Is it more formal to use words of Latin origin? [closed]

Solution 1:

The difference is very subtle, and is not simply a matter of "formal" vs "informal", though that is one component of it.

In this particular case, I think one of the biggest factors in the choice is euphemism. Graveyard contains grave, which some people are uncomfortable talking about in our society where we put so much effort into pretending that death doesn't exist. Cemetery distances us a little from that uncomfortable reality.

Solution 2:

Tricky one, this. In general, wherever several options for words exist to convey a given sense, whichever word is least common will sound most formal or fancy. Because English is a Germanic language with lots of Latin/French borrowings, a lot of our most frequently-used vocabulary is Germanic in origin, so the Latinate alternatives sound a bit odd. So if I used a word like 'piscatory' instead of 'fishy', you might raise an eyebrow.

That said, lots of our very common words (like 'very', and 'common'!) are also Latin in origin, often adopted through medieval French. So we have loads of informal Latinate words that we don't notice as being Latinate. So if I used a deliberately Germanic word like 'folkly' instead of 'common', then you'd think I were being formal. And weird. From time to time, enthusiastic amateur philologists have tried to write 'reformed' dictionaries of English, stripping out Latinate words and replacing them with good old Anglo-Saxonisms. They didn't get far.

And finally... there's a tradition of using Latinate neologisms (aka new words borrowed from Latin) to sound formal. There was a bit of a vogue for these 'inkhorn terms' in the sixteenth century, and an equal vogue for attacking the people who used them. A lot of the early English dictionaries are stuffed with those 'hard and unusual' words which had been optimistically borrowed in. Many died out, but many have survived and no longer strike us as odd or formal (e.g. celebrate, capacity, dismiss).