ENGLISH GRAMMAR: WORDS
It is hardly an exaggeration to say that no two words in English have precisely the same meaning. The sense may be roughly the same, but the colour, the "shade of meaning," or the suggestions and memories evoked may be very different.
Do you mean "Jack slid across the room," or "Jack glided across the room?" Did the candle-flame "flutter," or "flicker," or "wave" in the wind? Is Mary David's "betrothed," his "fiancee," his "girl," or his "young lady?" If with your bodily or mental eye you saw Jack on the polished floor or the candle-flame in the wind or if, in real life or in imagination, you know Mary and David, you know which word is the right one. The right word is the one which fits your meaning most closely. Mathew Arnold's advice, "Say it as clearly as you can."
The Right Word
Colour of Words and their Association they carry
Be careful about the colour of words, the associations they carry with them. Why does this sentence about Una and the Red Cross Knight make people laugh? "At last the Red Cross Knight arrived at his fiancee's people's place." Because, of course, the three words "fiancee," "people" and "place" suddenly bring prosaic modern middle-class life into the midst of a story of mediaeval chivalry and romantic love.
Choose Exact Words
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Choose exact words, and you will need few: your meaning will be clarified as water is when the mud sinks to the bottom. "Simply," really," "absolutely," literally," "just," are often "mud."
Don't use them unless you mean them.
Good Writers
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Have you noticed that good writers concentrate meaning into the elements of speech, the noun and the verb?
It is a good rule never to use a long and little-known word where a short and well-known one will do as well or better.
Slang Words in English
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Slang is often out of place because it is not widely enough known (e.g., a professor may not understand the slang schoolboys nor a schoolboy that of thieves) or it soon goes out of use, or, more often, because it is insipid. Now and again slang words have great vitality and expressiveness. Even then, do not use them unless they are widely known, express your meaning better than any other word would, and -note this- are in keeping with the tone of what you are writing.
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Source: English Grammar: EBH Joubert.
https://www.ecenglish.com/learnenglish/lessons/same-sound-different-meaning