks not so highly of her background.


Note that language can be used as a powerful social marker for solidarity. Obama used it a lot--he'd mark his speech, possibly unconsciously so, to show that he was "one of ______"--sometimes while talking to a different audience who missed his signals. Thatcher learned to speak in ways foreign to her social class; Blair tried to learn to speak in ways foreign to *his* social class. (Blair was resolutely middle-class and had to appeal to working class people; Thatcher was working class, and had to sound middle-class with aspirations to be higher).


Trump speaks to those he wants to speak to. You can talk about how to manipulate people by Madison Avenue techniques (re-labeled "framing" because advertising execs have a bad rep) all you want, but if you pitch it in a way that makes you sound arrogant and snooty, that's how it's interpreted. And arguing that "arrogant" is a synonym for "uppity" serves as a nice put down and defense for the loyal, but both misses the point (and commits the "understanding = cognition" sort of synonym false equivalency).

can't stand to hear that word anymore.

... because he can't think of more sophisticated ways to reinforce his arguments. He doesn't like to read, has a third-grade vocabulary, and often seems to be functionally illiterate. It's basically a toddler's approach to rhetoric -- repeat, repeat, repeat, and if that doesn't work, throw a tantrum.

on anything more than ill-informed opinions, and you can see why he has to repeat himself a lot. And throw tantrums.

Trump's vocabulary is double-plus not good.

He makes me cringe.

These are tell-tale signs of a true con-man. He speaks this way not only because he is intellectually lazy, but also because his base appreciates him using small words. He's "their kind of guy"---what they envision they would be like if his promises ever come true.

His base is also slow to admit Trump is corrupt and treasonous because they don't want to admit they were taken by a con-man. Hence their quickness to accept the "Fake News" explanation for what is plain to see for most of us.

One that really showed how talented Robin Williams truly was. RIP Sir.

extremely, exceedingly, exceptionally, extraordinarily, tremendously, immensely, hugely, intensely, acutely, abundantly, singularly, uncommonly, decidedly, particularly, supremely, highly, remarkably, really, truly, mightily, ever so, terrifically, awfully, fearfully, terribly, devilishly, majorly, seriously, mega, ultra, damn, damned; dead, real, way, mighty, awful, darned
When there's very, very, very or even the more grammatically ignorant: BIGLY.

and you'll be convinced that he has some serious and "very" progressive form of dementia. His mental acuity and vocabulary used to be significantly better, not to say that he was ever intelligent enough to be President.

Wish I could remember the news program that played several clips but my dementia is acting up a bit.

...quite striking. Not just vocabulary and sentence structure, but even pronunciation/accent and volume. He did not sound as coarse and crass as he does now.

I teach English and besides very being on my do not use list, I actually forbid the use of 'thing' because as my students know, there might as well be a blank space there. He uses thing as often as he uses very. My 21month old granddaughter already has a larger vocabulary than our prez

Microsoft Word flags "very" every time it shows up. It thinks you should try again, using a different word. Sometimes Word gets things right.

However, if you use it in a sentence like, "Donald Trump is the very model of the wrong person to be President," it's an outstanding choice.

blotus is a grown man with a 3rd grade mentality and the school yard bully to boot.

a lot. Sometimes in multiples. It's part of what makes his speech sound so very, very juvenile. That and the constant extreme adjectives. Huge, worst ever, all time, biggest... Trump is the all time dumbest President ever in the history of the world.