[mlyle]

There's a huge potential collection of words you can use. But there's also the words in the current zeitgeist that will be meaningful to your readers.

The only way you can learn these words and give them a proper weighting of "usefulness" and understand their fundamental nature is to read. Yes, you can get definitions and similar words from tomes, and even examples of usage, but you don't really understand the connotations or colloquial uses until you have seen other people use them in full context.

Of course, there are times when one might want to dredge up an infrequently used word, coin a new one, or transport something from current spoken vernacular onto the page. This should be a tiny fraction of where our chosen words come from, though. Reading is the tool to build usable vocabulary, even if it isn't fetch.