IQ_Words

obloquy

\OB-luh-kwee\, noun:| 1. Strongly condemnatory or abusive language or utterance.| 2. The condition of disgrace suffered as a result of public| blame, abuse, or condemnation; ill repute.

obviate

\OB-vee-ayt\, transitive verb:| To prevent by interception; to anticipate and dispose of or make unnecessary.| After lunch he packed and stepped into the shower: Ronald Rosenthal spent a good portion of his life in planes and he knew that hot water immediately before and after a flight obviated most of its bad effects.

onus

\OH-nuhs\, noun:| 1. A burden; an obligation; a disagreeable necessity.| 2. a: A stigma. b: Blame.| 3. The burden of proof.| And who knew what financial pressures he was under or how desperate was his need to shed the onus of his past?

Annex

(n)|a building which is an addition to an existing building| (v)|take possession of; seize; capture

lissom

, also lissome \LISS-uhm\, adjective:| 1. Limber; supple; flexible.| 2. Light and quick in action; nimble; agile; active.| Raphaelle Boitel moves with the lissom, contortionist plastique of a snake-woman.

pukka

, also pucka \PUHK-uh\, adjective:| 1. Authentic; genuine.| 2. Good of its kind; first-class.| He talks like the quintessential pukka Englishman and quotes Chesterton and Kipling by the yard and yet he has chosen to live most of his adult life abroad.

orotund

\OR-uh-tuhnd\, adjective:| 1. Characterized by fullness, clarity, strength, and smoothness of sound.| 2. Pompous; bombastic.| I have been cursed to stalk the night through all eternity, he went on, his voice orotund, carrying all| across the playground.

polymath

\PAH-lee-math\, noun:| A person of great or varied learning; one acquainted with various subjects of study.| A century after Aristotle, in 240 B.C., a brilliant polymath, Eratosthenes, is appointed chief librarian of the Museum at Alexandria--the most cosmopolitan city and center of learning in the Mediterranean world.

paroxysm

\PAIR-uhk-siz-uhm\, noun:| 1. (Medicine) A sudden attack, intensification, or recurrence of a disease.| 2. Any sudden and violent emotion or action; an outburst; a fit.| But when he's on target -- and more often than not he is -- he can send you into paroxysms of laughter.

Belie

contradict

Belied

contradicted

Dearth

shortage

Paucity

shortage

Monotonous

dull; repetitive

Staid

dull; sober; serious

Banal

dull; unoriginal

Monotonous

dull; unvarying

Obscured

hidden; covered; buried

Cryptic

hidden; obscure

Covert

hidden; undercover

Quarantine

isolation to prevent the spread of disease

Colloquial

local and informal (used of language)

Execrable

very, very bad

Imponderable

cannot be understood

Indelible

cannot be wiped out

Circumspect

cautious; considering all sides

Prudent

cautious; wise

Alacrity

eagerness; enthusiasm; quickness;speed and eagerness

Immoderate

excessive; extreme

Preeminent

famous; outstanding

Dalliance

non-serious involvement; toying or playing with something

Perquisites

'perks'

cenacle

'senik? noun 1. a group of people, such as a discussion group or literary clique. 2. the room in which the Last Supper was held.

Articulate

(adj.) able to express something well in words;clear; lucid; eloquent

sang

-froid, also sangfroid \sang-FRWAH\, noun:| Freedom from agitation or excitement of mind; coolness in| trying circumstances; calmness.

hugger

-mugger \HUH-guhr-muh-guhr\, noun:| 1. A disorderly jumble; muddle; confusion.| 2. Secrecy; concealment.| adjective: 1. Confused; muddled; disorderly. 2. Secret.| adverb: 1. In a muddle or confusion. 2. Secretly.| transitive verb: To keep secret.| intransitive verb: To act in a secretive manner.| While Ventura is speaking out -- his wisdom seems to be a hugger-mugger of twisted cliches from his reading of airport trash picked up as he traveled from bout to bout -- others who do possess minds too often are failing to speak theirs, and usually they do so only as a consequence of perceived electoral pragmatism.

Fathom

1. (v) work out; understand, 2. (n) measure of depth

Shroud

1. a cover for dead body, 2. to cover

Discriminating

1. able to make fine distinctions between; having good taste, 2. favoring one side/group and acting against another

Blunderbuss

1. ancient weapon (type of gun); 2. a clumsy person

Personification

1. attributing human qualities to something non-human, 2. acting as an example of

Pedestrian

1. boring (adj), 2. person who walks (n)

Pastoral

1. concerned with the countryside, 2. concerned with the care a pastor gives to someone

Ordain

1. destine; 2. confer holy orders on a priest

Divert

1. entertain; 2. distract; 3. cause a detour

Paradigm

1. example; 2. model; 3. way of looking at things

Conception

1. idea; view. 2. beginning of pregnancy

Legend

1. key to map; 2. myth or story

Prostration

1. lying face down; 2. be overcome with extreme weakness

Drone

1. monotonous noise (n); 2. to speak with no emotion (v); 3.male bee

Indifferent

1. neutral; 2. not outstanding

Hieroglyphics

1. picture writing; 2. writing which is difficult to read or enigmatic

Parasite

1. scrounger; 2. animal which takes digested food from another

Elliptical

1. shaped like an ellipse, 2. indirect

Quarry

1. something that is hunted; 2. mine for stone

Galvanized

1. stirred into action; stimulated, 2. coated with zinc

Petrify

1. terrify; 2. turn to stone

Grate (v)

1. to annoy; aggravate; vex; 2. shred

Flag

1. to lose energy, 2. to signal

Lobby

1. to try to persuade, 2. entrance hall

Ossify

1. turn to bone; 2. become fixed and rigid

Lukewarm

1. unenthusiastic; 2. neither hot nor cold

Currency

1. widespread acceptance, 2. money

Mallet

1. wooden hammer; 2. stick used for polo

Drivel

nonsense

lothario

noun a successful womanizer; a man who behaves selfishly in his sexual relationships with women

mist

noun a thin fog with condensation near the ground; verb become covered with mist; spray finely or cover with mist

imbroglio

noun a very embarrassing misunderstanding; an intricate and confusing interpersonal or political situation

legerdemain

noun an illusory feat; considered magical by naive observers

pittance

noun an inadequate payment

epigone

noun an inferior imitator of some distinguished writer or artist of musician

bugbear

noun an object of dread or apprehension; an imaginary monster used to frighten children

easel

noun an upright tripod for displaying something (usually an artist's canvas)

Captivating

fascinating

Anomalous

odd; not fitting the pattern

Anomalies

oddities; things that don't fit the pattern

Quirk

oddity

Condoning

overlooking; disregarding; ignoring

Effusive

overly expressive of emotions; 'gushing'

Fastidious

overly particular; finicky

Servile

overly submissive; groveling

Cliché

overused expression; something unoriginal

Preclude

prevent or make impossible

rancid

adj. (used of decomposing oils or fats) having a rank smell or taste usually due to a chemical change or decomposition; smelling of fermentation or staleness

redolent

adj. (used with `of' or `with') noticeably odorous; having a strong pleasant odor; serving to bring to mind

here

adj. being here now; adv. in or at this place; where the speaker or writer is; to this place (especially toward the speaker)

prurient

adj. characterized by lust

caitiff

adj. despicably mean and cowardly; noun a cowardly and despicable person

mawkish

adj. effusively or insincerely emotional

embonpoint

adj. euphemisms for slightly fat; noun the bodily property of being well rounded

parsimonious

adj. excessively unwilling to spend

regnant

adj. exercising power or authority

Dirge

mournful song

Clamor

shout; scream

Metaphorically

symbolically; figuratively

Raiment

clothes; garments

Receptacle

container; vessel; holder

busker

\BUS-kur\, noun:| A person who entertains (as by playing music) in public places.| Jakub is a student of mathematics, a likable but callow young man who seduces a blind busker, Alzbeta, who plays for the tourists in modern Prague.

adamant

\AD-uh-muhnt\, adjective:| Not capable of being swayed by pleas, appeals, or reason; not susceptible to persuasion; unyielding.

affable

\AF-uh-buhl\, adjective:| 1. Easy to speak to; receiving others kindly and conversing with them in a free and friendly manner.| 2. Gracious; benign.

opportune

\AHP-er-TOON\, \AHP-er-TYOON\, adjective:| Suitable for a given purpose or occasion; timely.| There is a war on. It's not the most opportune of times to distract the president with a phony political scandal.

ersatz

\AIR-sahts; UR-sats\, adjective: Being a substitute or imitation, usually an inferior one.| Meanwhile, a poor copy was erected in the courtyard; many an unsuspecting traveler paid homage to| that ersatz masterpiece.

arrogate

\AIR-uh-gayt\, transitive verb:| 1. To claim or seize without right or justification; to appropriate.| 2. To claim on behalf of another; to ascribe.

erudite

\AIR-yuh-dyt; -uh-dyt\, adjective:| Characterized by extensive reading or knowledge; learned.

agitprop

\AJ-it-prop\, noun:| Propaganda, especially pro-communist political propaganda disseminated through literature, drama, music, or art.

acrid

\AK-rid\, adjective:| 1. Sharp and harsh, or bitter to the taste or smell; pungent.| 2. Caustic in language or tone; bitter.

algorithm

\AL-guh-RITH-uhm\, noun:| A step-by-step procedure for solving a problem in a finite number of steps that often involves repetition of an operation.

anodyne

\AN-uh-dyn\, adjective:| 1. Serving to relieve pain; soothing.| 2. Not likely to offend; bland; innocuous.| noun:| 1. A medicine that relieves pain.| 2. Anything that calms, comforts, or soothes disturbed feelings.

ingenue

\AN-zhuh-noo\, noun:| 1. A naive girl or young woman.| 2. An actress playing such a person; also: the stage role of an ingenue.| This is not the face of an ingenue; this is an old soul in a new body -- wary, wise to her own long past, on to the wiles of the world, and having miles to go before she sleeps.

apogee

\AP-uh-jee\, noun:| 1. The point in the orbit of the moon or of an artificial satellite that is at the greatest distance from the center of the earth.| 2. The farthest or highest point; culmination.

apposite

\AP-uh-zit\, adjective:| Being of striking appropriateness and relevance; very applicable; apt.

autocrat

\AW-tuh-krat\, noun:| An absolute monarch who rules with unlimited authority; by extension, any person with undisputed authority in a relationship or situation.

bellwether

\BEL-wether\, noun:| 1. A wether, or sheep, which leads the flock, with a bell on his neck.| 2. Hence: A leader of a movement or activity.

billingsgate

\BIL-ingz-gayt; -git\, noun: Coarsely abusive, foul, or profane language.| Chaney would yell at him in his own particular patois -- an unapologetic stream of billingsgate far more creative than Marine drill instructors or master rappers.

bilious

\BIL-yuhs\, adjective:| 1. Of or pertaining to bile.| 2. Marked by an excess secretion of bile.| 3. Pertaining to, characterized by, or affected by gastric| distress caused by a disorder of the liver.| 4. Appearing as if affected by such a disorder.| 5. Resembling bile, especially in color.| 6. Of a peevish disposition; ill-tempered.| Most arresting of all, his normally gray elephant hide has changed to a bilious shade of green.

bivouac

\BIV-wak, BIV-uh-wak\, noun:| An encampment for the night, usually under little or no shelter.| intransitive verb:| To encamp for the night, usually under little or no shelter.| Rob had made his emergency bivouac just below the South Summit.

blandishment

\BLAN-dish-muhnt\, noun:| Speech or action that flatters and tends to coax, entice, or persuade; allurement -- often used in the plural.

bowdlerize

\BODE-luh-rise; BOWD-\, transitive verb:| 1. To remove or modify the parts (of a book, for example) considered offensive.| 2. To modify, as by shortening, simplifying, or distorting in style or content.| The president did not call for bowdlerizing all entertainment, but stressed keeping unsuitable material away from the eyes of children.

bombinate

\BOM-buh-nayt\, intransitive verb:| To buzz; to hum; to drone.| He is often drunk. His head hurts. Snatches of| conversation, remembered precepts, prefigured cries of| terror bombinate about his skull.

bootless

\BOOT-lis\, adjective: Unavailing; useless; without advantage or benefit.| I have seen a swan With bootless labour swim against the tide.

brio

\BREE-oh\, noun: Enthusiastic vigor; vivacity; liveliness; spirit.| Though my judgment was no doubt affected by all the wine we'd consumed, I remember being elated by our performance that night: our inspired spur-of-the-moment dialogue, the actors fleshing out their roles with such brio.

chary

\CHAIR-ee\, adjective:| 1. Wary; cautious.| 2. Not giving or expending freely; sparing.| What do you suppose the Founding Fathers, so chary of overweening government power, would make of a prosecutor with virtually unlimited reach and a staff the size of a small town?

daedal

\DEE-duhl\, adjective:| 1. Complex or ingenious in form or function; intricate.| 2. Skillful; artistic; ingenious.| 3. Rich; adorned with many things.| Most Web-site designers realize that large image maps and daedal layouts are to be avoided, and the leading World Wide Web designers have reacted to users' objections to highly graphical, slow sites by using uncluttered, easy-to-use layouts.

demagogue

\DEM-uh-gog\, noun:| 1. A leader who obtains power by means of impassioned appeals| to the emotions and prejudices of the populace.| 2. A leader of the common people in ancient times.

deprecate

\DEP-rih-kayt\, transitive verb:| 1. [Archaic] To pray against, as an evil; to seek to avert by prayer.| 2. To disapprove of strongly.| 3. To belittle; to depreciate.| We experience such augmentations as pleasure, which may be why aesthetic values have always been deprecated by social moralists, from Plato through our current campus Puritans.

descant

\DES-kant\, noun:| 1. (Music) (a) A melody or counterpoint sung above the plain song of the tenor. (b) The upper voice in part music.| 2. A discourse or discussion on a theme.|#|DES-kant; des-KANT; dis-\, intransitive verb:| 1. (a) To sing or play a descant. (b) To sing.| 2. To comment freely; to discourse at length.| [T]hese to their nests,| Were slunk, all but the wakeful nightingale;| She all night long her amorous descant sung.

desultory

\DES-uhl-tor-ee\, adjective:| 1. Jumping or passing from one thing or subject to another| without order or rational connection; disconnected; aimless.| 2. By the way; as a digression; not connected with the| subject.| 3. Coming disconnectedly or occuring haphazardly; random.| 4. Disappointing in performance or progress.| The shadows on the perfect lawn were straight and angular;they were the shadows of an old man sitting in a deep wicker-chair near the low table on which the tea had been served, and of two younger men strolling to and fro, in desultory talk, in front of him.

desuetude

\DES-wih-tood, -tyood\, noun:| The cessation of use; discontinuance of practice or custom; disuse.

diffident

\DIF-uh-dunt; -dent\, adjective:| 1. Lacking self-confidence; distrustful of one's own powers; timid; bashful.| 2. Characterized by modest reserve; unassertive.| He lived naturally in a condition that many greater poets never had, or if they had it, were embarrassed or diffident about it: a total commitment to his own powers of invention, a complete loss of himself in his materials.

dilatory

\DIL-uh-tor-ee\, adjective:| 1. Tending to put off what ought to be done at once; given to procrastination.| 2. Marked by procrastination or delay; intended to cause delay; -- said of actions or measures.| I am inclined to be dilatory, and if I had not enjoyed extraordinary luck in life and love I might have been living with my mother at that very moment, doing nothing.

disparate

\DIS-puh-rit; dis-PAIR-it\, adjective:| 1. Fundamentally different or distinct in quality or kind.| 2. Composed of or including markedly dissimilar elements.| Science at its best isolates a common element underlying many seemingly disparate phenomena.

dissolute

\DIS-uh-loot\, adjective:| Loose in morals and conduct; marked by indulgence in sensual pleasures or vices.

doff

\DOF\, transitive verb:| 1. To take off, as an article of clothing.| 2. To tip or remove (one's hat).| 3. To put aside; to rid oneself of.| After I finished sweeping, I grabbed my check, went to the locker room, and doffed the monkey suit, slipped into my jeans, sneakers and T-shirt and broke camp.

doula

\DOO-luh\, noun:| A woman who assists during childbirth labor and provides support to the mother, her child and the family after childbirth.

dudgeon

\DUH-juhn\, noun:| A state or fit of intense indignation; resentment; ill humor -- often used in the phrase in high dudgeon.| Higgins was so frustrated by such a basic error that he stormed out of the arena for the mid-session interval in high dudgeon.

diadem

\DY-uh-dem\, noun:| 1. A crown.| 2. An ornamental headband worn (as by Eastern monarchs) as a badge of royalty.| 3. Regal power; sovereignty; empire; -- considered as symbolized by the crown.| transitive verb: To adorn with a diadem; to crown.| On the far side of the cloister in the long, chapel-like room called the Treasure, she sits on her throne -- a small stiff gold figure robed in gold and covered with jewels and crowned with a golden diadem.

exculpate

\EK-skuhl-payt; ek-SKUHL-payt\, transitive verb:| To clear from alleged fault or guilt; to prove to be guiltless; to relieve of blame; to acquit.| Each member is determined to exculpate himself, to lay the blame elsewhere.

explicate

\EK-spluh-kayt\, transitive verb:| To explain; to clear of difficulties or obscurity.| I can cite a case -- my own -- of a young person's being altered politically by a novel, but I cannot explicate the process, let alone explain it in terms of the author's intention or literary strategies.

extricate

\EK-struh-kayt\, transitive verb:| To free or release from a difficulty or entanglement; to get free; to disengage.| Sean introduced himself and then extricated his hand from| Ronan's persistent grasp in order to show him the photo.

extant

\EK-stunt; ek-STANT\, adjective:| Still existing; not destroyed, lost, or extinct.

extirpate

\EK-stur-payt\, transitive verb:| 1. To pull up by the stem or root.| 2. To destroy completely.| 3. To remove by surgery.| A plant growing where it shouldn't is a weed. An object for which you have no need or sentimental attachment is garbage. Extirpate the one, toss the other.

exegete

\EK-suh-JEET\, noun:| A person who explains or interprets difficult parts of written works.| All the things said in this passage are clear and should be

exigent

\EK-suh-juhnt\, adjective:| 1. Requiring immediate aid or action; pressing; critical.| 2. Requiring much effort or expense; demanding; exacting.

equable

\EK-wuh-buhl; EE-kwuh-\, adjective:| 1. Equal and uniform; not varying.| 2. Not easily disturbed; not variable or changing -- said of| the feelings, temper, etc.| An equable climate, evidently due to the large area of sea compared with the land, seems to extend over the greater part of the southern hemisphere; and, as a consequence, the vegetation partakes of a semi-tropical character.

enervate

\EN-ur-vayt\, transitive verb:| 1. To deprive of vigor, force, or strength; to render feeble; to weaken.| 2. To reduce the moral or mental vigor of.| Beatriz de Ahumada soldiered on to produce nine more children, a tour of duty that left her enervated and worn.

epigone

\EP-uh-gohn\, noun:| An inferior imitator, especially of some distinguished writer, artist, musician, or philosopher.| He probably was influenced by John le Carré.... But Mr. Crisp... is no mere epigone.

aesthete

\ES-theet\, noun:| One having or affecting great sensitivity to beauty, as in art or nature.

fealty

\FEE-uhl-tee\, noun:| 1. Fidelity to one's lord; the feudal obligation by which the| tenant or vassal was bound to be faithful to his lord.| 2. The oath by which this obligation was assumed.| 3. Fidelity; allegiance; faithfulness.| He was re-elected Governor in 1855, and his administration of the State affairs, both in that and the preceding term of office,was marked by a regard for the public interest rather than party fealty.

fiat

\FEE-uht; -at; -aht; FY-uht; -at\, noun:| 1. An arbitrary or authoritative command or order.| 2. Formal or official authorization or sanction.

fetid

\FET-id; FEE-tid\, adjective:| Having an offensive smell; stinking.| The air was fetid, heavy as the breath of a large animal.

fettle

\FET-l\,| noun:A state or condition of fitness or order; state of mind; spirits -- often used in the phrase in fine fettle.| Aside from the problems with her voice... Miss Garland was in fine fettle last night.

philter

\FIL-tur\, noun:| 1. A potion or charm supposed to cause the person taking it to| fall in love.| 2. A potion or charm believed to have magic power.

philomath

\FIL-uh-math\, noun:| A lover of learning; a scholar.| It is precisely for the philomaths that universities ought to cater.

flippant

\FLIP-uhnt\, adjective:| Lacking proper seriousness or respect; showing inappropriate levity; pert.| In the mid-1950s we both wrote for the same weekly, where her contributions were a good deal more serious| and less flippant than mine.

