Calvin and Hobbes came along at just the right time to influence a generation of creators, many of whom would go on to create comic strips of their own. Alongside a couple of other seminal '90s newspaper comics like Bloom County/Outland, C&H's linework, flexibility, and imagination visibly inspired many of the artists who worked in the 2000s webcomics boom.

Over the course of rereading Calvin and Hobbes, however, I've come to wonder if we don't underrate its effect on 21st-century writing. Right from the start of its run, one of Bill Watterson's favorite running jokes involved Calvin's vocabulary. Calvin is ostensibly six years old and a lousy student, but he talks like he was raised on a diet of Word of the Day calendars.

It’s had a distinct impact on the pop culture of the 21st century, as half the ‘90s kids who went on to become comedy writers and cartoonists have inherited Watterson’s love of vocabulary-based punchlines. If you’ve read anything in the last 30 years where half the joke is that it’s using five-dollar words to deliver a 50-cent concept, you’re often looking at work from somebody who grew up on Calvin and Hobbes.

With that in mind, here are six of my favorite Calvin and Hobbes strips that focus on the strip's peculiar celebration of the English language. Calvin may not be able to focus in school, but at least he's a human thesaurus.

Calvin and Hobbes' love of language got started early, with this year-one Sunday strip that taught a generation the phrase "fist of defiance."

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