Everyone wants to talk like a geologist, but few have mastered the art. Here are a few suggestions that will make you sound like you have a Ph.D., or at least like a typical geologist such as Pierce Brosnan.

*He’s thinking, “I’d better wash the tephra off my Suburban before it sticks.”*

• Do not say “fault line.” Faults are surfaces, not lines. Just say “fault.”

*“The fault sliced right through the road.” USGS*

• Say “outcrop” instead of “outcropping.”

• A “formation” is a defined rock package, such as the Morrison Formation in Utah, source of many dinosaur fossils, or the Tapeats Sandstone in the Grand Canyon. A formation is not an outcrop or a hill or other physical piece of rock. Delicate Arch is not a rock formation; the Entrada Sandstone from which it was carved is a formation.

Bad: “Manly Beacon is a formation in Death Valley consisting of outcroppings of siltstone.” Better: “Manly Beacon is a bluff in Death Valley cut into siltstones of the Furnace Creek Formation.” Say that at a party and you’ll surely be the center of attention.

• Avoid saying that the mountains were “thrust up,” or the granite was “thrust up,” unless you know that the rocks were indeed placed there by a thrust fault (example: San Gabriel Mountains in Southern California).

*El Capitan was produced by erosion. It was not thrust up.*

• It is common for beginning students to describe an outcrop as “chunky.” I don’t even know what that is supposed to mean. Avoid.

• Pepper your conversation with cool and ear-catching geological words such as “pluton,” “caldera,” “moraine,” and “tephra” (see Pierce, above).

“For having such a small caldera, Eyjafjallajökull sure blew out a lot of tephra.” Massive bonus points for even trying to pronounce “Eyjafjallajökull,” which, according to Wikipedia, is pronounced “eiːjaˌfjatlaˌjœːkʏtl.” Got it? However, if you say “Eye-yuh” followed by a few random Klingon words, people will think you are fluent. volcano.si.edu

• Remember, geologists do not go on digs. They “do field work,” i.e., they go backpacking on the John Muir Trail, rock climbing in Yosemite, snorkeling in the Caribbean, volcano watching in Hawaii, field-tripping in the Andes, glacier monitoring in Alaska, etc. It’s their job.