florid

\FLOR-id\, adjective:| 1. Flushed with red; of a lively reddish color.| 2. Excessively ornate; flowery; as, a florid style; florid| eloquence.| The Reverend Mr Kidney is a short round bowlegged man with black muttonchop whiskers and a florid face, like a pomegranate, into which he has poured a great quantity of brandy and lesser amounts of whisky and claret.

fop

\FOP\, noun:| A man who is overly concerned with or vain about his dress and appearance; a dandy.| I wear ties because I don't have to, because in an increasingly dressed-down, homogenized world, they can set you apart. I wear ties because they nurture the inner fop.Also the outer one.

foundling

\FOWND-ling\, noun:| A deserted or abandoned infant; a child found without a parent| or caretaker.| Some of her desires were more altruistic: she wanted to| send Phyllis to school for a year, take Auntie May for a| winter in the Isle of Pines, and raise foundlings.

friable

\FRY-uh-buhl\, adjective:| Easily crumbled, pulverized, or reduced to powder.

fulminate

\FUL-muh-nayt\,| intransitive verb:| 1. To issue or utter verbal attacks or censures authoritatively or menacingly. 2. To explode; to detonate.| transitive verb:| 1. To utter or send out with denunciations or censures.| 2. To cause to explode.

firmament

\FUR-muh-muhnt\, noun:| 1. The region of the air; the sky; the heavens.| 2. The field or sphere of an interest or activity| But to judge by the twinkling summer stars that filled the| firmament, the dawn was still far off.

gewgaw

\G(Y)OO-gaw\, noun:| A showy trifle; a trinket; a bauble.| Bidders paid hundreds of thousands of dollars for worthless gewgaws--fake pearls, ashtrays, golf clubs--merely, one supposes, because they were touched by the hand of this celebrity of celebrities.

garrulous

\GAIR-uh-lus; GAIR-yuh-\, adjective:| 1. Talking much, especially about commonplace or trivial things; talkative.| 2. Wordy

gambol

\GAM-buhl\, intransitive verb:| To dance and skip about in play; to frolic.

gastronome

\GAS-truh-nohm\, noun: A connoisseur of good food and drink.| If poultry is for the cook what canvas is for a painter, to quote the 19th-century French gastronome Brillat-Savarin, why paint the same painting over and over again?

glower

\GLAU-urh\, intransitive verb:| To look or stare angrily or with a scowl.| noun: An angry or scowling look or stare.| At one point, the head of the institute started chatting with colleagues sitting at a table behind Yeltsin,prompting the Russian President to interrupt his reading and glower at them.

gloaming

\GLOH-ming\, noun:| Twilight; dusk.| The children squealed and waved and smiled, their teeth flashing white in the gloaming.

gubernatorial

\GOO-ber-nuh-TOR-ee-uhl\, adjective: Of or pertaining to a governor.| In 1780 [1]John Hancock was elected the first governor of Massachusetts under its new constitution and| thereafter was easily reelected whenever he chose to run. His gubernatorial career was marked by his| inability to prevent a fiscal and currency crisis in the mid-1780s.

gravitas

\GRAV-uh-tahs\, noun:| High seriousness (as in a person's bearing or in the treatment of a subject).

hobnob

\HAHB-nahb\, intransitive verb:To associate familiarly.| Occasionally I heard him stop in the corridor outside my door to hobnob with someone of status.

adventitious

\ad-ven-TISH-uhs\, adjective:| 1. Added extrinsically; not essentially inherent.| 2. (Biology) Out of the proper or usual place; as, adventitious buds or roots.

harridan

\HAIR-uh-din\, noun:| A scolding, vicious woman; a shrew; a hag.| With the insight of hindsight, I'd have liked to have been able to protect my mother from the domineering old harridan, with her rough tongue and primitive sense of justice, but I did not see it like that, then.

halcyon

\HAL-see-uhn\, noun:| 1. A kingfisher. 2. A mythical bird, identified with the kingfisher, that was fabled to nest at sea about the time of the winter solstice and to calm the waves during incubation. adjective:| 1. Calm; quiet; peaceful; undisturbed; happy; as, deep, halcyon repose.| 2. Marked by peace and prosperity; as, halcyon years.| It seems to be that my boyhood days in the Edwardian era were halcyon days.

hale

\HAYL\, adjective:| Free from disease and weakening conditions; healthy.| Uncle Charles was a hale old man with a well tanned skin, rugged features and white side whiskers.

heterodox

\HET-uh-ruh-doks\, adjective:| 1. Contrary to or differing from some acknowledged standard,| especially in church doctrine or dogma; unorthodox.| 2. Holding unorthodox opinions or doctrines.

hirsute

\HUR-soot; HIR-soot; hur-SOOT; hir-SOOT\, adjective:| Covered with hair; set with bristles; shaggy; hairy.| The Bear... makes the rounds of the clubs disguised in trench coat and broad-brimmed hat, hoping (successfully, it seems) to be mistaken for a rather hirsute human.

indigent

\IN-di-juhnt\, adjective:| Extremely poor; not having the necessities of life, such as food, clothing and shelter.| That which goes under the general Name of Charity... consists in relieving the Indigent.

indolent

\IN-duh-luhnt\, adjective:| 1. Avoiding labor and exertion; habitually idle; lazy; inactive.| 2. Conducive to or encouraging laziness or inactivity.| 3. Causing little or no pain.| 4. Slow to heal, develop, or grow.| We worked very hard--at least Iris did; I was more naturally indolent.

genial

\JEEN-yuhl; JEE-nee-uhl\, adjective:| 1. [Obsolete] Pertaining to generation or marriage.| 2. Friendly, warm; kindly; sympathetically cheerful and cheering.| 3. Mild, pleasant; comfortable; favorable to life or growth.| The day before the operation, despite his paralysis, he had been his usual genial self, laughing and joking.

gelid

\JEL-id\, adjective:| Extremely cold; icy.| The weather is gelid on a recent Thursday night--so uninviting that it's hard to imagine anyone venturing out.

gimcrack

\JIM-krak\, noun:A showy but useless or worthless object; a gewgaw.| adjective:Tastelessly showy; cheap; gaudy.| Yet the set is more than a collection of pretty gimcracks.

jocund

\JOCK-uhnd; JOH-kuhnd\, adjective:| Full of or expressing high-spirited merriment; light-hearted; mirthful.| His careless manners and jocund repartees might well seem incompatible with anything serious.

cadre

\KAD-ree; -ray; KAH-dray; -druh\, noun: 1. A core or nucleus of trained or otherwise qualified personnel around which an organization is formed. 2. A tightly knit and trained group of dedicated members active in promoting the interests of a revolutionary party. 3. A member of such a group. 4. A framework upon which a larger entity can be built; a scheme.| Trained cadres flowed across the porous border and down the blossoming supply trail through eastern| Laos (the Ho Chi Minh Trail).

carapace

\KAIR-uh-pace\, noun:| 1. The thick shell that covers the back of the turtle, the crab, and other animals.| 2. Something likened to a shell that serves to protect or isolate from external influence.| . . . a gauge for measuring the length of a lobster's carapace from the thorax to the eye socket.

callow

\KAL-oh\, adjective:| Immature; lacking adult perception, experience, or judgment.| Those who in later years did me harm I describe as I knew them then, and I beg any reader to remember that,| although I was hardly callow, I was not yet wise in the ways of the world.

captious

\KAP-shuhs\, adjective: 1. Marked by a disposition to find fault or raise objections. 2. Calculated to entrap or confuse, as in an argument.| The most common among those are captious individuals who can find nothing wrong with their own| actions but everything wrong with the actions of everybody else.

castigate

\KAS-tuh-gayt\, transitive verb:| To punish severely; also, to chastise verbally; to rebuke; to criticize severely.| It was not good enough to castigate him for his sins.

cavil

\KAV-uhl\, intransitive verb:| To raise trivial or frivolous objections; to find fault without good reason.| transitive verb:| To raise trivial objections to.| noun:| A trivial or frivolous objection.| Insiders with their own strong views, after all, tend to cavil about competing ideas and stories they consider less than comprehensive.

kismet

\KIZ-met; -mit\, noun: Destiny; fate.| It's pure kismet when these two find each other.

claque

\KLACK\, noun:| 1. A group hired to applaud at a performance.| 2. A group of fawning admirers.

clarion

\KLAIR-ee-uhn\, noun: 1. A kind of trumpet having a clear and shrill note. 2. The sound of this instrument or a sound similar to it. adjective: Sounding like the clarion; loud and clear.| His voice and laugh, which perpetually re-echoed through the Custom-House, had nothing of the tremulous| quaver and cackle of an old man's utterance; they came strutting out of his lungs, like the crow of a cock, or| the blast of a clarion.

clemency

\KLEM-uhn-see\, noun:| 1. Disposition to forgive and spare, as offenders; mercy.| 2. An act or instance of mercy or leniency.| 3. Mildness, especially of weather.| He put in a strong plea for clemency, begging the king to| spare the alchemist's life.

cogent

\KOH-juhnt\, adjective:| Having the power to compel conviction; appealing to the mind or to reason; convincing.| One woman, Adrian Pomerantz, was so intelligent that the professors always lit up when Adrian spoke; her| eloquent, cogent analyses forced them not to be lazy, not to repeat themselves.

cogitate

\KOJ-uh-tayt\, intransitive verb: To think deeply or intently; to ponder; to meditate.| transitive verb: To think about; to ponder on; to meditate upon; to plan or plot.| Still cogitating and looking for an explanation in the fire.

comity

\KOM-uh-tee\, noun:| A state of mutual harmony, friendship, and respect, especially between or among nations or people; civility.| comity of nations, noun:| 1. The courteous recognition by one nation of the laws and institutions of another.| 2. The group of nations observing international comity.| In Athens last week, E.U. leaders offered a picture of comity as they formally signed accession treaties with 10 new members.

confrere

\KON-frair\, noun:| A fellow member of a fraternity or profession; a colleague; a comrade; an intimate associate.| At Father Kilmartin's death the book was left unfinished (a sign of the times: not in manuscript, but on his laptop); and the arduous but also extremely delicate task of putting it into publishable condition was carried out by his Jesuit confrere, Robert J. Daly.

coruscate

\KOR-uh-skayt\, intransitive verb:| 1. To give off or reflect bright beams or flashes of light; to sparkle.| 2. To exhibit brilliant, sparkling technique or style.| They pulled up at the farthest end of a loop path that looked out over the great basin of the Rio Grande under brilliant, coruscating stars.

cosset

\KOSS-it\, transitive verb:| To treat as a pet; to treat with excessive indulgence; to| pamper.

cursory

\KUR-suh-ree\, adjective:Hastily or superficially performed.| In a time when most college coeds had strict curfews, Bennington students had none, and only a cursory morning check to make sure that we were alive and in our beds.

quondam

\KWAHN-duhm; KWAHN-dam\, adjective:| Having been formerly; former; sometime.| A quondam flower child, she spent seven years at the Royal| College of Art, before becoming a lecturer at Edinburgh School of Art.

querulous

\KWER-uh-luhs; -yuh\, adjective:| 1. Apt to find fault; habitually complaining.| 2. Expressing complaint; fretful; whining.| Querulous Oscar rattles on, never more or less than himself, but never much more than the content of his grumpy rattling.

quiddity

\KWID-ih-tee\, noun:| 1. The essence, nature, or distinctive peculiarity of a thing.| 2. A hairsplitting distinction; a trifling point; a quibble.| 3. An eccentricity; an odd feature.| He wanted to capture not just live animals, but the aliveness of animals in their natural state: their wildness, their quiddity, the fox-ness of the fox and the crow-ness of the crow

quidnunc

\KWID-nuhngk\, noun:| One who is curious to know everything that passes; one who knows or pretends to know all that is going on; a gossip; a busybody.| What a treasure-trove to these venerable quidnuncs, could they have guessed the secret which Hepzibah and Clifford were carrying along with them!

quaff

\KWOFF; KWAFF\,| transitive verb:To drink with relish; to drink copiously of; to swallow in large draughts.| intransitive verb: To drink largely or luxuriously.| noun: A drink quaffed.| He gets drunk with his guides, makes eyes at the girls and gamely quaffs snake wine.

quorum

\KWOR-uhm\, noun:| 1. Such a number of the officers or members of any body as is| legally competent to transact business.| 2. A select group.| The extraordinary powers of the Senate were vested in twenty-six men, fourteen of whom would constitute a quorum,of which eight would make up a majority.

lachrymose

\LAK-ruh-mohs\, adjective:| 1. Given to shedding tears; suffused with tears; tearful.| 2. Causing or tending to cause tears.| At the farewell party on the boat, Joyce was surrounded by a lachrymose family.

lambent

\LAM-buhnt\, adjective:| 1. Playing lightly on or over a surface; flickering; as, a lambent flame; lambent shadows.| 2. Softly bright or radiant; luminous; as, a lambent light.| 3. Light and brilliant; as, a lambent style; lambent wit.| I have an image in my mind of the soaring vault rising and disappearing into the gray-white silence, the niches in the salt walls where the saints dwelled, the few points of lambent gold glimmering feebly on the altar.

lassitude

\LASS-uh-tood; LASS-uh-tyood\, noun:| Lack of vitality or energy; weariness; listlessness.| The feverish excitement ... had given place to a dull, regretful lassitude.

laudable

\LAW-duh-bul\, adjective:| Worthy of praise; commendable.| Her first answer was laudable -- she wrote that yes, she would remain engaged to a man who fell seriously ill subsequent to the engagement.

lexicon

\LEK-suh-kon\, noun; plural lexicons or lexica \-kuh\:| 1. A book containing an alphabetical arrangement of the words| in a language with the definition of each; a dictionary.| 2. The vocabulary of a person, group, subject, or language.| 3. [Linguistics] The total morphemes of a language.| He thought it right in a lexicon of our language to collect many words which had fallen into disuse.

lenity

\LEN-uh-tee\, noun:| The state or quality of being lenient; mildness; gentleness of treatment; leniency.| The criminal suspect is pressured by remorse or hope of lenity or sheer despair to fess up.

levity

\LEV-uh-tee\, noun:| 1. Lightness of manner or speech, especially when inappropriate or excessive; frivolity.| 2. Lack of steadiness or constancy; changeableness.

littoral

\LIH-tuh-rul\, adjective: Of, relating to, or on a coastal or shore region, especially a seashore.| Professor Henslow tells me, he believes that nearly all the plants which I brought from these islands, are common littoral species in the East Indian archipelago.

limn

\LIM\, transitive verb:| 1. To depict by drawing or painting.| 2. To portray in words; to describe.| Oh, yes, I write, as I limn the familiar perfections of his profile, you look very well.

lineament

\LIN-ee-uh-muhnt\, noun:| 1. One of the outlines, exterior features, or distinctive marks of a body or figure, particularly of the face.| 2. A distinguishing or characteristic feature; -- usually in the plural.| If she saw herself, even in her memory, she did not see the brightness that had been hers as a wife; she saw the lined and ageing woman she had become, as if these lineaments had been waiting to emerge since her features had first been formed.

lucre

\LOO-kuhr\, noun:| Monetary gain; profit; riches; money; -- often in a bad sense.| His stories began to be published in the American Mercury before he moved to L.A., lured by the dream of Hollywood lucre.

malleable

\MAL-ee-uh-buhl\, adjective:| 1. Capable of being extended or shaped by beating with a| hammer, or by the pressure of rollers; -- applied to metals.| 2. Capable of being altered or controlled by outside forces;| easily influenced.| 3. Capable of adjusting to changing circumstances; adaptable.| His image for his own imagination is the acid, the catalyst, that is mixed in to make the gold malleable, and is then wiped away.

manse

\MAN(T)S\, noun:| 1. A large and imposing residence.| 2. The residence of a clergyman (especially a Presbyterian clergyman).| A two-story white Greek Revival manse, with a front porch and a terrace in the back.

maudlin

\MAWD-lin\, adjective:| Tearfully or excessively sentimental.

melee

\MAY-lay; may-LAY\, noun:| 1. A fight or hand-to-hand struggle in which the combatants are mingled in one confused mass.| 2. A confused conflict or mingling.| In another incident, two staff members required stitches from a melee that ensued from their attempts to| confiscate a razor blade found in the sock of a boy who had just arrived from another facility.

maelstrom

\MAYL-struhm\, noun:| 1. A large, powerful, or destructive whirlpool.| 2. Something resembling a maelstrom; a violent, disordered, or turbulent state of affairs.| The murk became thicker as Zachareesi fishtailed his canoe through a swirling maelstrom of currents pouring| past, and over, unseen rocks.

mien

\MEEN\, noun:| 1. Manner or bearing, especially as expressive of mood, attitude, or personality; demeanor.| 2. Aspect; appearance.

minatory

\MIN-uh-tor-ee\, adjective:| Threatening; menacing.| He was often observed peeping through the bars of a gate and making minatory gestures with his small forefinger while he scolded the sheep with an inarticulate burr, intended to strike terror into their astonished minds.

missive

\MIS-iv\, noun:| A written message; a letter.| She also agreed to write to the Prince, while the Count included a suitably outraged missive of his own.

mollify

\MOL-uh-fy\, transitive verb:| 1. To pacify; to soothe or calm in temper or disposition.| 2. To reduce in intensity; to temper.| 3. To soften; to reduce the rigidity of.| One hundred seventeen and a half pesos! Did you think you could mollify me with that amount, Philip V?

mores

\MOR-ayz; -eez\, plural noun:| 1. The fixed customs of a particular group that are morally binding upon all members of the group.| 2. Moral attitudes.| 3. Customs; habits; ways.| But even before that, the increasing secularization and urbanization of society, the employment of women in| large numbers and diverse occupations, the suffragette movement (culminating in the acquisition of the vote after| the war), the widespread practice and, no less important, the candid discussion of contraception, the advent| of automobiles providing an unprecedented degree of mobility and freedom

mordant

\MOR-d'nt\, adjective:Biting; caustic; sarcastic.| Mr. Justice Moorcroft's forte, a part which he had played for so many years that it had become instinctive, was a courteous reasonableness occasionally enlivened with shafts of mordant wit.

moribund

\MOR-uh-bund\, adjective:| 1. In a dying state; dying; at the point of death.| 2. Becoming obsolete or inactive.| He put on a beaver overcoat, a present from a wealthy Petrograd banker and speculator, Ignati Porfiryevich Manus, whose niece had been moribund with fever until Rasputin's healing intercession had revived her.

moiety

\MOY-uh-tee\, noun:| 1. One of two equal parts; a half.| 2. An indefinite part; a small portion or share.| 3. One of two basic tribal subdivisions.| Tom divided the cake and Becky ate with good appetite,while Tom nibbled at his moiety.

myrmidon

\MUR-muh-don; -dun\, noun:| 1. [Capitalized] A member of a warlike Thessalian people who| followed Achilles on the expedition against Troy.| 2. A loyal follower, especially one who executes orders| without question, protest, or pity.

nadir

\NAY-dir; nay-DIR\, noun:| 1. [Astronomy]. The point of the celestial sphere directly opposite the zenith and directly below the observer.| 2. The lowest point; the time of greatest depression or adversity.| Exploitation reached a nadir in the 1920s, when high government officials were implicated in a flourishing international slave trade and domestic forced labor.

nescience

\NESH-uhn(t)s; NESH-ee-uhn(t)s\, noun:| Lack of knowledge or awareness; ignorance.

nonage

\NON-ij; NOH-nij\, noun:| 1. The time of life before a person becomes legally of age.| 2. A period of youth or immaturity.| He was an adept in politics, even in his nonage, and an accomplished statesman before the laws regarded him as a man.

nugatory

\NOO-guh-tor-ee; NYOO-\, adjective:| 1. Trifling; insignificant; inconsequential.| 2. Having no force; inoperative; ineffectual.| Tygiel's forte as a historian is his eye for what may appear nugatory or marginal but, when focused| upon, illuminates the temper of a given moment.

numinous

\NOO-min-nus\, \NYOO-min-nus\, adjective:Indicating or suggesting the presence of a god-- spiritual,divine; inspiring awe and reverence-- holy.| Smoking is a ritual, and it has all the numinous force of a ritual.

nostrum

\NOS-truhm\, noun:| 1. A medicine of secret composition and unproven or dubious effectiveness; a quack medicine.| 2. A usually questionable remedy or scheme; a cure-all.| James is put to work at country fairs, promoting a quack nostrum for pain relief.

noisome

\NOY-sum\, adjective:| 1. Noxious; harmful; unwholesome.| 2. Offensive to the smell or other senses; disgusting. The body politic produces noisome and unseemly substances,| among which are politicians.

