The Peril of Not Echoing

LZ Granderson: If you use the wrong word, your conversation partner will assume correctly that you are a stranger in his or her hobby land. He says if she used the word office with all of her clients, they'd assume she knew nothing about their respective industries. LZ: A group's intense preference for one word is not arbitrary; certain jobs, minorities and special interest groups often have a history the public isn't sensitive to. When that history has too much pain attached to it, people invent another word that doesn't have bitter connotations., he writes.