If you want to make someone sound pretentious go ahead and have them use lots of excessively long and obscure words. But if you want someone to sound intelligent or knowledgeable, then only use longer and more obscure words if they convey a greater or more concise meaning.
Sure, if the reader is less intelligent or knowledgeable, they won't be able to tell the difference between long words used to look clever and ones used to convey information. This confusion supports politics, con artists, and parts of soft science all over the world. But if you're trying to make someone seem smart to smart people, their words need to be concise, or clear, or technically detailed[1]. Fortunately, you have the advantage of time, you can probably prepare in five minutes something that would be terribly clever if your character talks like that all the time :)
[1] In fact, many people, notably me and many of my friends, are quite smart AND quite pretentious, and strive to be precise, both from clarity, and also because they think it's funny. It's quite likely they'll go together, but I still maintain there's a difference, especially if the character was previously dumb but tenacious and then is hit by an intelligence-ray for a short humorous interlude :)
Sure, if the reader is less intelligent or knowledgeable, they won't be able to tell the difference between long words used to look clever and ones used to convey information. This confusion supports politics, con artists, and parts of soft science all over the world. But if you're trying to make someone seem smart to smart people, their words need to be concise, or clear, or technically detailed[1]. Fortunately, you have the advantage of time, you can probably prepare in five minutes something that would be terribly clever if your character talks like that all the time :)
[1] In fact, many people, notably me and many of my friends, are quite smart AND quite pretentious, and strive to be precise, both from clarity, and also because they think it's funny. It's quite likely they'll go together, but I still maintain there's a difference, especially if the character was previously dumb but tenacious and then is hit by an intelligence-ray for a short humorous interlude :)