Word choice is one of the best ways to set your writing apart. The right one brings your text to life with clarity and personality. Here's one of my favorites!
A few years ago, I read a riveting book by John Vaillant called Fire Weather: A True Story From a Hotter World. In addition to his exceptional storytelling, he also has a fantastic vocabularly and I noted a host of new terms in my reading journal, some of which I shared on this very blog. One of them is revirescent: growing fresh or young again, reviving.
It spoke to me on a visceral level then and I've looked for opportunities to use it since in my writing or workshops.
For instance, here's a poem in which the noun form of the word, revirescence, ends the piece. Called Fire Season, appears in the January 2026 edition of Everyone Everywhere, along with a photo of a prescribed fire a few years ago at Blustem Conservation Cemetery, where I lead the Everyday Conservation program and volunteer on the burial crew.
I thought about the word again the other day, when I walked by the site of this year's prescribed fire, one field over. I'm leading a nature walk in a couple weeks and we'll spend a fair bit of time here talking about Southeastern grassland restoration and the role of fire in it. You can bet I've got revirescence in my notes! I snapped this photo to capture the revirescent landscape. All the green you see sprouted up within the week after the burn. Amazing.
As you're writing this week, see what words you can deploy that show what you want to tell. Try several out to find the one that conveys the right information and — crucially — is appropriate for your audience and sounds like something you'd say or write. Choosing cool words just for the wow factor usually has the opposite effect. You look like a jerk or make your audience feel dumb. Either way, that's a credibility hit you don't need.
Related content
- Word Study: Recrudescence
- Persuasive writing: Context & connotation matter
- More about my nature and climate communication work
Images (c) 2026| Margot Lester. All rights reserved.