In ordinary language, the most important thing is that communication is effective, that is, that the speakers understand each other. In some contexts, people use unusual words. They are the cultured words. They are those terms that stand out for their limited use. They are typical of learned people and academic and highly specialized fields.
In daily and everyday communication it is not necessary to use cultured words (also called cultisms). If someone does it in an unjustified way, they may be considered a pedantic person, that is, they have a haughty, not very close and elitist attitude.
There is no rule of thumb about when to use cultured words and when not to. Its correct use depends on the situation of the speakers. In an academic act (the presentation of a doctoral thesis, for example) it is necessary to use cultism, since a specific knowledge implies specialized terminology, which is infrequent in daily life. In the professional sphere, cultured words are also used, since it is necessary to convey rigor and precision when explaining information. This is what often happens in medicine, where specialists in each branch have to use a highly technical vocabulary and patients are not familiar with it. For this reason, when we go to the doctor's office we ask him to explain our health problem in a simple way.
The same idea can be expressed in many ways. In a simple way, with plain words that are understood by the vast majority or, on the contrary, with cultured words. In the latter case, the speaker may have a problem if his interlocutor does not know the meaning of cultisms. To avoid these uncomfortable situations, it is convenient to limit cultured words to very specific situations.
Another of the peculiarities of cultism is that sometimes there is confusion about whether they really are or not. Someone can say that a word is cultured (for example the adjective withdrawn) when in reality it seems strange to him because it has a little vocabulary.
There are terms that can be considered as cult: tremebundo (terrifying), bland (with little grace), uberrimous (that abounds a lot) or epithet (adjective). Another obvious case of cultisms is the use of Latinisms: alter ego, cogito, culmen or desideratum. These are words that should not be used frequently, unless the context justifies it (for example, a meeting of Latin teachers).
