The funny thing about apologies:
- the people who really need to, don’t
- the people who don’t need to, do
The way I see this play out with my clients and for students? They’re always super sorry about not knowing words. For some reason, a lack of vocabulary feels like a huge disgrace. They really beat themselves up over it. The look on their faces and the shame… you’d think they just found out they had cancer.
I’m sick of it.
Increasing your set of vocabulary is a good thing, but nobody knows all the words.
When you don’t know, you don’t know.
When you don’t know, that’s not exclusive to language learning. Native speakers experience the same thing. And while it can be embarrassing in the moment, it should be just that: a single moment.
You have the moment, move on, and try to remember better.