Most people

Outrageous and outraged are certainly from the same family if one were to write the related words, such as outrage (noun form), outrage (verb form), outrageous (adjective form), outrageously (adverb form). But there are subtle differences in the forms, one from the other. The noun and verb forms are pretty similar although there is the difference in which the verb form shows a burst of emotion and the noun form removes that from the meaning. The adjective and adverb forms share most of the same meaning except that the adjective still refers to anger where the adverb does not. However, the adjective form and the past participle form [a member of the verb family] (the two words starting this blog) are not very close even though they belong to the same family. One deals with rage, the other mainly with something far from the norm. It's a mirror image of the human family with members having different personalities or defining characteristics.

So it is with people. If we think of a class of people, women for instance, we find that they have shared characteristics like the outrage family. However, the members of the class are not the same. In the same way the mind chooses words for expressing the right meaning, people can see the differences in the individual members of the class and choose to pass or accept. And just as there are major distinctions between noun/verb and adjective/adverb, there are some fine-tuned distinctions between close members of a class as between noun and verb and between adjective and adverb. So even if we choose to accept the members of a larger class, there are even smaller distinctions that set the members apart for further scrutiny dictating how much we want to accept that member.

Where I would use the word outrageous, I could also use unbelievable (most people's first choice) or incredible (many people's second choice). But my choice is outrageous. Focusing on just the right word choice follows the same routine as choosing members of a class, then narrowing to focus on a preference. Language and life choices have a number of parallels. I used to think that I could not change my life choice preferences. But that's like saying I am stuck with outrageous as a preference and could not change to incredible, unbelievable, unique, over-the-top, way beyond, or any number of words that might be equivalent. It's just that I have a preference after closely examining the possibilities. My criteria might change for how I select preferences. If so, then I might change preferences. That's more a reality.

I would say, though, that most people stick with the language they learned as young people and it marks them for life. It gives them their recognizable characteristics. Well, that's most people.