obdurate

\OB-duh-rit; -dyuh-\, adjective:| 1. a. Hardened in wrongdoing; stubbornly wicked. b. Hardened in feelings; hard-hearted.| 2. Resistant to persuasion; unyielding.| 3. Hard; harsh; rugged; rough.| The obdurate conscience of the old sinner.

objurgate

\OB-juhr-gayt\, transitive verb:| To express strong disapproval of; to criticize severely.| I objurgate the centipede,A bug we do not really need.--Ogden Nash, The Centipede| The act about to be objurgated here calls on the Food and Drug Administration to oversee a broad revision of food labeling.

palimpsest

\PAL-imp-sest\, noun:| 1. A manuscript, usually of papyrus or parchment, on which more than one text has been written with the earlier writing incompletely erased and still visible.| 2. An object or place whose older layers or aspects are apparent beneath its surface.| The manuscript is a palimpsest consisting of vellum leaves from which the fluent and assured script of the original Archimedes text and 55 diagrams had been washed or scraped off so that the surface could be used for new writings.

palindrome

\PAL-in-drohm\, noun:| A word, phrase, sentence, or verse that reads the same backward or forward.| A few examples:| * Madam, I'm Adam. (Adam's first words to Eve?)| * A man, a plan, a canal -- Panama! (The history of the Panama Canal in brief.)| * Able was I ere I saw Elba. (Napoleon's lament.)| * Mom, Dad.| Palindrome comes from Greek palindromos, literally running back (again), from palin, back, again + dromos, running.

palpable

\PAL-puh-buhl\, adjective:| 1. Capable of being touched and felt; perceptible by the| touch; as, a palpable form.| 2. Easily perceptible; plain; distinct; obvious; readily| perceived and detected; gross; as, palpable imposture;| palpable absurdity; palpable errors.| A sense of devastation from the attacks remains palpable, but so too is a sense of rejuvenation.

paladin

\PAL-uh-din\, noun:| 1. A knight-errant; a distinguished champion of a medieval king or prince; as, the paladins of Charlemagne.| 2. A champion of a cause.| Once in power, though, Clinton stumbled repeatedly over obstacles created by the schizoid campaign he had| conducted, in which he had cast himself simultaneously as the champion of a more conservative Democratic credo and as| a paladin of the party's traditional activism.

panoply

\PAN-uh-plee\, noun:| 1. A splendid or impressive array.| 2. Ceremonial attire.| 3. A full suit of armor; a complete defense or covering.| Every step taken to that end which appeases the obsolete hatreds and vanished oppressions, which makes easier the traffic and reciprocal services of Europe, which encourages nations to lay aside their precautionary panoply, is good in itself.

parley

\PAR-lee\, noun:| A conference or discussion, especially with an enemy, as with regard to a truce or other matters. intransitive verb: To speak with another; to confer on some point of mutual concern; specifically, to have a| discussion with an enemy.| The government recognized his knack for parleying with tribes, and it sent him all over the West.

parlous

\PAR-luhs\, adjective:| Attended with peril; fraught with danger; hazardous.| It was a parlous time on the Continent, when Communists and fascists vied brutally for supremacy.

pelf

\PELF\, noun:Money; riches; gain; -- generally conveying the idea of something ill-gotten.| . .. a master manipulator who will twist and dodge around the clock to keep the privileges of power and pelf.

penchant

\PEN-chunt\, noun: Inclination; decided taste; a strong liking.| Ben was a dreamy little boy, recalls Hiddy, who always thought her brother's penchant for reveries might lead him to become an artist or a great philosopher.

plenary

\PLEE-nuh-ree; PLEN-uh-ree\, adjective:| 1. Full in all respects; complete; absolute; as, plenary authority.| 2. Fully attended by all qualified members. Judges like to quote a 1936 Supreme Court opinion that| spoke of the very delicate, plenary and exclusive power of| the President as the sole organ of the Federal Government| in the field of international relations.

pleonasm

\PLEE-uh-naz-uhm\, noun:| 1. The use of more words than are necessary to express an| idea; as, I saw it with my own eyes.| 2. An instance or example of pleonasm.| 3. A superfluous word or expression.

potable

\POE-tuh-buhl\, adjective:| Fit to drink; suitable for drinking; drinkable.

polyglot

\POL-ee-glot\, adjective:| 1. Containing or made up of several languages.| 2. Writing, speaking, or versed in many languages.| noun:| One who speaks several languages.

posit

\POZ-it\, transitive verb:| 1. To assume as real or conceded.| 2. To propose as an explanation; to suggest.| 3. To dispose or set firmly or fixedly.| It is not necessary to posit mysterious forces to explain coincidences.

practicable

\PRAK-tik-uh-buhl\, adjective:| 1. Capable of being done, accomplished, or put into practice; feasible; as, a practicable method; a practicable aim.| 2. Capable of being used; usable.| The authors give easy-to-follow instructions on coping with a whole ham leg, and so many ways to cook with it| that the project even seems practicable.

prescient

\PRE-shee-uhnt\, adjective:| Knowing or anticipating the outcome of events before they happen.| Despite [1]Carroll's unfamiliarity with military matters he had an astonishingly prescient view of how the war for independence would be fought and won.

precipice

\PRES-uh-pis\, noun:| 1. A very steep, perpendicular, or overhanging place; a cliff.| 2. The brink of a hazardous situation.| Barbara got as close to the edge as she dared and looked down over the precipice.

prink

\PRINGK\, transitive verb:| To dress up; to deck for show.

probity

\PRO-buh-tee\, noun:| Complete and confirmed integrity; uprightness.

protean

\PRO-tee-un; pro-TEE-un\, adjective:| 1. Displaying considerable variety or diversity.| 2. Readily assuming different shapes or forms.| The [Broadway] musical was ceaselessly protean in these years, usually conventional but always developing convention, twisting it, replacing it.

provenance

\PROV-uh-nuhn(t)s\, noun:| Origin; source.| In a world awash in information of dubious provenance, whom can you trust to tell you the truth?

putsch

\PUCH ('u' as in 'push')\, noun:| (Sometimes capitalized) A secretly planned and suddenly| executed attempt to overthrow a government.| Hitler operated from Munich where he enjoyed a fair degree| of support, and it was here that his Putsch took place in| an effort to seize power in Bavaria.

felicitous

\fuh-LIS-uh-tuhs\, adjective:| 1. Well suited or expressed; appropriate; apt.| 2. Pleasant; delightful; marked by happiness or good fortune.| We do this sort of thing most weekends anyway, said a lean rebel with gunpowder smudges on his face and the felicitous name of Troy Cool.

purblind

\PUR-blynd\, adjective:| 1. Having greatly reduced vision.| 2. Lacking in insight or discernment.| Add to this that the work seems unsure of its audience, providing no footnotes or exact references, but concluding with a bizarre parade of bibliographical essays running to 59 pages; that it gives the date only about once every 100 pages (and then not always the right date...) and leaves us feeling as if we were wandering purblind in some deep cave.

persiflage

\PUR-suh-flahzh\, noun:| Frivolous or bantering talk; a frivolous manner of treating any subject, whether serious or otherwise; light raillery.| He was somber and wordless and utterly unresponsive to my mother's charming persiflage.

puissant

\PWISS-uhnt; PYOO-uh-suhnt; pyoo-ISS-uhnt\,| adjective: Powerful; strong; mighty; as, a puissant prince or empire.| As an upcoming young corporate lawyer in San Francisco in the 1930's, Crum tended the interests of some of California's most puissant businesses, starting with William Randolph Hearst's newspaper empire.

piebald

\PY-bald\, adjective:| 1. Having spots and patches of black and white, or other colors; mottled.| 2. Mixed; composed of incongruous parts.| She remembered the piebald hair of a convicted woman, with brown roots growing through the crude bleach.

pugilist

\PYOO-juh-list\, noun:| One who fights with the fists; especially, a professional prize fighter; a boxer.| I had escaped my years as a pugilist with few of the badges that gave fellow-veterans of the ring the appearance of ruffians--missing eyes, mashed noses, or suchlike disfigurements--and had no more to show for my beatings than some small scars about my face and a nose that bore only the mild bumps and jagged edges that come with several breakings.

putative

\PYOO-tuh-tiv\, adjective:| Commonly thought or deemed; supposed; reputed.| Certainly, to have even a putative ancestor commemorated by Shakespeare is something about which to boast.

puerile

\PYOO-uhr-uhl; PYOOR-uhl\, adjective:| Displaying or suggesting a lack of maturity; juvenile; childish.

pule

\PYOOL\, intransitive verb:| To whimper; to whine.| The first lady initially flourished as a wronged wife precisely because she endured her humiliation so stoically; she did not whine or pule or treat her pain as license to behave badly.

rapine

\RAP-in\, noun: The act of plundering; the seizing and carrying away of another's property by force.| He who has once begun to live by rapine always finds reasons for taking what is not his.

recondite

\REK-un-dyt\, adjective: 1. Difficult to understand; [1]abstruse.2. Concerned with obscure subject matter.| And his fondness for stopping his readers short in their tracks with evidence of his recondite vocabulary is wonderfully irritating.

relegate

\REL-uh-gayt\, transitive verb:| 1. To assign to an inferior position, place, or condition.| 2. To assign to an appropriate category or class.| 3. To assign or refer (a matter or task, for example) to another for| appropriate action.| 4. To send into exile; to banish.| Employment discrimination locked them out of better paying jobs and relegated them to menial occupations.

restive

\RES-tiv\, adjective:| 1. Impatient under restriction, delay, coercion, or opposition; resisting control.| 2. Unwilling to go on; obstinate in refusing to move forward; stubborn.| He turned restive at the least attempt at coercion.

reticent

\RET-ih-suhnt\, adjective:| 1. Inclined to keep silent; reserved; uncommunicative.| 2. Restrained or reserved in style.| 3. Reluctant; unwilling.

revenant

\REV-uh-nunt\, noun:| One who returns after death (as a ghost) or after a long absence.| Lazarus, as a revenant, is often used by the religious romance-writers of the middle ages as a vehicle for their conceptions of the lower world.

ribald

\RIB-uld; RY-bawld\, adjective:| Characterized by, or given to, vulgar humor; coarse.| noun: A ribald person; a lewd fellow.| Barrymore delights you with his own delight in his silly, ribald jokes (most of which are unprintable here).

rictus

\RIK-tuhs\, noun:| 1. The gape of the mouth, as of birds.| 2. A gaping grin or grimace.| A rictus of cruel malignity lit up greyly their old bony faces.

risible

\RIZ-uh-buhl\, adjective:| 1. Capable of laughing; disposed to laugh.| 2. Exciting or provoking laughter; worthy of laughter; laughable; amusing.| 3. Relating to, connected with, or used in laughter; as, risible muscles.| Before long, I began to read aloud with my father, chanting the strange and wondrous rivers -- Shenandoah, Rappahannock, Chickahominy -- and wrapping my tongue around the risible names of rebel generals: Braxton Bragg, Jubal Early, John Sappington Marmaduke, William Extra Billy Smith, Pierre Gustave Toutant Beauregard.

roseate

\ROH-zee-it; -ayt\, adjective:| 1. Overly optimistic; bright or cheerful.| 2. Resembling a rose especially in color.| That roseate view was shattered when the North last week detained a South Korean housewife, on a Kumkang tour with her six-year-old son, on a bizarre pretext.

rubicund

\ROO-bih-kund\, adjective: Inclining to redness; ruddy; red.| The men are second cousins, around forty, resembling each other not very much, one taller and leaner, less rubicund than the other, who has just returned from California.

roister

\ROY-stur\, intransitive verb:| 1. To engage in boisterous merrymaking; to revel; to carouse.| 2. To bluster; to swagger.

sacrosanct

\SAK-roh-sankt\, adjective:| Sacred; inviolable.| The family was viewed as sacrosanct: divorce was highly unusual and children were expected to be grateful for the sacrifices that parents, who postponed their own gratifications in forming a family, made on their behalf.| salad days, noun:| A time of youthful inexperience, innocence, or indiscretion.| Those were his salad days, and he thought they might last forever.

salutary

\SAL-yuh-ter-ee\, adjective:| 1. Producing or contributing to a beneficial effect; beneficial; advantageous.| 2. Wholesome; healthful; promoting health.| Alexis de Tocqueville famously observed during his sojourn in this country that America was teeming with such associations -- charities, choral groups, church study groups, book clubs -- and that they had a remarkably salutary effect on society, turning selfish individuals into public-spirited citizens.

sough

\SAU; SUHF\, intransitive verb:| To make a soft, low sighing or rustling sound, as the wind.| noun:| A soft, low rustling or sighing sound.| At a recent visit to Marsha's grave in Rathdrum, as the wind soughed through the towering pines nearby, Marsha's brother Pat left a silk bluebird by her headstone to honor her love of the outdoors.

sapient

\SAY-pee-uhnt\, adjective:| Wise; sage; discerning.| By actual measurement they are the brainiest of birds, and on subjective evidence they seem more sapient than most other living creatures.

segue

\SEG-way; SAYG-way\, verb:| To proceed without interruption; to make a smooth transition.| Daylight segued into dusk. --Susan Dworski| Our honeymoon seemed to segue into a month of dinner parties.

sedulous

\SEJ-uh-luhs\, adjective:| 1. Diligent in application or pursuit; steadily industrious.| 2. Characterized by or accomplished with care and perseverance.| He did not attain this distinction by accident but by sedulous study from the cradle forward.

sentient

\SEN-shee-uhnt; -tee-; -shuhnt\, adjective:| 1. Capable of perceiving by the senses; conscious.| 2. Experiencing sensation or feeling.| I can remember very vividly the first time I became aware| of my existence; how for the first time I realised that I was| a sentient human being in a perceptible world.

schadenfreude

\SHOD-n-froy-duh\,| noun: A malicious satisfaction obtained from the misfortunes of others.| That the report of Sebastian Imhof's grave illness might also have been tinged with Schadenfreude appears not to have crossed Lucas's mind.

scrabble

\SKRAB-uhl\, intransitive verb:| 1. To scrape or scratch with the hands or feet.| 2. To struggle by or as if by scraping or scratching.| 3. To proceed by clawing with the hands and feet; to scramble.| 4. To make irregular, crooked, or unmeaning marks; to scribble; to scrawl.| transitive verb:| 1. To mark with irregular lines or letters; to scribble on or over.| 2. To make or obtain by scraping together hastily.| noun:| 1. The act or an instance of scrabbling.| 2. A scribble.| Mice kept me awake by scrabbling in the uncovered garbage can.

scuttlebutt

\SKUHT-l-buht\, noun:| 1. (Nautical)| a. A drinking fountain on a ship.| b. A cask on a ship that contains the day's supply of drinking water.| 2. Gossip; rumor.| What were they talking about? Sports? Neighborhood scuttlebutt? Off-color jokes? I didn't know; I knew only how exciting it was to see Dad in action.

slugabed

\SLUHG-uh-bed\, noun:| One who stays in bed until a late hour; a sluggard.| Nemecek's business is not for slugabeds. He opens for business every weekday at 4 a.m.

sobriquet

\SO-brih-kay; -ket; so-brih-KAY; -KET\, noun:| A nickname; an assumed name; an epithet.| In addition to his notorious amours, he became distinguished for a turbulent naval career, particularly for the storms he weathered, thus bringing him the sobriquet Foulweather Jack.| At a small reception on the occasion of my twenty-fifth anniversary in this position, my good friend Izzy Landes raised a glass and dubbed me the Curator of the Curators, a sobriquet I have worn with pride ever since.

sojourn

\SO-jurn; so-JURN\, intransitive verb:| To stay as a temporary resident; to dwell for a time.| noun: A temporary stay.| Though he has sojourned in Southwold, wandered in Walberswick, dabbled in Dunwich, ambled through Aldeburgh and blundered through Blythburgh, Smallweed has never set foot in Oxford.

somnolent

\SOM-nuh-luhnt\, adjective:| 1. Sleepy; drowsy; inclined to sleep.| 2. Tending to cause sleepiness or drowsiness.

spoony

\SPOO-nee\, adjective:| 1. Foolish; silly; excessively sentimental.| 2. Foolishly or sentimentally in love.| Nevertheless, because we're spoony old things at heart, we like to believe that some showbiz marriages are different.

spoonerism

\SPOO-nuh-riz-uhm\, noun:| The transposition of usually initial sounds in a pair of words.

spurious

\SPYUR-ee-uhs\, adjective:| 1. Not proceeding from the true or claimed source; not genuine; false.| 2. Of illegitimate birth.| Some of these graves are clearly spurious and were manufactured by nineteenth-century royalists who| wanted evidence of an unbroken 2,000-year-old imperial line.

stasis

\STAY-sis; STAS-is\, noun;

stertorous

\STUR-tuh-ruhs\, adjective:| Characterized by a heavy snoring or gasping sound; hoarsely breathing.| In the cinder-block motel room he set the alarm, but his own stertorous breathing woke him before it rang.

circumspect

\SUR-kuhm-spekt\, adjective:| Marked by attention to all circumstances and probable consequences; cautious; prudent.| When the evidence is plentiful and the theories well confirmed, we can be more confident of the historical scenarios we propose; when theories are weak or evidence scarce, we ought to be more circumspect.

sinecure

\SY-nih-kyur; SIN-ih-\, noun:| An office or position that requires or involves little or no responsibility, work, or active service.| I was fortunate to receive the. . . offer, which in practical terms was a sinecure.

cynosure

\SY-nuh-shoor; SIN-uh-shoor\, noun:| 1. Anything to which attention is strongly turned; a center of attraction.| 2. That which serves to guide or direct.| 3. [Capitalized]. The northern constellation Ursa Minor, which contains the North Star; also, the North Star itself.| The monarch, at the apex of court power and centre of its ritual, and the greatest patron of the arts, was the cynosure of this culture, standing (or, more usually, sitting) at the centre of a system of artistic practice intended to represent his or her sacred omnipotence and monopoly of power.

abjure

\ab-JUR\, transitive verb:| 1. To renounce under oath.| 2. To renounce or reject solemnly; to recant; to reject; repudiate.| 3. To abstain from; to shun.

abscond

\ab-SKOND\, intransitive verb:| To depart secretly; to steal away and hide oneself -- used especially of persons who withdraw to avoid arrest or prosecution.

abstemious

\ab-STEE-mee-uhs\, adjective:| 1. Sparing in eating and drinking; temperate; abstinent.| 2. Sparingly used or consumed; used with temperance or moderation.| 3. Marked by or spent in abstinence.

ostensible

\ah-STEN-suh-bul\, adjective:| Represented or appearing to be true, but not necessarily so.| The credibility of the energy-trading sector has been severely damaged by disclosures of sham transactions in energy trading, designed to build up ostensible sales and profits and therefore share prices of the trading companies.

accede

\ak-SEED\, intransitive verb:| 1. To agree or assent, as to a proposition, or to terms proposed by another.| 2. To become a party, as to an agreement, treaty, convention,| 3. To attain, as to an office or rank; to enter upon the duties of an office.

apparition

\ap-uh-RISH-uhn\, noun:| 1. A ghost; a specter; a phantom.| 2. The thing appearing; the sudden or unexpected appearance of something or somebody.| 3. The act of becoming visible; appearance.| 4. (Astronomy) The first appearance of a star or other luminary after having been invisible or obscured; -- opposed to [1]occultation.

atelier

\at-l-YAY\, noun:| A workshop; a studio.

auspicious

\aw-SPISH-uhs\, adjective:| 1. Giving promise of success, prosperity, or happiness;| predicting good; as, an auspicious beginning.| 2. Prosperous; fortunate; as, auspicious years.

autochthonous

\aw-TOCK-thuh-nuhs\, adjective:| 1. Aboriginal; indigenous; native.| 2. Formed or originating in the place where found.

autodidact

\aw-toh-DY-dakt\, noun:| One who is self-taught.

badinage

\bad-n-AHZH\, noun:| Light, playful talk; banter.

bagatelle

\bag-uh-TEL\, noun:| 1. A trifle; a thing of little or no importance.| 2. A short, light musical or literary piece.| 3. A game played with a cue and balls on an oblong table having cups or arches at one end.

bonhomie

\bah-nuh-MEE\, noun:| Good nature; pleasant and easy manner.| That bonhomie which won the hearts of all who knew him.

bedizen

\bih-DY-zuhn\, transitive verb:| To dress or adorn in gaudy manner.

beholden

\bih-HOHL-duhn\, adjective:| Obliged; bound in gratitude; indebted.

benignant

\bih-NIG-nuhnt\, adjective:| 1. Kind; gracious.| 2. Beneficial; favorable.| After the captain and ladies had sat down, the autocratic steward rang a second bell, and with a majestic wave of the hand, and a calm, benignant smile, signified his pleasure that we should sit down.

berate

\bih-RAYT\, transitive verb:| To scold severely or angrily| She tells of Mr. Hauptmann's great joy when they had a baby son, and of the times she ran up the stairs to berate him for playing the mandolin after the baby was asleep and found him playing the Brahms Lullaby as the baby looked on approvingly.

boulevardier

\boo-luh-var-DYAY; bul-uh-\, noun:| 1. A frequenter of city boulevards, especially in Paris.| 2. A sophisticated, worldly, and socially active man; a man who frequents| fashionable places; a man-about-town.| Oswald, whose idea of excitement is breakfasting with a penguin, is a boulevardier: Hat cocked precariously on his head, he saunters out into the sunny city.

booboisie

\boob-wah-ZEE\, noun:| A class of people regarded as stupid or foolish.| Until then, he'd dismissed Hollywood as a purveyor of machine-made fodder for the booboisie, but he found,| much| to his surprise, that the movies weren't nearly as bad as he'd claimed.

bouleversement

\bool-vair-suh-MAWN\, noun:Complete overthrow; a reversal; a turning upside down.| For the second time in his life Amory had had a complete bouleversement and was hurrying into line with his generation.

