the.com/diction
not what you say — the specific words you chose to say it, and why those.
means diction is a speaker or writer's choice of words, judged by clarity, correctness, and fit for the occasion.
from from latin dictio, act of saying, from dicere, to say — originally just rhetoric jargon for word-choice before it got dragged into every high school essay rubric.
not pronunciationdiction means word choice, not enunciation, despite common confusion
four levelsformal, informal, colloquial, slang all count as diction
legal term toojurisdiction shares the same latin root, dicere
for instance
hemingway's prose — famous for stripped, plain diction — short words, no ornament
faulkner's prose — opposite extreme — dense, latinate, sprawling word choice
legal contracts — deliberately archaic diction like heretofore and whereas
rap battles — diction as weapon — density and rarity of word choice scored on the spot