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: 
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> Is this really such a concern in English?
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> This quest for a single word might be considered stylistically important in some languages but how important is it in English?
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Why is English different from other languages? The difference is not the language but why you need a single word for a certain concept.

Getting a single word is often good in terms of Linguistic Economy (usually languages seek that), and if there's a case where you need one word (for a title, a website, etc) then yes, it's important. There must be other reasons certainly, I must have forgotten something.
And I think it's important, yes.

Whole books have been written with new words to accommodate for the fact that some concepts have no single word in English.

One such books writes in its foreword: 

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> In Life, there are many hundreds of common experiences, feelings, situations and even objects which we all know and recognize, but for which no words exist.  
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>  On the other hand, the world is littered with thousands of spare words which spend their time doing nothing but loafing about on signposts pointing at places.  
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>  Our job, as we see it, is to get these words down off the signposts and into the mouths of babes and sucklings and so on, where they can start earning their keep in everyday conversation and make a more positive contribution to society.
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'Nuff said.