Brobdingnagian

\brob-ding-NAG-ee-uhn\, adjective:| Of extraordinary size; gigantic; enormous.| The venture capital business has a size problem. A monstrous, staggering, stupefying one. Brobdingnagian even.

bravado

\bruh-VAH-doh\, noun plural bravados or bravadoes \bruh-VAH-dohz\A real or pretended show of courage or boldness.| While the popular mood in Belgrade remains defiant, unease beneath the bravado is growing.

beneficence

\buh-NEFF-i-suhns\, noun:| The practice of doing good; active goodness, kindness, or charity; bounty springing from purity and goodness.

deliquesce

\del-ih-KWES\, intransitive verb:| 1. To melt away or to disappear as if by melting.| 2. (Chemistry) To dissolve gradually and become liquid by| attracting and absorbing moisture from the air, as certain| salts, acids, and alkalies.| 3. To become fluid or soft with age, as certain fungi.| 4. To form many small divisions or branches -- used especially| of the veins of a leaf.| Now it's high summer, the very high point of the high season, and I've just struggled back from Santa Eulalia with the weekly shop, most of which has already deliquesced into an evil-smelling puddle in the back of the car.

depredation

\dep-ruh-DAY-shun\, noun:| 1. An act of plundering or despoiling; a raid.| 2. [Plural] Destructive operations; ravages.| . . . the depredations of pirates and privateers on the high seas.

deride

\dih-RYD\, transitive verb:| To laugh at with contempt; to subject to ridicule or make sport of; to mock; to scoff at.| She was inclined to deride Mr. Hemingway's mania for firearms and thereby often hurt his feelings.

descry

\dih-SKRY\, transitive verb:| 1. To catch sight of, especially something distant or obscure;| to discern.| 2. To discover by observation; to detect.| On a clear day, if there was no sun, you could descry (but barely) the ships roving out at anchor in Herne Bay and count their masts.

detritus

\dih-TRY-tuhs\, noun; plural detritus:| 1. Loose material that is worn away from rocks.| 2. Hence, any fragments separated from the body to which they| belonged; any product of disintegration; debris.

desideratum

\dih-sid-uh-RAY-tum; -RAH-\, noun; plural desiderata:| Something desired or considered necessary.

farrago

\fuh-RAH-go; fuh-RAY-go\, noun; plural farragoes:| A confused mixture; an assortment; a medley.

diktat

\dik-TAHT\, noun:| 1. A harsh settlement unilaterally imposed on a defeated party.| 2. An authoritative decree or order.| Whether with the rapid reaction force or with the Bosnian government, the United States should vigorously support efforts to lift the siege of Sarajevo and help to piece back together a contiguous territory so that the Bosnian government can come to the bargaining table free of a Serbian diktat.

discursive

\dis-KUR-siv\, adjective:| 1. Passing from one topic to another; ranging over a wide| field; digressive; rambling.| 2. Utilizing, marked by, or based on analytical reasoning -- contrasted with intuitive.

disconcert

\dis-kuhn-SURT\, transitive verb:| 1. To disturb the composure of.| 2. To throw into disorder or confusion; as, the emperor disconcerted the plans of his enemy.| In steering a small boat before a heavy gale, don't look back -- it may disconcert you.

dubiety

\doo-BY-uh-tee; dyoo-\, noun:| 1. The condition or quality of being doubtful or skeptical.| 2. A matter of doubt| Kennedy and O'Connor may think that Title 3 has been violated, but O'Connor and the chief justice are not convinced that the Supreme Court was meant to litigate challenges under that federal statute, and their dubiety here is shared by Justices Scalia and Souter.

diaphanous

\dy-AF-uh-nuhs\, adjective:| 1. Of such fine texture as to allow light to pass through; translucent or transparent.| 2. Vague; insubstantial.| The curtains are thin, a diaphanous membrane that can't quite contain the light outside.

idee fixe

\ee-day-FEEKS\, noun; plural idees fixes \ee-day-FEEKS\:| An idea that dominates the mind; a fixed idea; an obsession.| The reality of obsession -- its incessant return to the same few themes, scenarios and questions; its meticulous examination and re-examination of banal minutiae for hidden meanings that simply aren't there; the cancerous way an idee fixe usurps other, more interesting thoughts -- is that it is confining, not rebellious, and not fascinating but maddeningly dull.

expatiate

\ek-SPAY-shee-ayt\, intransitive verb:| 1. To speak or write at length or in considerable detail.| 2. To move about freely; to wander.

expeditious

\ek-spuh-DISH-uhs\, adjective:| Characterized by or acting with speed and efficiency.| His problem was to get from Lookout Valley to Chattanooga Valley in the most expeditious way possible.

eleemosynary

\el-uh-MOS-uh-ner-ee\, adjective:| 1. Of or for charity; charitable; as, an eleemosynary institution.| 2. Given in charity; having the nature of alms; as, eleemosynary assistance.| 3. Supported by or dependent on charity; as, the eleemosynary poor.| We also need to revive the great eleemosynary institutions through which compassionate people serve those in need with both greater flexibility and discipline than government agencies are capable.

encumbrance

\en-KUHM-bruhn(t)s\, noun:| 1. Something that burdens or impedes; a burdensome and troublesome load;| an impediment.| 2. A claim or lien upon property.| But just as certainly, the Don understood that Astorre wanted an excuse to be free of any encumbrance on his march to the glories of life.

eschew

\es-CHOO\, transitive verb: To shun; to avoid (as something wrong or distasteful).| In high school and college the Vassar women had enjoyed| that lifestyle, but afterward they had eschewed it as shallow.

evanescent

\ev-uh-NES-unt\, adjective:| Liable to vanish or pass away like vapor; fleeting.

itinerant

\eye-TIN-uhr-uhnt\, adjective:| Passing or traveling from place to place; wandering.| noun:One who travels from place to place.| Like many itinerant vendors in rural places, he was a smooth-talking purveyor of dreams along with tawdry trinkets, and Eliza responded to this romantic wanderer.

factotum

\fak-TOH-tuhm\, noun:A person employed to do all kinds of work or business.| Mr. Hersey thus became Mr. Lewis's summertime factotum,copying pages of a play that Lewis was writing about Communism.

fanfaronade

\fan-fair-uh-NAYD; -NOD\, noun:| 1. Swaggering; empty boasting; blustering manner or behavior; ostentatious| display.| 2. Fanfare.| George Manahan made his debut this week as music director of New York City Opera, and it is difficult to imagine someone laying claim to a major podium with less of a fanfaronade.

faineant

\fay-nay-AWN\, adjective:| Doing nothing or given to doing nothing; idle; lazy.

fiduciary

\fih-DOO-shee-AIR-ee\, adjective: Relating to the holding of something in trust for another.| American capitalism relies heavily on the fiduciary duty concept to protect those who entrust their money to large and often distant corporations.

flagitious

\fluh-JISH-uhs\, adjective:| 1. Disgracefully or shamefully criminal; grossly wicked; scandalous; -- said of acts, crimes, etc.| 2. Guilty of enormous crimes; corrupt; profligate; -- said of persons.| 3. Characterized by enormous crimes or scandalous vices; as, flagitious times.| However flagitious may be the crime of conspiring to subvert by force the government of our country, such conspiracy is not treason.

foment

\foh-MENT\, transitive verb:To nurse to life or activity; to encourage; to incite; to instigate; -- often in a bad sense.| Cynical politicians may even foment conflicts among groups to advance their own power.

forfend

\for-FEND\, transitive verb:| 1. a. [Archaic] To prohibit; to forbid. b. To ward off; to prevent; to avert.| 2. To defend; to protect; to preserve.| The Tory leader sort of wanted to say that the government should deploy the army more rapidly, but -- heaven forfend -- he didn't want to imply that it was anybody's fault that the soldiers hadn't been deployed!

fortuitous

\for-TOO-uh-tuhs; -TYOO-\, adjective:| 1. Happening by chance; coming or occurring by accident, or without any known| cause.| 2. Happening by a fortunate or lucky chance.| 3. Fortunate or lucky.| The profession, the political faith, the entire life of many men, depend on chance circumstances, on what is fortuitous, on the caprice and the unexpected turns of fate.

frisson

\free-SOHN\, noun: A moment of intense excitement; a shudder; an emotional thrill.| When we think a story hasn't been invented, there's an extra frisson in reading it.

facetious

\fuh-SEE-shuhs\, adjective:| 1. Given to jesting; playfully jocular.| 2. Amusing; intended to be humorous; not serious.| J. K. Morley was being both serious and facetious when he claimed that the world's greatest water power is woman's tears.

forlorn

\fur-LORN; for-\, adjective:| 1. Sad and lonely because deserted, abandoned, or lost.| 2. Bereft; forsaken.| 3. Wretched or pitiful in appearance or condition.| 4. Almost hopeless; desperate.| Henry had felt guilty at abandoning his sister; he had married not once but twice, leaving Rose forlorn.

fugacious

\fyoo-GAY-shuhs\, adjective: Lasting but a short time; fleeting.| The fugacious nature of life and time.

funereal

\fyoo-NIR-ee-uhl\, adjective:| 1. Of or pertaining to a funeral.| 2. Suiting a funeral; solemn; dark; gloomy; mournful.

gaucherie

\goh-shuh-REE\, noun:| 1. A socially awkward or tactless act.| 2. Lack of tact; boorishness; awkwardness.| If you find yourself sitting next to an obviously prosperous guest at a dinner party and your host introduces| him (it will be a him) as a successful barrister, you will be guilty of a gaucherie of the crassest kind if you| exclaim: How fascinating! If I promise not to call you Rumpole, will you tell me about your goriest| murder trials?

gourmand

\goor-MAHND; GOOR-mahnd; GOOR-mund\, noun: 1. One who eats to excess. 2. A lover of good food.| A gourmand who zealously avoids all exercise as seriously damaging to one's health, he had caviar for| breakfast and was now having oysters for lunch, whetted with wine, as he fueled| himself for a [1]postprandial reading at the Montauk Club in Brooklyn.

grandee

\gran-DEE\, noun:| 1. A man of elevated rank or station.| 2. In Spain or Portugal, a nobleman of the first rank.| Jack Byron still harbored delusions of being a local grandee, attempting to influence district politics; as the final humiliation, in the parliamentary election of 1786 his vote was disallowed.

gregarious

\grih-GAIR-ee-us\, adjective:| 1. Tending to form a group with others of the same kind.| 2. Seeking and enjoying the company of others.

galumph

\guh-LUHM(P)F\, intransitive verb:| To move in a clumsy manner or with a heavy tread.| Then he climbed up the little iron ladder that led to the wharf's cap, placed me once more upon his shoulders and galumphed off again.

hauteur

\haw-TUR; (h)oh-\, noun:| Haughty manner, spirit, or bearing; haughtiness; arrogance

edacious

\i-DAY-shus\, adjective: Given to eating; voracious; devouring.| Swallowed in the depths of edacious Time.

effulgence

\i-FUL-juhn(t)s\, noun: The state of being bright and radiant; splendor; brilliance.| The purity of his private character gave effulgence to his public virtues.

exacerbate

\ig-ZAS-ur-bayt\, transitive verb:| To render more severe, violent, or bitter; to irritate; to aggravate; to make worse.| To reduce the stress that exacerbates my stuttering, I have meditated, done deep-breathing exercises, and floated under a condition of sensory deprivation in a dark, enclosed isolation tank.

exiguous

\ig-ZIG-yoo-us\, adjective: Extremely scanty; meager.| They are entering the market, setting up stalls on snowy| streets, moonlighting to supplement exiguous incomes.

exalt

\ig-ZOLT\, verb:| 1. To praise, glorify, or honor| 2. To heighten or intensify| 3. To raise in rank, character, or status; as, exalted the humble shoemaker to the rank of King's adviser| [A] show that was merely competent needed something special if it was to run--a couple of hit tunes, something astonishing in design or [1]choreography... or a theatre-filling personality who can exalt ordinary material.

ebullient

\ih-BUL-yuhnt\, adjective:| 1. Overflowing with enthusiasm or excitement; high-spirited.| 2. Boiling up or over.

ephemeron

\ih-FEM-uh-ron\, noun; plural ephemera \ih-FEM-uh-ruh\:| 1. Something short-lived or of no lasting significance.| 2. ephemera: Items, especially printed matter (as posters,| broadsides, pamphlets, etc.), intended to be of use or| importance for only a short time but preserved by collectors.| And collections of correspondence will always reveal a remarkable mind, grappling with everything from the ephemera of day-to-day life to the mysteries of the universe.

equivocate

\ih-KWIV-uh-kayt\, intransitive verb:| To be deliberately ambiguous or unclear in order to mislead or to avoid committing oneself to anything definite.| The witness shuffled, equivocated, pretended to misunderstand the questions.

immure

\ih-MYUR\, transitive verb:| 1. To enclose within walls, or as if within walls; hence, to shut up; to imprison; to incarcerate.| 2. To build into a wall.| 3. To entomb in a wall.| Not surprisingly, Sally shuddered at the thought of being immured in the black cave, to die slowly and hopelessly, far below the sunny hillside.

irascible

\ih-RASS-uh-buhl\, adjective:| Prone to anger; easily provoked to anger; hot-tempered.| The lawyer described his client as an irascible eighty-two-year-old eccentric who alternated between spinning fascinating tales about her past and cussing him out.

esurient

\ih-SUR-ee-uhnt; -ZUR-\, adjective: Hungry; voracious; greedy| The enemy then was an esurient Soviet Union which, having swallowed up Eastern Europe, had imposed a totalitarian system on countries just liberated from Nazism.

evince

\ih-VIN(T)S\, transitive verb:To show in a clear manner; to manifest; to make evident; to bring to light.| The study showed that girls were better prepared for class, had better attendance records, and evinced more positive academic behavior overall.

excrescence

\ik-SKRESS-uhn(t)s\, noun:| 1. Something (especially something abnormal) growing out from something else.| 2. A disfiguring or unwanted mark, part, or addition.

extempore

\ik-STEM-puh-ree\, adverb:| Without premeditation or preparation; on the spur of the moment.

mellifluous

\muh-LIF-loo-us\, adjective:| Flowing as with honey; flowing sweetly or smoothly; as, a mellifluous voice.| The balladeer whose mellifluous voice serenaded two generations of lovers.

imbroglio

\im-BROHL-yoh\, noun:| 1. A complicated and embarrassing state of things.| 2. A confused or complicated disagreement or misunderstanding.| 3. An intricate, complicated plot, as of a drama or work of fiction.| 4. A confused mass; a tangle.| The political imbroglio also appears to endanger the latest International Monetary Fund loan package for Russia,| which is considered critical to avoid a default this year on the country's $17 billion in foreign debt.

impassive

\im-PASS-iv\, adjective:| 1. Devoid of or unsusceptible to emotion.| 2. Showing no sign of emotion or feeling; expressionless.| As before, he seemed neither happy nor unhappy. Just utterly impassive.

importunate

\im-POR-chuh-nit\, adjective:| Troublesomely urgent; overly persistent in request or demand; unreasonably solicitous.| An emperor penguin in captivity starved to death by feeding all his rations -- about six pounds of fish daily -- to an importunate chick.

indelible

\in-DEL-uh-buhl\, adjective:| 1. That cannot be removed, erased, or washed away.| 2. Making marks that cannot easily be removed or erased.| 3. Incapable of being forgotten; memorable.| It was part of his image, indelible as the ink stains under the breast pocket.

indomitable

\in-DOM-ih-tuh-buhl\, adjective:| Incapable of being subdued or overcome; unconquerable.

ineffable

\in-EF-uh-buhl\, adjective:| 1. Incapable of being expressed in words; unspeakable; unutterable; indescribable. 2. Not to be uttered; taboo. . . . the tension inherent in human language when it attempts to relate the ineffable, see the invisible, understand the incomprehensible.

inclement

\in-KLEM-uhnt\, adjective:| 1. Rough, harsh; extreme, severe -- generally restricted to the elements or weather. 2. Severe, unrelenting; cruel.| To make his misery complete he was forced to travel back in the winter, in the most inclement weather.

inchoate

\in-KOH-it\, adjective:| 1. In an initial or early stage; just begun.| 2. Imperfectly formed or formulated.| Mildred Spock believed that, at about the age of three, her children's inchoate wills were to be shaped like vines sprouting up a beanpole.

insensate

\in-SEN-sayt; -sit\, adjective:| 1. Lacking sensation or awareness; inanimate.| 2. Lacking human feeling or sensitivity; brutal; cruel.| 3. Lacking sense; stupid; foolish.| The religion of primeval humans, he suggested, held that souls inhabited not only human beings but also animals,trees, plants--even rocks, rivers, and other natural features we regard as insensate.

incipient

\in-SIP-ee-uhnt\, adjective:| Beginning to exist or appear.

inscrutable

\in-SKROO-tuh-bul\, adjective:| Difficult to fathom or understand; difficult to be explained or accounted for satisfactorily; obscure;| incomprehensible; impenetrable; as, an inscrutable design or event.| US Secretary of State Madeleine Albright recalled the inscrutable comment of a French diplomat| about the interaction of the various European organisations: It will work in practice, yes. But will it work in theory?

intractable

\in-TRAK-tuh-buhl\, adjective:| 1. Not easily governed, managed, or directed; stubborn; obstinate; as, an intractable child.| 2. Not easily wrought or manipulated; as, intractable materials.| 3. Not easily remedied, relieved, or dealt with; as, intractable problems.| Would their methods work with a child who was as violent and intractable as Helen?

intransigent

\in-TRAN-suh-juhnt; -zuh-\, adjective:| Refusing to compromise; uncompromising.| He was intransigent at times, and almost playfully yielding at others.

interpolate

\in-TUR-puh-layt\, transitive verb:| 1. To alter or corrupt (as a book or text) by the insertion of new or foreign| matter.| 2. To insert (material) into a text or conversation.| 3. To insert between other elements or parts.| 4. [Mathematics] to estimate a value of (a function) between two known values.| intransitive verb:To make insertions.| Twenty years earlier, Rodgers was not so pleased when, at the request of the star Belle Baker, Berlin had written a song for her to interpolate into an otherwise all-Rodgers-and-Hart score for the Broadway musical Betsy.

interstice

\in-TUR-stuhs\, noun; plural interstices \in-TUR-stuh-seez; -suhz\:| 1. A space between things or parts, especially a space between| things closely set; a narrow chink; a crack; a crevice; an| interval.| 2. An interval of time.| Out in the harbor, boats are gridlocked: who knows how they got there, or how they will get away? The filthy water is barely visible in the interstices of smokestack, hull, and sail.

inveigle

\in-VAY-guhl; -VEE-\, transitive verb:| 1. To persuade by ingenuity or flattery; to entice.| 2. To obtain by ingenuity or flattery.| Deep Blue had tried to inveigle Kasparov into grabbing several pawn offers, but the champion was not fooled.

inveterate

\in-VET-uhr-it\, adjective:| 1. Firmly established by long persistence; deep-rooted; of long standing.| 2. Fixed in habit by long persistence; confirmed; habitual.| In Montpelier, where this prison stands, the inveterate prejudice against prisoners has been swept away.

invidious

\in-VID-ee-uhs\, adjective:| 1. Tending to provoke envy, resentment, or ill will.| 2. Containing or implying a slight.| 3. Envious.| But to the human hordes of Amorites -- Semitic nomads wandering the mountains and deserts just beyond the pale of Sumer -- the tiered and clustered cities, strung out along the green banks of the meandering Euphrates like a giant's necklace of polished stone, seemed shining things, each surmounted by a wondrous temple and ziggurat dedicated to the city's god-protector, each city noted for some specialty -- all invidious reminders of what the nomads did not possess.

