I went through a phase of using "big words". At some level it was almost definitely an attempt at showing off. Maybe you genuinely weren't, but I definitely was, and I sense it strongly in others.

These days I almost always focus on being understandable. I think it's a valuable skill to give a broad overview about a topic in a field they know nothing about, in language they will understand. Though I'm not good enough to convincingly explain "technical debt" to high level management yet!