Lucian of Samosata Lexiphanes 25

[25] What is most ridiculous of all is that although you want to be more than Attic and have meticulously shaped your diction after the most antiquated pattern, some (or rather, most) of the expressions which you intermingle with what you say are such that even a boy just beginning school would not fail to know them. For instance, you can’t think how I prayed for the earth to swallow me as I listened to the exhibition you made of yourself when you thought that “shift’? meant a man’s garment also, and used “slatterns” of male servants when who does not know that a shift is a female garment and that only women are called slatterns? And there were other things far more obvious than these, like “‘flopped” ¹ and “meeting up” ² and “setting,” ³ which are not even naturalised in the Attic tongue. We do not praise even poets who compose poems that are all full of rare words, but your compositions, if I might compare prose to verse, would be like the “Altar” of Dosiadas, the “Alexandra” of Lycophron, and whatever else is still more infelicitous in diction than those works. ⁴ If you imitate the men of whom I have spoken and if you repair your education, you will have planned the best possible course for yourself, but if you unwittingly slip back into your preciosity, I at least have done my part in advising you and you may blame yourself, if indeed you are conscious of deterioration.