An editor once asked me to change "gnomic" to "aphoristic," on the grounds that more people would know what the latter meant. He was probably right, although I didn't follow his suggestion. To me, these words mean different things. "Gnomic" is hermetic, arcane; "aphoristic" is more rational or clever in a witty way. In this particular case the poetry I was writing about was gnomic but not particularly aphoristic.