When I attended high school, my classmates teased me for using big words.

That comes with the territory when you're a youngster. As adults, there are benefits to enhancing your lexicon. A large vocabulary portrays you as persuasive, intelligent, attractive and confident, while warding off Alzheimer's.

How can we effortlessly expand our vocabulary?

What folks must understand is that every big word is just a small word dressed up to go to the ball. If you can say small words, you can say big words.

The trick is to connect common, small words to their corresponding big words in your mind, so that when you're tempted to recite the small words, you say the big words instead.

Over time, communicating with big words gets easier, as they officially enter your vocabulary.

Let's look at 2 examples:

Instead of: "A lot, so many"

Say this: countless, numerous, rife, replete, teeming, spate, substantial, considerable, glut, plethora, influx, endless, myriad, etc.

Instead of: "Said, told"

Say this: articulate, express, convey, state, assert, recount, opine, share, mention, utter, voice, comment, remark, observe, impart, communicate, etc.

I highly recommend that you always google words that you hear and read, even if you know them already. You will discover multiple definitions that you were unaware of and be given a list of synonyms to replace small words. Additionally, I recommend reading "The Big Book of Words You Should Know" by David Olsen, Michelle Bevilacqua and Justin Cord Hayes.