inure

\in-YOOR\, transitive verb:| To make accustomed or used to something painful, difficult, or inconvenient; to harden; to habituate; as, inured to drudgery and distress.| intransitive verb:| To pass into use; to take or have effect; to be applied; to serve to the use or benefit of; as, a gift of lands inures to the heirs.| They were a hard-driven, hardworking crowd inured to the hardest living, and they found their recreation in hard drinking and hard fighting.

ineluctable

\in-ih-LUCK-tuh-buhl\, adjective:| Impossible to avoid or evade; inevitable.

incontrovertible

\in-kon-truh-VUR-tuh-buhl\, adjective:| Too clear or certain to admit of dispute; indisputable; unquestionable.

inanition

\in-uh-NISH-uhn\, noun:| 1. The condition or quality of being empty.| 2. Exhaustion, as from lack of nourishment.| 3. Lack of vitality or spirit.| The problem that faces British universities is not that they have become fat and lazy, but that they have been starved beyond lean efficiency into inanition.

irrefragable

\ir-REF-ruh-guh-buhl\, adjective:| Impossible to refute; incontestable; undeniable; as, an irrefragable argument; irrefragable evidence.| I had the most irrefragable evidence of the absolute truth and soundness of the principle upon which my| invention was based.

jollification

\jol-ih-fuh-KAY-shuhn\, noun:| Merrymaking; festivity; revelry.| Some inform; some prompt the conscience; some entertain, while having more than jollification in mind.

camarilla

\kam-uh-RIL-uh; -REE-yuh\, noun:| A group of secret and often scheming advisers, as of a king; a cabal or clique.| Mr Kiselev likened Yeltsin's entourage to a camarilla..

cavalcade

\kav-uhl-KAYD; KAV-uhl-kayd\, noun:| 1. A procession of riders or horse-drawn carriages.| 2. Any procession.| 3. A sequence; a series.

coeval

\koh-EE-vuhl\, adjective:| Of the same age; originating or existing during the same period of time -- usually followed by 'with'.| noun: One of the same age; a contemporary.| According to John Paul, this longing for transcendent truth is coeval with human existence: All men and women shape a comprehensive vision and an answer to the question of life's meaning.

concatenation

\kon-kat-uh-NAY-shuhn; kuhn-\, noun: A series of links united; a series or order of things depending on each other, as if linked together; a chain, a succession.| But at this stage the accident appears to have been just that, a dreadful concatenation of random events.

consanguineous

\kon-san(g)-GWIN-ee-us\, adjective:| Of the same blood; related by birth; descended from the same parent or ancestor.| These Neolithic people practiced agriculture in a settled communal life and are widely supposed to have had consanguineous clans as their basic social grouping.

contravene

\kon-truh-VEEN\, transitive verb:| 1. To act or be counter to; to violate.| 2. To oppose in argument; to contradict.

contradistinction

\kon-truh-dis-TINK-shuhn\,| noun: Distinction by contrast; as, sculpture in contradistinction to painting.| In the quarter-century since [1]Gravity's Rainbow, American novelists| have increasingly fixed their boldest inventions in the past, usually their own| early years or a time long before they were born -- in contradistinction to postwar writers who| vigorously peeled away World War II and the social fabric of the 1950's.

conurbation

\kon-uhr-BAY-shuhn\, noun:| An aggregation or continuous network of urban communities.| To live there in that great smoking conurbation rumbling with the constant thunder of locomotives, filled with the moaning of train whistles coming down the Potomac Valley,was beyond my most fevered hopes.

countervail

\kown-tur-VAYL\, transitive verb:| 1. To act against with equal force, power, or effect; to| counteract.| 2. To compensate for; to offset; to furnish or serve as an| equivalent to.

crepuscular

\kri-PUS-kyuh-lur\, adjective:| 1. Pertaining to twilight; glimmering; hence, imperfectly clear or luminous.| 2. (Zoology) Flying in the twilight or evening, or before sunrise; -- said certain birds and insects.| A faint crepuscular light extending beyond the cusps of the planet.

collude

\kuh-LOOD\, intransitive verb:| To act in concert; to conspire; to plot.

comestible

\kuh-MES-tuh-buhl\, adjective: Suitable to be eaten; edible.| noun:Something suitable to be eaten; food.| I came to Adria's lab expecting subtle combinations and rare ingredients, the real outer limit of the comestible.

canorous

\kuh-NOR-us; KAN-or-uhs\, adjective:| Richly melodious; pleasant sounding; musical.| I felt a deep contentment listening to the meadowlark's complex melody as he sat on his bragging post calling for a mate, and the soft canorous whistle of the bobwhite as he whistled his name with intermittent lulls.

capacious

\kuh-PAY-shuhs\, adjective:| Able to contain much; roomy; spacious.| Litter was picked up non stop during the week (mostly by that nice governor with the capacious pockets).

corroborate

\kuh-RAHB-uh-RAYT\, transitive verb:| To strengthen or make more certain with other evidence.| Whenever I can, I interview family and friends extensively both to corroborate the history given me by the defendant and to gain insight into his behavior and personality.

complaisant

\kuhm-PLAY-suhnt; -zuhnt\, adjective:| Exhibiting a desire to please; obliging; compliant.| They evict the irascible artist and install a complaisant tenant.

compunction

\kuhm-PUHNK-shuhn\, noun:| 1. Anxiety or deep unease proceeding from a sense of guilt or consciousness of causing pain.| 2. A sting of conscience or a twinge of uneasiness; a qualm; a scruple.| Not only were tears one means of prayer, according to Benedict, they were the only pure form: We must know that God regards our purity of heart and tears of compunction, not our many words.

condign

\kuhn-DINE; KON-dine\, adjective:| Suitable to the fault or crime; deserved; adequate.| In a story as old as the Greeks, overweening pride brought condign disaster.

conflate

\kuhn-FLAYT\, transitive verb:| 1. To bring together; to fuse together; to join or meld.| 2. To combine (as two readings of a text) into one whole.| Scott Reynolds's creepy debut feature [film] conflates the| present and the past with ingenious use of flashbacks.

confute

\kuhn-FYOOT\, transitive verb:| To overwhelm by argument; to refute conclusively; to prove or show to be false.| Having settled in Rome in 1486, he proposed 900 theses and challenged any scholar to confute them, agreeing to pay his expenses.

monomania

\mon-uh-MAY-nee-uh; -nyuh\, noun:| 1. Pathological obsession with a single subject or idea.| 2. Excessive concentration of interest upon one particular subject or idea.| One of the themes in the book was the necessity for a leader to be passionate about the work. And sometimes in a corporate setting, passion becomes monomania.

concomitant

\kuhn-KOM-uh-tuhnt\, adjective:| Accompanying; attendant; occurring or existing concurrently.| noun: Something that accompanies or is collaterally connected with something else; an accompaniment.| For a filmmaker so obsessed with these issues, it is a sad irony that his fear of things going wrong--and his concomitant mania for clockwork control--should have been a major reason for the failure of... his final film.

conspectus

\kuhn-SPEK-tuhs\, noun:| 1. A general sketch or survey of a subject.| 2. A synopsis; an outline.| Eagerly the Austen family went at their productions,choosing plays that represented, as Gay says, a conspectus of late 18th-century fashionable comic theatre.

convivial

\kuhn-VIV-ee-uhl\, adjective:Of or relating to feasting, drinking, and good company; fond of festivity and good company; sociable.| Young Sam, steeped in the family's endless storytelling,confessions, musings about their aspirations, and bickering about politics, seemed destined to become happy and convivial.

contemporaneous

\kuhn-tem-puh-RAY-nee-uhs\, adjective:Originating, existing, or occurring at the same time.| The best sources for a historian are those that provide a contemporaneous account of the events under scrutiny.

comport

\kum-PORT\, transitive verb:| To conduct or behave (oneself) in a particular manner.| intransitive verb: To be fitting; to accord; to agree -- usually followed by 'with'.

quotidian

\kwoh-TID-ee-uhn\, adjective:| 1. Occurring or returning daily; as, a quotidian fever.| 2. Of an everyday character; ordinary; commonplace.

quiescent

\kwy-ES-uhnt; kwee-\, adjective:| Being in a state of repose; at rest; still; inactive.| The solution, Dr. Wilmut discovered, was to, in effect, put the DNA from the adult cell to sleep, making it quiescent by depriving the adult cell of nutrients.

chimerical

\ky-MER-ih-kuhl; -MIR-; kih-\, adjective:| 1. Merely imaginary; produced by or as if by a wildly fanciful imagination; fantastic; improbable or unrealistic.| 2. Given to or indulging in unrealistic fantasies or fantastic schemes.| But those risks are real, not chimerical.| chthonic (THONE-ik), adjective: dwelling in or under the earth; also, pertaining to the underworld| Driven by dæmonic, chthonic Powers. --T.S. Eliot

cupidity

\kyoo-PID-uh-tee\, noun: Eager or excessive desire, especially for wealth; greed; avarice.| Curiosity was a form of lust, a wandering cupidity of the eye and the mind.

lackadaisical

\lack-uh-DAY-zih-kuhl\, adjective:| Lacking spirit or liveliness; showing lack of interest;languid; listless. Drowsy from the heat and from fatigue, he dozed to the steady lackadaisical clips of the mule's shoes.

logorrhea

\law-guh-REE-uh\, noun: Excessive talkativeness or wordiness.

legerdemain

\lej-ur-duh-MAIN\, noun:| 1. Sleight of hand.| 2. A display of skill, trickery, or artful deception.| We are inclined to regard the treatment of [paradoxes].. . as a mere legerdemain of words.

loquacious

\loh-KWAY-shuhs\, adjective:| 1. Very talkative.| 2. Full of excessive talk; wordy.

lugubrious

\lu-GOO-bree-us; -GYOO-\, adjective:| 1. Mournful; indicating sorrow, often in a way that seems| feigned, exaggerated, or ridiculous.| 2. Gloomy; dismal.| Oh yes, he says, and his lugubrious expression suggests that the loss afflicts him still.

laconic

\luh-KON-ik\, adjective:| Using or marked by the use of a minimum of words; brief and pithy; brusque.| Readers' reports range from the laconic to the verbose.

lacuna

\luh-KYOO-nuh\, noun; plural lacunae \luh-KYOO-nee\ or lacunas:| 1. A blank space; a missing part; a gap.| 2. (Biology) A small opening, depression, or cavity in an anatomical structure.| Like most other writers of his generation, he was a profoundly apolitical being, not from any lacuna in his education but as a matter of principle.

lascivious

\luh-SIV-ee-uhs\, adjective:| 1. Lewd; lustful.| 2. Tending to arouse sexual desires.| Irwin, wearing Groucho Marx glasses to which a false nose is attached, appears uncharacteristically as a lascivious fellow, the maitre d'hôtel who tries to move in on the girlfriend.

malfeasance

\mal-FEE-zuhn(t)s\, noun:| Wrongdoing, misconduct, or misbehavior, especially by a public official.| But more often than not the same board members who were removed by the chancellor for malfeasance subsequently manage to get reelected in a political process that defies any form of accountability.

malapropos

\mal-ap-ruh-POH\, adjective:| Unseasonable; unsuitable; inappropriate.

malediction

\mal-uh-DIK-shun\, noun:| A curse or execration.

maladroit

\mal-uh-DROYT\, adjective:| Lacking adroitness; clumsy; awkward; unskillful; inept.| Do you know someone who... loves quiet conversations about feelings or ideas, and can give a dynamite presentation to a big audience, but seems awkward in groups and maladroit at small talk?

melange

\may-LAHNZH\, noun:| A mixture; a medley.| Interspersed with diverse lectures and classroom activities were periods of financial difficulty, military service, and employment as a private tutor, all of which added to the curious melange of experiences that would ultimately blossom into his unexpected and remarkable life's work.

milieu

\meel-YUH; meel-YOO\, noun; plural milieus or milieux \-(z)\:| Environment; setting.| These were agricultural areas, populated with prosperous farming families and rural artisans -- a completely different milieu from the Monferrands', which was more closed, more cultured, but less affluent.

mendacious

\men-DAY-shuhs\, adjective:| 1. Given to deception or falsehood; lying; untruthful; as, a mendacious person.| 2. False; untrue; as, a mendacious statement.

misnomer

\mis-NO-muhr\, noun:| 1. The misnaming of a person in a legal instrument, as in a complaint or indictment.| 2. Any misnaming of a person or thing; also, a wrong or inapplicable name or designation.| Morning sickness is a misnomer -- it can strike any time.

salubrious

\suh-LOO-bree-us\, adjective:| Favorable to health; promoting health; healthful.

meticulous

\muh-TIK-yuh-luhs\, adjective:| Extremely or excessively careful about details.| How much work gets done in the fall perennial garden depends somewhat on whether your gardening tendencies lean toward the meticulous or toward the casual.

matutinal

\muh-TOOT-nn-uhl\, adjective:| Relating to or occurring in the morning; early.| Get up early and wash your face in the matutinal May Day dew; it will make your skin beautiful and your heart pure.

multifarious

\muhl-tuh-FAIR-ee-uhs\, adjective:| Having great diversity or variety; of various kinds;diversified.| She is good at constructing a long, multifarious narrative,weaving many minor stories into one, so that you are left with a sense of the fluidity and ambiguity of historical interpretation.

mercurial

\mur-KYUR-ee-uhl\, adjective:| 1. [Often capitalized] Of or pertaining to the god Mercury. 2. [Often capitalized] Of or pertaining to the planet Mercury. 3. Having the qualities of shrewdness, eloquence, or thievishness attributed to the god Mercury. 4. Changeable in temperament or mood; temperamental; volatile. 5. Of, pertaining to, or containing mercury. 6. Caused by the use of mercury. Most of his New England cronies, accustomed to Brownson's frequent changes of opinion, treated him as| a mercurial spirit who had finally stepped off the edge of the world rather than as a role model.

munificent

\myoo-NIF-i-suhnt\, adjective:Very liberal in giving or bestowing; very generous; lavish.| Another munificent friend has given me the most splendid reclining chair conceivable.

nimiety

\nih-MY-uh-tee\, noun: The state of being too much; excess.| What a nimiety of ... riches have we here! I am quite undone.

nonagenarian

\non-uh-juh-NAIR-ee-uhn; no-nuh-\, noun:| A ninety year old person; someone whose age is in the nineties.

nefarious

\nuh-FAIR-ee-us\, adjective:| Wicked in the extreme; iniquitous.

obsequious

\ob-SEE-kwee-uhs; uhb-\, adjective:| Marked by or exhibiting servile attentiveness; compliant to excess; fawning.| His wealth nevertheless turns the townspeople into groveling, obsequious sycophants.

oneiric

\oh-NY-rik\, adjective:| Of, pertaining to, or suggestive of dreams; dreamy.| On this score, the novel might easily drift off into an oneiric never-never land, but Mr. Welch doesn't let this happen.

omnipresent

\om-nuh-PREZ-uhnt\, adjective: Present in all places at the same time; ubiquitous.| It was rather that myth was omnipresent; the whole people thought in this way and were long confirmed| in their belief.

ennui

\on-WEE\, noun:| A feeling of weariness and dissatisfaction arising from lack of interest; boredom.| He glanced at his heavily laden bookshelves. Nothing there appealed to him. The ennui seemed to have settled into his very bones.

outre

\oo-TRAY\, adjective:| Unconventional; eccentric; bizarre.| This seven-year-old house of outre culture is the kind of place you can shop for a sculpture made out of working flamethrowers, videocassettes of underground movies, computer-generated art or a cute robot

osculation

\os-kyuh-LAY-shuhn\, noun:| The act of kissing; also: a kiss.| He had engaged in nervous osculation with all three of Lord Flamborough's daughters.

ostentation

\os-ten-TAY-shuhn\, noun: Excessive or pretentious display; boastful showiness.| In a city where the wealthy are known for ostentation, many are now buying low-profile economy cars to| fool kidnappers and thieves.

panacea

\pan-uh-SEE-uh\, noun:| A remedy for all diseases, problems, or evils; a universal medicine; a cure-all.| [T]echnology had become a panacea for the great economic,social, and political challenges facing the nation as it embarked on the path of modernization.

parsimonious

\par-suh-MOH-nee-uhs\, adjective:Sparing in expenditure; frugal to excess.| His mother became increasingly parsimonious over the years,and even if there were a good doctor around she did not like to pay one.

peccadillo

\peck-uh-DIL-oh\, noun:| A slight offense; a petty fault.| No peccadillo is too trivial: we learn that the mogul once blew his top because his laundry came back starched ( 'Fluff and fold!' he screamed).

peregrination

\pehr-uh-gruh-NAY-shun\, noun: A traveling from place to place; a wandering.| He left Parma in the family camper-van, abandoning it in a Milan car-park to avoid its being identified at border controls before setting off on a peregrination through Switzerland, France, London, Canada, New York and eventually back to London.

pecuniary

\pih-KYOO-nee-air-ee\, adjective:| 1. Relating to money; monetary.| 2. Consisting of money.| 3. Requiring payment of money.

plebeian

\plih-BEE-uhn\, adjective:| 1. Of or pertaining to the Roman plebs, or common people.| 2. Of or pertaining to the common people.| 3. Vulgar; common; crude or coarse in nature or manner.| noun:| 1. One of the plebs, or common people of ancient Rome; opposed to patrician.| 2. One of the common people or lower classes.| 3. A coarse, crude, or vulgar person.| He was unashamed of his plebeian roots but keen to provide himself with aristocratic forebears.

portend

\por-TEND\, verb: To indicate (events, misfortunes, etc.) as in future; to foreshadow; to bode.| Although no humans were there to witness the giant comet of 65 million years ago, in this case it really did portend disaster.

postprandial

\post-PRAN-dee-uhl\, adjective:| Happening or done after a meal.

prepotency

\pree-POTE-n-see\, noun:| 1. The quality or condition of having superior power,| influence, or force; predominance.| 2. (Biology) The capacity, on the part of one of the parents,| as compared with the other, to transmit more than his or her| own share of characteristics to their offspring.| The awesome prepotency of this smokescape is no illusion, for this is an epicenter of power, oil capital of the Western world and the most industrialized corner of the United States.

prelapsarian

\pree-lap-SAIR-ee-uhn\, adjective:| Pertaining to or characteristic of the time or state before the Fall.| Because artifice connotes civilization to the Chinese elite, it doesn't have quite the negative meaning it has| for Europeans brought up on stories of prelapsarian Eden and on Romantic conceptions of nature.

prestidigitation

\pres-tuh-dij-uh-TAY-shuhn\, noun:| Skill in or performance of tricks; sleight of hand.| He was the man who had sat alone in a room for hundreds and hundreds of hours, his fingers manipulating cards and coins until he had learned and could perfectly reproduce every form of prestidigitation found in books of magic lore.

preponderate

\prih-PON-duh-rayt\, intransitive verb:| 1. To exceed in weight.| 2. To incline or descend, as the scale of a balance; to be weighed down.| 3. To exceed in influence, power, importance, number, amount, etc.| It's about the random acts of kindness which still, magically, preponderate over acts of incivility or nastiness.

prevaricate

\prih-VAIR-uh-kayt\, intransitive verb:| To depart from or evade the truth; to speak with equivocation.| Journalism has a similar obligation, particularly with men and women suddenly transferred to places of great power,who are often led to exaggerate and prevaricate, all in the name of a supposedly greater good.

proclivity

\pro-KLIV-uh-tee\, noun:| A natural inclination; predisposition.

prolix

\pro-LIKS; PRO-liks\, adjective:| 1. Extending to a great length; unnecessarily long; wordy.| 2. Tending to speak or write at excessive length.

pronunciamento

\pro-nun-see-uh-MEN-toe\, noun:| 1. A proclamation or manifesto; a formal announcement or declaration.| 2. A pronouncement.

procrastination

\proh-CRAS-tuh-NAY-shun\,| noun:The act or habit of delaying doing something.| If you have newspapers dating to the last millennium,magazines from the Seventies stacked on your nightstand, and countless envelopes filled with family photos stuffed in a drawer, you may be carrying procrastination to an extreme.

propinquity

\pruh-PING-kwih-tee\, noun:| 1. Nearness in place; proximity.| 2. Nearness in time.| 3. Nearness of relation; kinship.| Following the race he took umbrage at Stewart's rough driving so early in the day, and the propinquity of the two drivers' haulers allowed the Kid to express his displeasure up close and personal.

propitious

\pruh-PISH-uhs\, adjective:| 1. Presenting favorable circumstances or conditions.| 2. Favorably inclined; gracious; benevolent.

