My vocabulary is less "obscure" and "high flown" than it is the case that the vocabulary of the average American is embarrassingly bad. And recently so. Yes, I have a larger vocabulary than most people, and always have had.
Yes. I was that bookworm/literary kid. Yes, I know lots of words, and use lots of words, that aren't in the most common circulation.
But stop. A great deal of my vocabulary would not have been considered "arcane" *even just 15 years ago*. I've watched this happen.
The words and associated concepts-including actual history, European folktales, foundational Western works of literature and plays-that Americans don't know today is astounding.
I'm talking about references that *any literate person, no college degree required* would have known 15 to 20 years ago. No, it's not that "the information is obsolete/it's just time marching on." It's NOT that.
That phenomenon exists, but this is not that. This is a profound cliff drop in literacy, and cultural literacy, that happened almost overnight with Millennials and Gen Z.
I didn't get "more arcane" recently. The population got signficantly more ignorant recently, and noticeably, and faster than we've ever seen in prior generations.
Hell--I'm watching fully grown adults react to seeing a word I use that they don't know exactly the way kids in 4th grade did when they picked on the bookworm kid.