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"""It's fine to use a thesaurus to look up an alternative word for "clever" because you already used "clever" a few sentences ago. Just don't come back with "meretricious"."""

Good grief. I don't have a thesaurus, but do they really give those as equivalents?

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They give many (all?) alternatives. It's up to the writer to pick the word they want and usually inexperienced writers will pick a complicated word that makes them seem clever.

Also, "meretricious" doesn't mean clever at all. It means "apparently attractive but having in reality no value or integrity."

The only time I've seen the word in print was in the Sherlock Holmes books. Benedict Cumberbatch also used it once in BBC's Sherlock.

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