proponent

\pruh-POH-nuhnt\, noun:One who argues in support of something; an advocate; a supporter.| A fervent proponent of the work ethic, Reuther at first resisted the demand for early retirement, as he had rejected shorter hours in the 1950s.

pellucid

\puh-LOO-sid\, adjective:| 1. Transparent; clear; not opaque.| 2. Easily understandable.

pugnacious

\puhg-NAY-shuhs\, adjective: Inclined to fight; combative; quarrelsome.| Roberto's pugnacious grandmother lived across the meadow and would yell threats and curses helplessly from her balcony.

perdurable

\pur-DUR-uh-bul; pur-DYUR-\, adjective:Very durable; lasting; continuing long.| The idea of a classic is historically bound up with the view . .. that there are certain perdurable human truths and values, immune from geographical or historical [1]vitiation.

perforce

\pur-FORS\, adverb:| By necessity; by force of circumstance.

perfunctory

\pur-FUNGK-tuh-ree\, adjective:| 1. Done merely to carry out a duty; performed mechanically or| routinely.| 2. Lacking interest, care, or enthusiasm; indifferent. The city's moderate hotels, however, tend to offer minimal| comforts, perfunctory service and dreary decor.

perspicacity

\pur-spuh-KAS-uh-tee\, noun:| Clearness of understanding or insight; penetration, discernment.| His predictions over the years have mixed unusual aristocratic insight with devastating perspicacity.

pusillanimous

\pyoo-suh-LAN-uh-muhs\, adjective:| Lacking in courage and resolution; contemptibly fearful; cowardly.

raconteur

\rack-on-TUR\, noun:| One who excels in telling stories and anecdotes.| An excellent raconteur, he had a varied stock of stories| and enjoyed the joke just as much when it was on himself as| he did when it was on some one else.

ratiocination

\rash-ee-ah-suh-NAY-shun; rash-ee-oh-\, noun:| The process of reasoning.| For all their vaunted powers of ratiocination, grand masters of chess tend to be a skittery lot.

redivivus

\red-uh-VY-vuhs; -VEE-\, adjective:Living again; brought back to life; revived; restored.| Augustine redivivus, R. contends, would find in the history of the present century confirmation of his pessimistic views of human nature.

rebarbative

\ree-BAR-buh-tiv\, adjective:| Serving or tending to irritate or repel.| Over the past couple of hours a lot of rebarbative, ulcerated and embittered people had been working hard at bedding their resentments down in sensory-deprivation tanks full of alcohol.

redoubt

\rih-DOWT\, noun:| 1. A small and usually temporary defensive fortification.| 2. A defended position or protective barrier.| 3. A secure place of refuge or defense; a stronghold.

refractory

\rih-FRAK-tuh-ree\, adjective:| 1. Stubbornly disobedient; unmanageable.| 2. Resisting ordinary treatment or cure.| 3. Difficult to melt or work; capable of enduring high| temperature.

refulgent

\rih-FUL-juhnt\, adjective:| Shining brightly; radiant; brilliant; resplendent.| If Moore was not quite a burned-out case, his once refulgent light flickered only dimly in his sad last years.

recalcitrant

\rih-KAL-sih-truhnt\, adjective:| Stubbornly resistant to and defiant of authority or restraint.

renascent

\rih-NAS-uhnt\, adjective:| Springing or rising again into being; showing renewed vigor.| Their goal: to give voters in the June presidential elections a realistic choice between the rough-and-tumble reforms of President Boris Yeltsin and the Soviet-era nostalgia of Gennadi Zyuganov,leader of the renascent Russian Communist Party.

riparian

\rih-PAIR-ee-uhn; ry-PAIR-ee-uhn\, adjective:| of or pertaining to the bank of a river or stream| Riparian areas are the green, vegetated areas on each side of streams and rivers. They serve many important| functions, including purifying water by removing sediments and other contaminants; reducing the risk of flooding| and associated damage; reducing stream channel and streambank erosion; increasing available water and| stream flow duration by holding water in stream banks and [1]aquifers; supporting a diversity of plant and| wildlife species; maintaining a habitat for healthy fish populations; providing water, [2]forage, and shade| for wildlife and livestock; and creating opportunities for recreationists to fish, camp, picnic, and enjoy other| activities.

repast

\rih-PAST\, noun:| Something taken as food; a meal.| This repast could scarcely have been digested before a tea of fresh bread, butter, cheese, cold meat, and cake was served at half past six.

recrimination

\rih-krim-uh-NAY-shuhn\,| noun:1. The act of returning one charge or accusation with another.| 2. An accusation brought by the accused against the accuser; a counter| accusation.| Others have written about the epidemic of partisanship and lack of character in our government's elected branches and the cycle of recrimination and disaffection it has created.

robustious

\roh-BUHS-chuhs\, adjective:| 1. Boisterous; vigorous.| 2. Coarse; rough; crude.| . . . the robustious romantic figure comparable to John Willoughby in Sense and Sensibility--he comes in with dash, then proves a temptation to the heroine but is an eventual disappointment.

salmagundi

\sal-muh-GUHN-dee\, noun:| 1. A salad plate usually consisting of chopped meat,anchovies, eggs, and onions, served with oil and vinegar.| 2. Any mixture or assortment; a medley; a potpourri; a miscellany.| A glance at the schedule is enough to make one feel that one would rather go out and shoot songbirds than stay in and watch the dismal salmagundi of game shows, repeats and soap operas.

sardonic

\sar-DON-ik\, adjective:Scornful, mocking; disdainfully humorous.| Clive gave a sardonic account of a publicly subsidized concert in a nearly deserted church hall, in which the legs of a piano were repeatedly struck with the broken neck of a violin for over an hour.

sartorial

\sar-TOR-ee-uhl\, adjective:| 1. Of or relating to a tailor or to tailoring.| 2. Of or relating to clothing, or style or manner of dress.| 3. [Anatomy] Of or relating to the sartorius muscle.| His sartorial style runs toward jeans, Hawaiian shirts and cowboy boots, and he favors the grizzled, haven't-shaven-in-days look.

sempiternal

\sem-pih-TUR-nuhl\, adjective:| Of never ending duration; having beginning but no end; everlasting; endless.| In all the works on view, Mariani conjures a sempiternal realm that exists parallel to mundane reality and which is accessible through art, reverie and the imagination

censorious

\sen-SOR-ee-uhs\, adjective:| 1. Tending to blame, condemn, or criticize; harshly critical.| 2. Implying or expressing harsh criticism or disapproval; as, censorious remarks.| Another factor is the morally censorious climate in which we live -- a climate that is intolerant of eccentricity,waywardness and general lack of perfection.

sesquipedalian

\ses-kwuh-puh-DAYL-yuhn\, adjective:| 1. Given to or characterized by the use of long words.| 2. Long and ponderous; having many syllables.| noun: A long word.| As a sesquipedalian stylist, he can throw a word like 'eponymous into a sentence without missing a beat.

chicanery

\shih-KAY-nuh-ree\, noun:| 1. The use of trickery or sophistry to deceive (as in matters of law).| 2. A trick; a subterfuge.| Wordsworth's paternal grandfather, Richard, had first come to Westmorland from South Yorkshire in 1700, to recoup his fortunes with the then baron Lonsdale, having been done out of his fortune by his own guardian's chicanery.

chagrin

\shuh-GRIN\, noun: Acute vexation, annoyance, or embarrassment, arising from disappointment or failure.| transitive verb: To unsettle or vex by disappointment or humiliation; to mortify.| He ran away to the recruiting office at Ottumwa, a river port where Union soldiers were transported east--how he got to the town, a good half-day journey by wagon, isn't clear--and to his chagrin, he found his father waiting there.

caesura

\sih-ZHUR-uh; -ZUR-\, noun;

simulacrum

\sim-yuh-LAY-kruhm; -LAK-ruhm\, noun;

scintilla

\sin-TIL-uh\, noun: A tiny or scarcely detectable amount; the slightest particle; a trace; a spark. In victory, they must hold on to at least a scintilla of humility, lest they get too cocky -- and ripe for a| takedown.

seriatim

\sir-ee-AY-tim; -AT-im\, adverb:| In a series; one after another.

circumlocution

\sir-kum-lo-KYOO-shun\, noun:| The use of many words to express an idea that might be expressed by few; indirect or roundabout language; a [1]periphrase.| Dickens gave us the classic picture of official heartlessness: the government Circumlocution Office, burial ground of hope in Little Dorrit.

somniferous

\som-NIF-uhr-uhs\, adjective:Causing or inducing sleep.| He has gone outside the usual channels of stodgy academic journals and somniferous lectures.

soporific

\sop-uh-RIF-ik; soh-puh-\, adjective:| 1. Causing sleep; tending to cause sleep.| 2. Of, relating to, or characterized by sleepiness or lethargy.| noun: A medicine, drug, plant, or other agent that has the quality of inducing sleep; a narcotic.| Hamilton's voice droned on, hypnotic, soporific, the gloom beyond the windows like the backdrop of a waking dream.

stentorian

\sten-TOR-ee-uhn\, adjective:| Extremely loud.| Around his family, Sergeant Charles Mingus Sr. was easily angered and often violent and closemouthed the rest of the time, except when he gave orders in a stentorian voice that carried the assumption of command.

celerity

\suh-LAIR-uh-tee\, noun:| Rapidity of motion or action; quickness; swiftness.

circumambient

\sur-kuhm-AM-bee-uhnt\, adjective:| Surrounding; being on all sides; encompassing.| The self owes its form and perhaps its very existence to the circumambient social order. Facing reality, then, implies accepting one's essential powerlessness, yielding or adjusting to| circumambient forces, taking solace in some local pattern or order that one has created and to which one has| become habituated.

ablution

\uh-BLOO-shun\, noun:| 1. The act of washing or cleansing; specifically, the washing of the body, or some part of it (as in a religious rite).| 2. The water used in cleansing.

abominate

\uh-BOM-uh-nayt\, transitive verb:| To hate in the highest degree; to detest intensely; to loathe; to abhor.

officious

\uh-FISH-uhs\, adjective:| Marked by excessive eagerness in offering services or advice where they are neither requested nor needed; meddlesome.| Ian Holm plays a well-meaning but officious lawyer who tries to make the grieving families sue for damages.

afflatus

\uh-FLAY-tuhs\, noun:| A divine imparting of knowledge; inspiration.

affray

\uh-FRAY\, noun:| A tumultuous assault or quarrel; a brawl.

aggress

\uh-GRES\, intransitive verb:| To commit the first act of hostility or offense; to make an attack.

acumen

\uh-KYOO-muhn; AK-yuh-muhn\, noun:| Quickness of perception or discernment; shrewdness shown by keen insight.

ameliorate

\uh-MEEL-yuh-rayt\, transitive verb: To make better; to improve.| intransitive verb: To grow better.

aplomb

\uh-PLOMM\,| noun:| Assurance of manner or of action; self-possession; confidence;coolness.

apostasy

\uh-POS-tuh-see\, noun:| Total desertion or departure from one's faith, principles, or party.

appurtenance

\uh-PUR-tn-un(t)s\, noun:| 1. An adjunct; an accessory; something added to another, more important thing.| 2. [Plural]. Accessory objects; gear; apparatus.| 3. [Law]. An incidental right attached to a principal property right for purposes such as passage of title, conveyance, or inheritance.

asseverate

\uh-SEV-uh-rayt\, transitive verb:| To affirm or declare positively or earnestly.| But of course it is! asseverates Herman Woodlife.

assiduous

\uh-SIJ-oo-uhs\, adjective:| 1. Constant in application or attention; devoted; attentive.| 2. Performed with constant diligence or attention; unremitting; persistent; as, assiduous labor.

aspersion

\uh-SPUR-zhuhn; -shuhn\, noun:| 1. A damaging or derogatory remark; slander.| 2. The act of defaming or slandering.| 3. A sprinkling with water, especially in religious ceremonies.

aver

\uh-VUR\,transitive verb| [Inflected forms: averred; averring]:| 1. To affirm with confidence; to declare in a positive manner, as in confidence of asserting the truth.| 2. (Law) To assert, claim, or declare as a fact.

euphonious

\yoo-FOH-nee-uhs\,| adjective:Pleasing or sweet in sound; smooth-sounding.| She combines alliteration and deft word choices with the grace of an oral storyteller, creating euphonious and precise sentences that are perfect for reading aloud.

Smorgasbord

a Swedish buffet of cold dishes

Novice

a beginner; tyro

Anthology

a book which is a collection of poems or stories

Respite

a break; intermission

Anecdote

a brief amusing story

Contusion

a bruise

Genre

a category; type

Malediction

a curse

Laceration

a cut

Aversion

a dislike of

Dichotomy

a division into two parts

Obsession

a dominating concern

Presentiment

a feeling that something might happen

Epistle

a letter (form of communication)

Maverick

a loner

Labyrinth

a maze

Parody

a mockery; imitation for ridicule; spoof

Effigy

a model of a person

Paragon

a perfect example

Hypochondriac

a person obsessed with health; having imaginary illnesses

Nonentity

a person of no importance; not famous

opsimath

a person who begins to learn or study only late in life.

pastiche

noun a work of art that imitates the style of some previous work; a musical composition consisting of a series of songs or other musical pieces from various sources

Idiosyncrasy

a personal peculiarity; something unique to an individual

Hedonist

a pleasure seeker

Euphemism

a polite phrase to cover something unpleasant

Precedent

a previous occurrence used as a guide

Conundrum

a puzzle

Insurgent

a rebel

Palliative

a remedy that improves but doesn't cure

Reprieve

a respite; postponement of a sentence

Restorative

a tonic

Coalition

a union of two parts

Portent

a warning sign; omen

Sage

a wise person

Malefactor

a wrong-doer

hypnopompic

adj of or relating to the state immediately preceding waking up contrast to hypnogogic

Clairvoyant

able to see into the future/another dimension

Resilient

able to spring back; strong

Ambulatory

able to walk around (used of hospital patients)

fuliginous

adj sooty or dusky

repartee

noun adroitness and cleverness in reply

Resignation

acceptance of fate

Circumstantial

accidental; indirect (as in circumstantial evidence)

Amass

accumulate

Amassed

accumulated

Exonerates

acquits; absolves; removes blame

Denunciation

act of speaking out against

Despotic

acting like a tyrant

Avuncular

acting like an uncle; kindly

Crepuscular

active at dawn and dusk

Diurnal

active in daytime

Epitomizes

acts as a typical example of

Stoke

add fuel to; strengthen

puny

adj. (used especially of persons) of inferior size; inferior in strength or significance

go

adj. functioning correctly and ready for action; noun a board game for two players who place counters on a grid; the object is to surround and so capture the opponent's counters; a time for working (after which you will be relieved by someone else)

bibulous

adj. given to or marked by the consumption of alcohol

next

adj. immediately following in time or order; nearest in space or position; immediately adjoining without intervening space; (of elected officers) elected but not yet serving

deaf

adj. lacking or deprive of the sense of hearing wholly or in part; (usually followed by `to') unwilling or refusing to pay heed; noun people who have severe hearing impairments

after

adj. located farther aft; adv. behind or in the rear; happening at a time subsequent to a reference time

sedulous

adj. marked by care and persistent effort

duplicitous

adj. marked by deliberate deceptiveness especially by pretending one set of feelings and acting under the influence of another

seamy

adj. morally degraded; showing a seam

puckish

adj. naughtily or annoyingly playful

maladroit

adj. not adroit

near

adj. not far distant in time or space or degree or circumstances; closely resembling the genuine article; being on the left side

awry

adj. not functioning properly; turned or twisted toward one side; adv. away from the correct or expected course

impolitic

adj. not politic

shrill

adj. of colors that are bright and gaudy; being sharply insistent on being heard; having or emitting a high-pitched and sharp tone or tones

noisome

adj. offensively malodorous; causing or able to cause nausea

dowdy

adj. primly out of date; lacking in smartness or taste; noun deep-dish apple dessert covered with a rich crust

like

adj. resembling or similar; having the same or some of the same characteristics; often used in combination; equal in amount or value; having the same or similar characteristics

disjunctive

adj. serving or tending to divide or separate

ajar

adj. slightly open

cozy

adj. suggesting connivance; enjoying or affording comforting warmth and shelter especially in a small space; having or fostering a warm or friendly and informal atmosphere

captious

adj. tending to find and call attention to faults

midget

adj. very small; noun a person who is markedly small

fledgling

adj. young and inexperienced; (of a young bird) having acquired its flight feathers; noun young bird that has just fledged or become capable of flying

Posthumous

after death

Heresy

against orthodox opinion

Belligerence

aggression

Bellicose

aggressive

Pugnacious

aggressive

Belligerent

aggressive; ready to fight

Concur

agree

Concord

agreement

Concordance

agreement

funambulist

noun an acrobat who performs on a tightrope or slack rope

Nonchalance

an appearance of indifference; calm and composed

Decathlon

an athletic competition with ten events

Omnipotent

all powerful

Omniscient

all-knowing

Omnipotent

all-powerful

Querulous

always complaining

Equivocal

ambiguous; something that can be interpreted in more than one way

Haughtiness

arrogance; pride

Haughty

arrogant

Dowager

an elderly woman of elevate social status

Phenomenon

an event or happening (plural: phenomena)

Plethora

an excess

Alibi

an excuse that shows someone was not at a crime scene

Disparity

an inequality

Seminary

an institution in which priests are trained

Pariah

an outcast from society

Galleon

ancient type of sailing ship

Archaic

ancient; outdated; old fashioned

Ire

anger [irate (a) = very angry]

Nettle

annoy

Miffed

annoyed

Irksome

annoying; infuriating

Bombast

arrogant, pompous language

Purportedly

apparently claiming

Paradox

apparently contradictory statement

Sensuous

appealing to the senses

Ratify

approve; consent

Felicitous

apt

Invidious

arousing envy

Collate

arrange in order

Abashed

ashamed or sorry

Lynch

assassinate; kill; illegal hanging

Nonchalant

assuming an appearance of not caring; indifferent

Presumption

assuming too much

Presumptuous

assuming too much; arrogant

Bypasses

avoids; finds a way around

Comely

attractive

Personable

attractive

Mediocre

average

rara

avis \RARE-uh-AY-vis\, noun plural rara avises \RARE-uh-AY-vuh-suhz\ or rarae aves \RARE-ee-AY-veez\:| A rare or unique person or thing.| He was, after all, that rara avis, a Jewish Catholic priest with a wife and children.

Circumvent

avoid

Obviate

avoid; make unnecessary

Reclusive

avoiding other people; solitary

Cantankerous

bad tempered

Cantankerous

bad-tempered; quarrelsome

Insolvent

bankrupt

Hypothetical

based on guesswork; not proven

Ossified

become fixed and rigid

Mendicancy

begging

Bestial

behaving like a beast; brutal

Brevity

being brief

Credence

belief

Credulity

belief

Egalitarianism

belief in equality

Nihilism

belief in nothing; anarchy

Credible

believable

Plausible

believable

Cynical

believing that people act only out of selfish motives

Beleaguer

besiege; attack

Partisan

biased; one-sided; committed to one group

Conflagration

big fire

Rancor

bitterness and bad feeling

Censure

blame

Recrimination

blame

Censure

blame; criticize

Censured

blamed

Censures

blames

Sanguinary

bloodthirsty; bloody

Brusque

blunt; abrupt

Rambunctious

boisterous

Barrage

bombardment; stream (of abuse etc.)

Ramifications

branches; subdivisions of a complex system; outcomes

Intrepid

brave

Stoic

brave; able to tolerate whatever life throws at you

Fortitude

bravery

Respite

break (from work etc.)

Respite

break from work etc.

Brevity

briefness

Reconcile

bring disputing side together again

Reconcile

bring disputing sides together; overcome bad feeling

Prospectus

brochure

Disdain

contempt; strong dislike

Cumulative

building up

Edifice

building; structure; construction

Onus

burden

Onerous

burdensome

Onerous

burdensome; hard to undertake

Caustic

burning

Discordancy

cacophony; harshness; jarring

plural

caesuras or caesurae \sih-ZHUR-ee; -ZUR-ee\:| 1. A break or pause in a line of verse, usually occurring in the middle of a line, and indicated in scanning by a double vertical line; for example, The proper study|| of mankind is man [Alexander Pope, An Essay on Man].| 2. Any break, pause, or interruption.| After an inconclusive day spent discussing the caesura of Sonnet's opening line, Luke and his colleagues went for cocktails at Strabismus.

