Question: Recently, this forum has seen many questions of the *what is the single word for* type.

Is this really such a concern in English?

Single words such as obfuscate or elucidate can obfuscate as much they can elucidate.

This quest for a single word might be considered stylistically important in some languages but how important is it in English?

Answer: 
It can be interesting:

Q. What is the single word that best means "smelling of a horse's urine"?

A. *Jumentous*, adj. smelling of a horse's urine.

Comment: Why thank you kind sir, that is indeed an interesting word. Now what a shame I'll almost never have a need to use it except perhaps in word games.

In terms of good English, no, not particularly useful, rarely necessary, just about never going to lead to as great a turn of phrase as expressing the same idea with several words.

And which is better:

> 
> It's jumentous.
> 
> 
> 

Or:

> 
> That is horse piss and rotted straw, he thought. It is a good odour to breathe. It will calm my heart. My heart is quite calm now. I will go back. (James Joyce, *A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man*)
> 
> 
>
I have asked questions like this before, and for me the motivation is to achieve a level of precision, not necessarily conciseness. To me, the question "is there a word for..." is really an open query on established terminology for specific concepts. If there isn't any, then of course the English language is quite easily able to convey even the most complex ideas effectively. That can be achieved by layering concepts on each other until the overall ideas are communicated, but if there is already a word or phrase that communicates the idea, why would I want to go to the trouble to express it in another way unless I had a specific reason to do so?