Active vocabulary: Surreal, stultify, esoteric

[Tom]

Hi

I would like to know if the given words are active part of your vocabulary. The book I am using these days to improve my vocabulary says that these words are very common in spoken and written English.

Surreal
Esoteric
Stultify
Eclat

Tom

P.S. Is the phrase in red correct grammatically?

[Alan]

Hi Tom,

Well, that's a question! It rather depends on who's talking or writing. They all have about them an air of 'artiness' and by that I mean arty. Possibly stultify is in a different league and hasn't got the arty flavour about it. But then to me words are delicious playthings and I feel you should be able to savour them, enjoy them and use them as you will. And of course that's me Tom and I wouldn't dream of saying a word is very common or not.

Alan
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English as a Second Language
You can read my ESL story Everything in the Garden is lovely