circumnavigating a problem

I knew a guy at work who spoke with big words rather than simple ones. The title was one of his favourites whereas the rest of us would get around something.

One of the columnists in The Guardian today wrote about the MP's expenses scandal. In the first couple of paragraphs there was a word I'd heard but never really knew its meaning, a word that I knew but the context was unfamiliar and a word I had never even seen before.

The familiar word with the unknown meaning turns out to have several widely used and immediately obvious alternatives, while the unknown word had a comical pronunciation. Its meaning, rather involved, was explained by use of example and I just could not see how it fit the way she used it.

At this point I gave up reading and that was a shame as it's a subject that interests me. But curiosity got the better of me and I just scanned through the rest. I think I'd get a headache if I read it properly.

I suppose you could argue this is one of the ways in which we learn, but I felt the way the column was written just excluded me.