His beautiful use of language and his fervent desire to not "dumb down" his work is one of the reason I enjoyed so much of Christopher Hitchens' work. Amongst many other things, the world lost a valiant defender of the language when he passed.

Although I agree, we are feed a constant stream of dumbed down dialog in the media, and opening a dictionary does seem to be too much work for a lot of people, I can't help be believe that this too is part of of our evolutionary process.

The same complaint has been made by each previous generation, lamenting the loss of what they held dear. However, if we held to prior generation's vernacular and vocabulary, we'd still be "Thee"ing and "Thou"ing everything. This may be seen as a good thing by some, but untenable by the masses.

So, next time someone asks me what a word means, I will say "I shall Googleth thine query, forthwith".