Phlegmatic

calm

Placid

calm and peaceful

Poised

calm; collected; self-possessed

Phlegmatic

calm; imperturbable

Placid

calm; peaceful

Serene

calm; peaceful

Sedate

calm; placid

Mollified

calmed; pacified

Plausible

can be believed; reasonable

Arable

can be cultivated

Palpable

can be felt

Salvageable

can be saved

Ineffable

can't be expressed in words

Negate

cancel; deny

Abrogate

cancel; deny; repeal

Implacable

cannot be appeased; relentless

Inevitable

cannot be avoided

Irrevocable

cannot be cancelled; unchangeable

Incorrigible

cannot be corrected (of behavior)

Irreproachable

cannot be criticized. (Reproach = criticize)

Irreproachable

cannot be criticized; perfect

Indecipherable

cannot be decoded; cannot be worked out

Ineffable

cannot be expressed in words

Inviolable

cannot be invaded

Irrefutable

cannot be proved wrong

Cherished

cared for; firmly-held

Husbandry

careful management of resources

Perusal

careful reading

Deliberation

careful thought

Scrupulous

careful; diligent; painstaking

Lax

careless; not strict

Slipshod

careless; untidy

Negligence

carelessness

Engender

cause

Defoliate

cause leaves to fall off

Perpetuated

caused to continue

Polemical

causing debate or argument

Seditious

causing division or rebellion

Certitude

certainty

Impugned

challenged; attacked in words

Protean

changeable

Capricious

changeable; fickle

Chimerical

changeable; unstable

Incantation

chant; invocation; prayer

Anarchy

chaos; lack of government

Indictment

charge; legal accusation

Philanthropy

charity; love of mankind

Flout

defy; reject

Disarming

charming; unthreatening

Bilk

cheat; defraud

Impudent

cheeky

Facetious

cheeky; not to be taken seriously

Puerile

childish

Peevishness

childish sullenness; irritability

Opting

choosing

Disseminating

circulating; broadcasting; spreading (information)

Archetype

classic example of

Scouring

cleaning thoroughly; thorough searching

Lucid

clear

Exposition

clear explanation

Enunciation

clear pronunciation; accent; articulation

Flagrant

clearly wrong

Proximity

closeness

Inept

clumsy

Lummox

clumsy person

Maladroit

clumsy; unskillful

Gritty

coarse; granular

Cajole

coax

Menagerie

collection of animals

Archives

collections of old records; place of storage of old documents

Emerge

come out; appear

Merge

come together

Coalesce

come together; merge

Solace

comfort

Solace

comfort for grief

Convergence

coming together

Rife

common

Hackneyed

common and over-used

Banal

common; dull

Pedestrian

common; mundane; banal

Hackneyed

commonplace; over-used

Analogous

comparable

Analogy

comparison

Benignity

compassion; gentleness; fondness

Bemoan

complain about

Exhaustive

complete and thorough

Consummate

complete; total; supremely good

Knotty

complex; difficult to solve

Intricate

complicated

Convoluted

complicated or long-winded

Labyrinthine

complicated; highly convoluted

Cosmopolitan

composed of varied nationalities

Pyromania

compulsion to start fires

Morbidity

concern with death and disease

Mercenary

concerned only with money

Forensic

concerned with argument or debate (esp. for legal evidence)

Raze

destroy; demolish; tear down

Funerary

concerned with funerals

Epistolary

concerned with letters; through correspondence

Bucolic

concerned with the countryside and farming

Filial

concerned with the relationship between child and parent

Olfactory

concerned with the sense of smell

Gustatory

concerned with the sense of taste

Orthographical

concerned with writing and spelling

Aesthetic

concerning art or beauty

Denounce

condemn; speak out against

Patronize

condescend to; behave in an arrogant manner towards

Befuddle

confuse

Confound

confuse

Corollary

consequence; inference

Carping

constant criticism

Extirpation

destruction

Expedient

convenient; practical

Orthodox

conventional

Judicious

correct in judgment; wise

Enumerate

count out; list

Paradoxically

counter to what one would think; contradictory

Mettle

courage; bravery; valor

Enshroud

cover

Pusillanimous

cowardly

Artisan

craftsman

Disingenuous

crafty

Innovate

create; introduce something new

Pernicious

destructive; harmful

Disparaging

critical

Remonstrance

criticism

Disparage

criticize; belittle

Deprecate

criticize; denounce

Disparaged

criticized

Disparaging

criticizing

Fraudulent

crooked; intending to cheat

Callous

cruel and unfeeling

Callousness

cruelty; unfeeling behavior

Nuzzle

cuddle; snuggle

Devious

cunning

Guile

cunning; craftiness

Clientele

customers

Excised

cut out

Curtail

cut short

Razing

cutting down

Jaundiced

cynical; pessimistic

Dike

dam; embankment

Blighted

damaged; destroyed; ruined

Marred

damaged; spoiled

Perdition

damnation

Refute

disprove

Languish

decay; fade away; get weaker

Artifice

deception; trickery

Illusory

deceptive; false; misleading

Manipulative

deceptive; skilful at handling people

Decipher

decode; work out meaning

Embellished

decorated

Consecrate

dedicate

Consecrated

dedicated; made holy

Consecration

dedication

Infer

deduce; conclude

Poignant

deeply moving; strongly affecting the emotions

Embezzle

defraud; steal

Procrastinate

delay; put off

Malinger

deliberately avoid work; shirk

Misrepresentation

deliberately deceiving

Obfuscate

deliberately make something difficult to understand

Delineation

demarcation; explanation; definition; outlining

Rebuttal

denial

Extradite

deport from one country back to the home country

Degradation

deprivation; poverty; debasement

Profundity

depth

Profundity

depth (of ideas)

Pejorative

derogatory

Abstain

desist; go without; withdraw

Impoverished

destitute; poor

Obliterate

destroy; demolish; eradicate

Resolution

determination

Precocious

developing early

Aberration

deviation; abnormality

Sophistry

devious logic

Elusive

difficult to pin down

Abstruse

difficult to understand; obscure

Obscure

difficult to understand; partially hidden

Decorum

dignified, correct behavior [decorous (a)]

Predicament

dilemma; difficult situation

Quandary

dilemma; puzzle

Grimy

dirty

Discord

disagreement

Dissent

disagreement

Disapprobation

disapproval

Censorious

disapproving; critical

Debacle

disaster

Recant

disclaim; retract statement

Cacophony

discordant loud noises

Relegate

dismiss to a lower position

Aloof

distant; detached; cold

Garble

distort; confuse; muddle

Skewed

distorted; bent

Precinct

district of a city

Polarized

divided into two extremes

Prosaic

dull; boring; ordinary

Lackluster

dull; monotonous; bland

Mundane

dull; ordinary

Bifurcation

division into two

Dichotomies

divisions into two parts

But

do I have to sound so funereal, so pontifically solemn? furbelow \FUR-buh-low\, noun:| 1. A pleated or gathered flounce on a woman's garment; a ruffle.| 2. Something showy or superfluous; a bit of showy| ornamentation.

Stevedore

dockworker

Opaque

does not let light through

Officious

domineering; intrusive; meddlesome

Precipitous

done in a hurry

Dubious

doubtful

Skeptical

doubtful

Skeptical

doubting; not gullible

Elicit

draw out (used mainly for information or feelings)

Parched

dried up

Quaff

drink down quickly

Inebriation

drunkenness; intoxication

Droll

dryly amusing

Insipid

dull; bland; boring

Choleric

easily angered

Irascible

easily angered

Palpable

easily felt; easily perceived

Gullible

easily fooled

Obtrusive

easily seen

Obtrusive

easily seen; 'sticking out'

Conspicuous

easily seen; prominent

Compliant

easy to control; submissive

Idiosyncratic

eccentric

Resonance

echo

Resonant

echoing

Frugal

economical

Parsimonious

economical; frugal; thrifty

Frugal

economical; not wasting anything

Jubilant

ecstatic; delighted; rejoicing

Rudimentary

elementary; basic

Gaunt

emaciated; bony and angular

Devoid of

empty of

Foster

encourage

Fostered

encouraged

Regale

entertain

Milieu

environment

Milieu

environment; surroundings

Egalitarian

equal; believer in equality

Parity

equality

Arcane

esoteric

Epitome

essence; typical example or symbol of

Ensconce

establish firmly in a position

Perpetuity

eternity

Pathos

evoking sadness or pity

Grandiose

exaggerated; too great; on a grand scale

Scrutinize

examine carefully

Exemplars

excellent examples of

Exorbitant

excessive

Hubris

excessive pride

Byzantine

excessive; decadent

Exhilarating

exciting

Empathetic

exhibiting deep emotional understanding

Egress

exit

Belabor

explain in unnecessary detail

Debunking

exposing false claims or myths

Lament

express regret

Lament

express regret over something

Solicitousness

expressing care/concern

Lamentation

expression of regret or sorrow

Extrapolate

extend; predict on the basis of known data

Decimation

extensive destruction

gleam

noun an appearance of reflected light; a flash of light (especially reflected light); verb appear briefly

Indigence

extreme poverty

Jingoistic

extremely patriotic; nationalistic

Gregarious

extroverted; sociable; outgoing

Equitable

fair and equal

Judicious

fair and equal

Judicious

fair; wise

Fidelity

faithfulness; loyalty

Counterfeit

fake; false

Fraudulent

fake; false

Counterfeiter

faker; someone who makes fake money, for example

Plummet

fall suddenly and steeply

Fallacious

false

Specious

false

Spurious

false

Saccharin

falsely sweet

Renown

fame

Preeminence

fame; top position

Infamous

famous for something bad

Persnickety

fastidious; fussy

Corpulent

fat

Auspicious

favorable; promising to turn out well

Elitist

favoring top group; snob

Acrophobia

fear of heights

Phobic

fearful

Plumage

feathers of a bird

Palisade

fence made of posts

Fecund

fertile

Metaphor

figurative speech; using implied comparisons

Ascertain

find out; make sure

Robust

firm and strong

Resolute

firm of purpose

Stereotype

fixed image

Insipid

flavorless; bland

Lithe

flexible

Pliant

flexible

Malleable

flexible; can be shaped

Pliable

flexible; not stubborn

Lithe

flexible; supple

Levity

flippancy; joking about serious matters

Flotsam

floating rubbish

Eloquent

fluent and persuasive in speech

Dotard

foolish old man

Proscribe

forbid

Coercion

force

Coerced

forced

clerisy

noun an educated and intellectual elite

Adamant

forceful; inflexible

Precursor

fore-runner; earlier version

Precursor

forerunner

Precursors

forerunners

Portend

foretell

Absolution

forgiveness; pardon; release

Red tape

formalities; paperwork; official procedure

Cohesive

forming a whole; 'sticking' together

Bulwark

fortification; barricade; wall

Bastion

fortress; stronghold

Serendipity

fortunate coincidence; unsought discovery

Auspicious

fortunate; indicative of a successful outcome

Soothsayer

fortuneteller

Empiric

found by experiment/practice

Candid

frank; honest

Guileless

frank; straightforward; honest

Candor

frankness; openness

Gratis

free of charge; without payment

Exculpate

free someone from blame; pardon; acquit

Blithe

free-spirited; carefree

Gratuitous

free; unwarranted

Disillusioned

freed from wrong ideas

Affability

friendliness; cordiality

Amiable

friendly; lovable

Congenial

friendly; sociable; suitable

Affable

friendly; social; easygoing

Amity

friendship

Gambol

frolic; leap; bound

Exasperated

frustrated; annoyed

Exasperation

frustration and annoyance

Replete

full

Riddled

full of (usually full of holes)

Embittered

full of bitter feelings

Falter

hesitate; waver

Posterity

future generations

Jollity

gaiety; happiness

Garner

gather; collect

Garish

gaudy

Sermonized

gave moral lecture

Consensus

general agreement

Largess

generosity

Magnanimity

generosity (of spirit)

Magnanimous

generous; big-hearted

Munificent

generous; charitable

Docile

gentle and easily lead

Recuperate

get better after illness

Exorcism

getting free/rid of; eliminating (especially demons)

Apparition

ghost; something that 'appears'

Sanction

give approval to

Ratify

give official approval to

Endorse

give support or approval to

Bolster

give support to

Enfranchise

give voting rights

Mendacious

given to lying

Morose

gloomy; bad tempered

Digression

going off the point

Decorous

good and correct (used of behavior)

Palatable

good to eat; agreeable

Opportunism

grabbing opportunities; seeking unprincipled advantage

Erudition

great knowledge or learning

Hilarity

great laughter

Devoured

greedily eaten/consumed

Gluttonous

greedy

Furrow

groove

Hyperbole

grossly exaggerated speech

Entourage

group of followers; retinue

Obsequious

groveling

Fawning

groveling; 'sucking up' to people

Burgeon

grow; flourish; put forth new shoots

Sentinel

guard; sentry

Precept

guiding principle

Credulous

gullible; ready to believe anything

Effusive

gushing; demonstrative

Intuitions

gut feelings

Inveterate

habitual

Fortuitous

happening by chance

Arduous

hard and difficult

Elusive

hard to pin down

Diligent

hard-working

Adversity

hardship

Destitution

hardship; poverty; misery

Deleterious

harmful

Detrimental

harmful

Noxious

harmful; poisonous; lethal

Innocuous

harmless

Placebo

harmless medicine with no effect; dummy medicine

Innocuous

harmless; inoffensive

Grating

harsh; rasping

Cryptic

hidden

Furtive

hidden and secret

Abhor

hate

Odious

hateful

Misanthrope

hater of the rest of mankind

Misogynist

hater of women

Animosity

hatred; antagonism

Profound

having deep meaning

Prescient

having fore-knowledge

Multifaceted

having many aspects

Multifarious

having many aspects

Languid

having no energy or interest

Despondent

having no hope; miserable

Impecunious

having no money

Nondescript

having no special features; dull and ordinary

Nondescript

having no special qualities; ordinary

Dogmatic

having stubbornly held opinions

Salubrious

health-giving

Harbored

held [as in 'harbored and idea']

Demur

hesitate; refuse

Ornate

highly decorated

Corrugated

highly folded

Balk

hinder and prevent; hesitate over

Hamper

hinder; obstruct

Sanctity

holiness

Integrity

honesty

Integrity

honor; honesty

Inimical

hostile

Glacial

hostile; unfriendly; cold; icy

Animosity

hostility; hatred

Antagonism

hostility; strong opposition

Caldron

huge cooking pot

Abasement

humiliation; degradation

Hasten

hurry; accelerate; rush

Sanctimonious

hypocritically holy

Sanctimonious

hypocritically holy; making a pretense of religious feeling

Postulate

hypothesize; propose

Glacial

icy; unfriendly

Quixotic

idealistic; impractical

Boorish

ill-mannered

Churlish

ill-mannered

Malady

illness

Envisioning

imagining, predicting

Callow

immature

Stolid

impassive; dull; indifferent

Enhance

improve; make better or clearer

Amelioration

improvement

Impetuous

impulsive

Impetuosity

impulsiveness

Peremptory

in a commanding manner

Jocular

in a joking manner

Pensive

in a thoughtful mood; thinking deeply

Copious

in large amounts

Legion

in large numbers

Myriad

in large numbers

Meager

in short supply

Inertia

inactivity; lethargy

Inherent

inbuilt; genetic

Encompassed

included; surrounded

Inept

incompetent; unskilled; useless

Discrepancy

inconsistency

Augment

increase; make bigger

Augmenting

increasing in size or number

Infusion

influx

Harbingers

indicators; bringers of warnings

Apathetic

indifferent; uninterested; lethargic

Circuitous

indirect

Allusion

indirect reference

Oblique

indirect; slanting

Soporific

inducing sleep

Nefarious

infamous

Notoriety

infamy

Notoriety

infamy; known for wrong doing

Manipulatable

influencable; controllable

Innate

inherited; inborn

Naiveté

innocence; lack of worldliness

Perspicacity

insight

Perspicacious

insightful; sharp; wise

Hypocritical

insincere

Stipulated

insisted

Formidable

inspiring awe

Cerebral

intellectual

Didactic

intended to teach; instructive

Didactic

intending to preach or teach

Didactic

intending to teach or give instructions

Intrigued

interested and curious

Officious

interfering

Sporadic

intermittent; on and off

Fitful

intermittent; on and off; not continuous

Hiatus

interruption; pause

Preamble

introductory material

Embroil

involve in hostility or argument

Extraneous

irrelevant

Extrinsic

irrelevant; on the outside

Cantankerous

irritable and difficult to please

Fractious

irritable; difficult to control

Sequester

isolate

Serrated

jagged; saw-like

Jubilant

joyful

Discernment

judgment;

Luscious

juicy; moist; succulent

Incipient

just beginning

Nascent

just begun; in an early stage of development

Germinal

just growing; not developed; immature

Sophomoric

juvenile; immature

Benevolent

kindly

Benign

kindly

Benign

kindly; harmless

Raze

knock down

Stoic

known for fortitude; indifferent to pleasure or pain

squelch

noun an electric circuit that cuts off a receiver when the signal becomes weaker than the noise; a crushing remark; verb suppress or crush completely

Ineptitude

lack of ability

Incoherence

lack of clarity

Ambivalence

lack of clarity; wavering; being undecided;uncertainty; having 'mixed' feelings

Lassitude

lack of energy

Apathy

lack of energy or interest

Apathy

lack of interest or emotion

Intemperance

lack of moderation

Irreverence

lack of respect

Insolence

lack of respect; rudeness

Levity

lack of seriousness; humor

Diffident

lacking confidence

Apathetic

lacking energy or interest

Languid

lacking energy; weak

Irresolute

lacking firmness of purpose; hesitant

Irresolute

lacking firmness; inability to decide or commit

Amorphous

lacking in shape

Irreverent

lacking respect

Enduring

lasting

Opulence

lavish display of wealth

Indolence

laziness

Lackadaisical

lazy

Lackadaisical

lazy; careless; lax

Erudition

learning; scholarly knowledge

Bequeath

leave something in one's will to be given after one's death

Salacious

lecherous; erotic

Mitigate

lessen; make less severe

Reprieve

let off (at least temporarily)

Predilection

liking for; penchant

Circumscribe

limit

Concatenate

link together

Concatenation

linking into chains

Heed

listen to

Cornucopia

literally a horn filled with fruits etc; symbol of plenty

Dynamic

lively; vibrant; energetic

Embodiment

living example of

Arboreal

living in trees

Contemporary

living or happening at the same time

Desolate

lonely; devoid of life; feeling very sad and hopeless

Secluded

lonely; isolated

Longevity

long life

Discursiveness

long windedness; indirectness

Nostalgia

longing for the past

Nostalgic

longing for the past

Staunch

loyal; faithful; dependable

Steadfastness

loyalty; firmness of purpose

Cogent

lucid; well argued

Decoy

lure; trap; trick

Mitigated

made less severe

Exacerbated

made worse

Protagonist

main character in film, book, play etc.

Err

make a mistake

Ameliorate

make better

Elucidate

make clear

Expedite

make faster

Alleviate

make less severe

pother

noun an excited state of agitation; verb make upset or troubled; make a fuss; be agitated

Exacerbate

make worse

Exacerbates

makes worse

Ameliorating

making better

Flippant

making jokes about serious matters

Alleviation

making less severe

Gibbering

making meaningless noises

Quagmire

marsh; bog

Arbitration

mediating between disputing sides

Analgesic

medicine to combat pain

Alchemy

medieval chemistry; attempt to change base metal into gold

Proletarian

member of the working class

Cognitions

mental knowledge

Obtuse

mentally dull

Clemency

mercy

Punctilious

meticulous

Bourgeois

middle class

Skirmish

minor battle

Peccadillo

minor weakness; trivial offence

Penurious

miserly

Niggardly

miserly; stingy

Beguile

mislead; lure

Amalgam

mixture

Amalgamation

mixture or joining of different components

Demagogues

mob leaders; agitators

Derided

mocked

Sarcasm

mockery

Sardonic

mocking

Diorama

model of a scene

Mitigator

moderator

Depravity

moral corruption

Lugubrious

mournful; very sad

Regressive

moving backwards (literal or metaphoric)

Brawny

muscular

Inscrutable

mysterious; impenetrable

Bigot

narrow-minded, prejudiced person

Parochial

narrow-minded; concerned only with local matters

Indigenous

native to a locality

Indigenous

native to a particular area

Indigenous

native to a particular place

Ingenuous

naïve

Ingénue

naïve, unsophisticated person

Aspersion

negative feeling; damaging remark

Remiss

neglectful

Dispassionate

neutral; objective

Interminable

never-ending

Novel

new; unusual

Neologism

newly coined word

Defunct

no longer in existence

Obsolete

no longer valid

bete

noire \bet-NWAHR\, noun: Something or someone particularly detested or avoided; a bugbear.| Even more regrettable, as far as Dame Edna is concerned, is the presence of her old bete noire, the extravagantly disgusting Sir Les Patterson.

Cacophony

noise; din

Obstreperous

noisy and boisterous

Harangue

noisy, attacking speech

Peripatetic

nomadic; moving from place to place

Itinerant

nomadic; wandering from place to place

Inexpedient

not advisable

Incoherent

not clear

Sporadic

not continuous; intermittent

Fitful

not continuous; stopping and starting

Inconspicuous

not easily seen

Inconspicuous

not easily seen; subtle; not noticeable

Indiscernible

not easy to see

Incongruous

not fitting in; out of place

Inadvertent

not intentional

Metaphorical

not literal; figurative

Hypothetical

not proven; based on guesswork

Frivolous

not serious

Indecorous

not well-behaved; lacking in dignity

mammon

noun (New Testament) a personification of wealth and avarice as an evil spirit; wealth regarded as an evil influence

midriff

noun (anatomy) a muscular partition separating the abdominal and thoracic cavities; functions in respiration; the middle area of the human torso (usually in front)

estivation

noun (botany) the arrangement of sepals and petals in a flower bud before it opens; (zoology) cessation or slowing of activity during the summer; especially slowing of metabolism in some animals during a hot or dry period

cash

noun United States country music singer and songwriter (1932-2003); prompt payment for goods or services in currency or by check; money in the form of bills or coins

cradle

noun a baby bed with sides and rockers; birth of a person; a trough that can be rocked back and forth; used by gold miners to shake auriferous earth in water in order to separate the gold

pick

noun a basketball maneuver; obstructing an opponent with one's body; a heavy iron tool with a wooden handle and a curved head that is pointed on both ends; a thin sharp implement used for removing unwanted material

shard

noun a broken piece of a brittle artifact

bludgeon

noun a club used as a weapon; verb overcome or coerce as if by using a heavy club; strike with a club or a bludgeon

lampoon

noun a composition that imitates somebody's style in a humorous way; verb ridicule with satire

fuddle

noun a confused multitude of things; verb be confusing or perplexing to; cause to be unable to think clearly; consume alcohol

ragamuffin

noun a dirty shabbily clothed urchin

sobriquet

noun a familiar name for a person (often a shortened version of a person's given name)

crowd

noun a large number of things or people considered together; an informal body of friends; verb to gather together in large numbers

portmanteau

noun a large travelling bag made of stiff leather; a new word formed by joining two others and combining their meanings

potboiler

noun a literary composition of poor quality that was written quickly to make money (to boil the pot)

leitmotiv

noun a melodic phrase that accompanies the reappearance of a person or situation (as in Wagner's operas)

melange

noun a motley assortment of things

polymath

noun a person of great and varied learning

prig

noun a person regarded as arrogant and annoying

signet

noun a seal (especially one used to mark documents officially)

dagger

noun a short knife with a pointed blade used for piercing or stabbing; a character used in printing to indicate a cross reference or footnote

dirge

noun a song or hymn of mourning composed or performed as a memorial to a dead person

ballast

noun any heavy material used to stabilize a ship or airship; an electrical device for starting and regulating fluorescent and discharge lamps; an attribute that tends to give stability in character and morals; something that steadies the mind or feelings

moon

noun any natural satellite of a planet; the natural satellite of the Earth; any object resembling a moon

fish

noun any of various mostly cold-blooded aquatic vertebrates usually having scales and breathing through gills; the flesh of fish used as food; the twelfth sign of the zodiac; the sun is in this sign from about February 19 to March 20

mien

noun dignified manner or conduct

oneiromancy

noun divination through the interpretation of dreams

raiment

noun especially fine or decorative clothing; verb provide with clothes or put clothes on

ostrich

noun fast-running African flightless bird with two-toed feet; largest living bird; a person who refuses to face reality or recognize the truth (a reference to the popular notion that the ostrich hides from danger by burying its head in the sand)

pabulum

noun insipid intellectual nourishment; any substance that can be used as food

ring

noun jewelry consisting of a circlet of precious metal (often set with jewels) worn on the finger; a square platform marked off by ropes in which contestants box or wrestle; a characteristic sound

lore

noun knowledge gained through tradition or anecdote

barnacle

noun marine crustaceans with feathery food-catching appendages; free-swimming as larvae; as adults form a hard shell and live attached to submerged surfaces; European goose smaller than the brant; breeds in the far north

hope

noun one of the three Christian virtues; a specific instance of feeling hopeful; the general feeling that some desire will be fulfilled

nostrum

noun patent medicine whose efficacy is questionable; hypothetical remedy for all ills or diseases; once sought by the alchemists

hand

noun physical assistance; terminal part of the forelimb in certain vertebrates (e.g. apes or kangaroos); a rotating pointer on the face of a timepiece

grouse

noun popular game bird having a plump body and feathered legs and feet; flesh of any of various grouse of the family Tetraonidae; usually roasted; flesh too dry to broil; verb hunt grouse

rescue

noun recovery or preservation from loss or danger; verb take forcibly from legal custody; free from harm or evil

manacle

noun shackle that consists of a metal loop that can be locked around the wrist; usually used in pairs; verb confine or restrain with or as if with manacles or handcuffs

drum

noun small to medium-sized bottom-dwelling food and game fishes of shallow coastal and fresh waters that make a drumming noise; a musical percussion instrument; usually consists of a hollow cylinder with a membrane stretched across each end; a cylindrical metal container used for shipping or storage of liquids

soothsayer

noun someone who makes predictions of the future (usually on the basis of special knowledge)

squall

noun sudden violent winds; often accompanied by precipitation; verb make high-pitched, whiney noises; blow in a squall

stirrup

noun support consisting of metal loops into which rider's feet go; the stirrup-shaped ossicle that transmits sound from the incus to the cochlea

bloat

noun swelling of the rumen or intestinal tract of domestic animals caused by excessive gas; verb become bloated or swollen or puff up; make bloated or swollen

rise

noun the act of changing location in an upward direction; an increase in cost; a growth in strength or number or importance

look

noun the act of directing the eyes toward something and perceiving it visually; physical appearance; the feelings expressed on a person's face

rumpus

noun the act of making a noisy disturbance; verb cause a disturbance

sparge

noun the act of sprinkling or splashing water; verb agitate by introducing air or compressed gas; scatter with liquid; wet lightly

cantle

noun the back of a saddle seat

rind

noun the natural outer covering of food (usually removed before eating); the tissue forming the hard outer layer (of e.g. a fruit)

malapropism

noun the unintentional misuse of a word by confusion with one that sounds similar

mayhem

noun the willful and unlawful crippling or mutilation of another person; violent and needless disturbance

nib

noun the writing point of a pen; horny projecting mouth of a bird

braggadocio

noun vain and empty boasting

offal

noun viscera and trimmings of a butchered animal often considered inedible by humans

sapling

noun young tree

Inductee

novice; beginner

Esoteric

obscure

Esoteric

obscure and difficult to understand

Arcane

obscure; known only to a few people

Perceptive

observant

Fanatical

obsessive; fixated

Hinder

obstruct

Blatant

obvious

Overt

obvious; not hidden

Blatantly

obviously

Pivotal

of central importance

Apocryphal

of doubtful origin

Paramount

of supreme importance

Bureaucracy

officialdom

Dictum

often-used saying

Hoary

old

Archaic

old-fashioned

Lavish

on a grand scale; wasteful

Intermittent

on and off; not continuous

Peripheral

on the edge; not important

Moribund

on the point of death

Predecessor

one who came before

Patron

one who give support (usually financial)

Purveyor

one who sells something or causes something to spread

Libelous

open to prosecution for libel (Libel = written slander)

Antagonistic

opposed; hostile; aggressive

Sanguine

optimistic; cheerful

Banality

ordinariness; dullness

Prosaic

ordinary

Mundane

ordinary; worldly

Anachronistic

out of normal time range

Antiquated

outdated; old fashioned

Antediluvian

outdated; prehistoric; very old-fashioned

Delineates

outlines

Prognosis

outlook

Exemplary

outstandingly good; setting a fine example

Egregious

outstandingly, obviously bad

Belabor

over-emphasizing

Hyperbole

over-exaggeration

Coddled

over-protected; kept warm

Cliche

over-used expression

Placate

pacify; soothe; calm

Appease

pacify; soothe; calm down; make peace with

Pallid

pale

Coddle

pamper; fuss over; indulge

Indulgent

pampering; satisfying desires

Contagious

passed on through touch; infectious

Fervor

passion; enthusiasm

Fanaticism

passion; excessive devotion

Fervent

passionate

pari

passu \PAIR-ee-PASS-oo; PAIR-ih-PASS-oo\, adverb:| At an equal pace or rate.| Expand the state and [its] destructive capacity necessarily expands too, pari passu.

Reciprocate

pay back

Punctilious

paying attention to small details

Remuneration

payment for work done

Equanimity

peace of mind; balance; calm

Placid

peaceful

Serene

peaceful

Belittlers

people who criticize/disparage

Debunkers

people who expose/throw out old ideas

Pacifists

people who oppose war

Revisionists

people who revise; anti-revolutionaries

Insightful

perceptive

Percipient

perceptive; insightful

Astute

perceptive; sharp-witted

Infallible

perfect; flawless; cannot make mistakes

Mandate

permission

Scapegoat

person on whom blame is placed for faults of others

Foil for

person that shows another to advantage

Protégé

person under protection of, or guided by another

Martinet

person who believes in strict discipline

Dilettante

person who dabbles in a subject without serious study

Dilettante

person who dabbles in the arts

Malingerer

person who deliberately tries to avoid work

Atheist

person who does not believe in God

Iconoclast

person who goes against accepted authority

Pedant

person who insists on strict adherence to rules or narrow learning

Masochist

person who intentionally inflicts pain on himself

Cartographer

person who makes maps

Iconoclast

person who opposes orthodoxy

Chronicler

person who records historical information

Lobbyist

person who tries to persuade someone to support a particular cause

Savant

person with knowledge

Connoisseur

person with refined taste and good judgment

Rhetoric

persuasive language

Plaintiff

petitioner (in court of law)

stormy

petrel \STOR-mee-PET-ruhl\, noun:| 1. Any of various small sea birds of the family Hydrobatidae, having dark plumage with paler underparts; also called storm petrel.| 2. One who brings discord or strife, or appears at the onset of trouble.| But far from a 'pet' of the Communist regime, Gorky, the stormy petrel of the revolution, also condemned the revolution early on as a cruel experiment with the Russian people doomed to failure.

Collage

picture made from fragments of other pictures

Quaint

picturesque

Juxtapose

place next to

Asylum

place of refuge or safety

Antipodes

places on opposite sides of the globe

Docile

placid; easily lead

Juxtaposition

placing two thing nest to each other

Euphony

pleasant sounds

Mellifluous

pleasant-sounding

Stratagem

plot; plan; trick

Machinations

plots and plans

Collusion

plotting and planning

Pillage

plunder

Bard

poet

Burnish

polish

Pretentious

pompous; self-important

Feasible

possible and practicable

Marsupial

pouched mammal (like a kangaroo)

Penury

poverty

Magnate

powerful businessman

Potent

powerful; compelling; strong

Pragmatic

practical

Pragmatist

practical person; one who is concerned with usefulness

Pragmatism

practicality

Eulogy

praise

Extol

praise

Laud

praise

Plaudits

praise

Extolled

praised

Creditable

praiseworthy

Invocation

prayer

Extrapolated

predicted on the basis of existing data; extended

Congenital

present from birth

Retention

preservation; withholding

Presumptive

presumed

Preclude

prevent

Protocol

procedure; code of behavior

Cavalcade

procession of vehicles

Goad

prod; urge

Prolific

producing a lot

Espouse

promote; take up; support

Proponents

promoters; supporters

Exonerated

proved not guilty

Smelt

refine an ore

Provocative

provoking

Clairvoyant

psychic; mystic

Referendum

public vote

Chastises

punishes

Catharsis

purging of pent-up emotions

Oust

push out of a position

Ousted

pushed out of a position

Jeopardize

put at risk

Jeopardize

put at risk; endanger

Deter

put off; prevent

Redress

put right something that was wrong

Incarceration

putting in prison

Anthropocentrism

putting man at the center of one's philosophy

Deferment

putting off

Pretentious

putting on an act

Altruism

putting others first; being self-sacrificing

Enigma

puzzle

Enigma

puzzle; mystery

Enigmas

puzzles

Dilemma

puzzling situation

Cryptic

puzzling; enigmatic

Expatriate

refugee; emigrant; someone living away from his own country

Condone

tacitly support; overlook

Idiosyncratic

quirky; eccentric; unique to an individual

Idiosyncratic

quirky; unique to an individual

Podium

raised platform

Arbitrary

random; for no definite reason

Repertoire

range; set of skills

Mercurial

rapidly changing

Peruse

read carefully

Insurrectionists

rebels

Cower

recoil in fear or servility; shrink away from

Cringe

recoil; flinch; shy away

Retrenchment

reducing staff or forces; conserving resources

Deplore

regret

Remorse

regret; sorrow; contrition

Lamentable

regrettable

Inexorable

relentless

Germane

relevant

Pertinent

relevant

Panacea

remedy for all ills

Retraction

removal; 'taking back'

Overhaul

renovate

Anecdote

short account/story

Begrudge

resent

Rancor

resentment; animosity; bad feeling

Deference

respect

Reticent

restrained; holding something back; uncommunicative

Rescind

retract; repeal

Rehash

revamp hurriedly/carelessly

Resurgence

revival

Jaunt

short pleasure trip

Assiduous

thorough; diligent

Deride

ridicule; make fun of; mock

Lampoon

ridicule; spoof

Ludicrous

ridiculous; silly

Prerogative

right or privilege

Hidebound

rigid in opinions

Raucous

rough and unpleasant (of sounds)

Abrasive

rough; coarse; harsh

Rotund

round

Detritus

rubbish

Insolence

rudeness

Boorishness

rudeness; ill-mannered behavior

Derelict

rundown; abandoned

Pathos

sadness; stirring the emotions

Foundered

sank

Ironic

satiric; unexpected

Exegesis

scholarly explanation or interpretation

Pedagogy

science of teaching

Jurisprudence

science or study of law

Castigate

scold strongly

Berate

scold; criticize

Chided

scolded

Reprimanded

scolded

Foraging

searching for food

Clandestine

secret; covert; stealthy

Furtiveness

secretiveness

Stanza

section of a poem

Faction

section; group with common interests

Conciliatory

seeking compromise

Mercenary

seeking money above all else

Abstemious

self denying; refraining from indulging

Hedonism

self indulgence; pleasure-seeking

Autonomous

self-governing

Autonomy

self-government

Altruism

self-sacrifice

Complacent

self-satisfied; smug

Egotistical

selfish

Egotists

selfish people

Foreboding

sense of doom

Estrangement

separation

Gravity

seriousness

Obsequious

servile; submissive

Ephemeral

short-lived

Myopic

short-sighted (literal or metaphoric)

Emancipate

set free

Austere

severely plain

Ignominy

shame

Ignominy

shame [ignominious (a) = shameful]

Ignominious

shameful

Reprehensible

shameful; very bad

Acrid

sharp; pungent (used of smells and tastes)

Hone

sharpen; increase; whet

Acuity

sharpness (mental or visual)

Acumen

sharpness of mind

Resplendent

shining; glowing

Flabbergasted

shocked; speechless

Anecdote

short account of something interesting; story

Flaunt

show off; display in a showy manner

Disdained

showed contempt for

Deferential

showing respect

Reverential

showing respect

Ostentatious

showy

Flamboyant

showy; ornate

Repudiate

shun; eschew

Spurned

shunned; rejected

Occlusion

shutting out

Diffident

shy; hesitant

Reticent

shy; unwilling to reveal information

Factions

sides in a dispute; groups with common interests

Gestures

signals

Inane

silly

Fatuous

silly; foolish

Sedulous

thorough; eager

plural

simulacra \sim-yuh-LAY-kruh; -LAK-ruh\:| 1. An image; a representation.| 2. An insubstantial, superficial, or vague likeness or semblance.| Incorporating simulacra of historic buildings and exotic landscapes the Emperor saw on his extensive travels through his dominions, the villa is high-style multiculturalism.

Scuttle

sink

Intuition

sixth sense; 'gut feeling'

Deft

skilful

Adroit

skilful / skillful (Maladroit = clumsy)

Dexterous

skilful with hands

Adroitness

skill

Finesse

skill

Soporific

sleep-inducing

Somnambulist

sleepwalker

Sluggard

slow-moving; lethargic person

Dilatory

slow; falling behind with one's work

Dilatory

slow; sluggish

Modicum

small amount

Meager

small; scanty

Redolent

smelling of; giving off odors

Complacent

smug; over-confident

Sarcasm

sneering, bitter remarks; ironic or taunting

Lofty

snooty; arrogant; haughty

Convivial

sociable and friendly

Matriarchy

society governed by women

Mellow

soft; melodious; ripe

Epicure

someone who appreciates good food and drink

Braggart

someone who boasts

Recluse

someone who cuts himself off from life

Libertarian

someone who opposes tyranny

Poseur

someone who puts on an act

Profiteer

someone who seeks to make unjustified profits

Propagandist

someone who spreads ideas

Qualification

something added to modify an opinion

Fabrication

something made up; untrue

Nuance

something subtle; a fine shade of meaning

Axiom

something that is taken to be true; basic idea that can't be questioned

Deterrent

something that puts one off; a preventive

Irony

something unexpected; use of words to convey opposite meaning

Anomaly

something which does not fit in a pattern; irregularity

Discrepancy

something which does not match up; inconsistency

Salutary

something which teaches you a lesson; beneficial

Meticulous

thorough; taking care of details

Rigor

thoroughness

Liniment

soothing lotion

Contrition

sorrow and repentance

Contrite

sorry

Capacious

spacious

Sparse

spare; bare; meager

Equivocate

speak ambiguously/vaguely

Equivocate

speak ambiguously; avoid telling the truth

Prevaricate

speak misleadingly and evasively

Pontificate

speak pompously or dogmatically

Drawl

speak slowly with words running together

Lance

spear; spike; javelin

Jargon

specialized language used by experts

Blasphemy

speech which offends religious sentiments

Celerity

speed

Dispatch

speed and eagerness

Expeditious

speedy

Despoiled

spoiled

Marred

spoiled; ruined

Desecration

spoiling something holy

Intermittent

sporadic; irregular

Speckled

spotted; freckled; dotted

Pervasive

spreading everywhere

Hackneyed

stale and over-used

Ogle

stare at; observe in an obvious manner

Broach

start to discuss; approach

plural

stases \STAY-seez; STAS-eez\:| 1. A state of balance, equilibrium, or stagnation.| 2. Stoppage of the normal flow of a bodily fluid or semi fluid.| The reality of governance was not stasis but change; institutions did not operate according to mechanical laws,they evolved organically.

Concise

stated in few words

Plaudit

statement giving strong praise

Manifesto

statement of values

Endurance

staying power; patience; stamina

Pilfer

steal

Purloin

steal

Precipice

steep slope

Extant

still in existence

Stagnant

still; not moving

Parsimony

stinginess; frugality; cost-cutting

Rousing

stirring

Desist

stop; discontinue; cease

Hangar

storage area (like garage) for a plane

Repertory

story; stock; repertoire

Hodgepodge

strange mixture

Exotic

strange; foreign

Resilience

strength; ability to withstand

Emancipators

those who set others free

Buttress

strengthen; support

Denuded

stripped

Adulation

strong admiration; worship

Robust

strong; healthy; tough

Contumacious

stubborn

Obdurate

stubborn

Intransigent

stubborn; unyielding

Headstrong

stubborn; willful

Intransigence

stubbornness

Prosody

study of versification

Dolt

stupid person

Guffaw

sudden loud laughter

Potable

suitable for drinking

Navigable

suitable for sailing

Conducive to

suitable for; leading to

Petulant

sulky

Petulant

sulky; peevish

Recapitulate

summarize

Scuttled

sunk

Cursory

superficial

Perfunctory

superficial; cursory

Advocate

support

Endorse

support

Endorsement

support; approval

Foster

support; encourage

Bolster

support; prop up

Endorsed

supported

Corroborated

supported; given supporting evidence

Proponents

supporters

Stifle

suppress

Squelch

suppress; crush

Quelled

suppressed

Stifling

suppressing

Consummate

supremely good

Capitulate

surrender; give in to

Mire

swamp; muddy ground

Profanity

swearing; cursing

Distension

swelling

Billowing

swelling; fluttering; waving

Commandeer

take possession of

Plagiarism

taking credit for someone else's writing or ideas

Eclectic

taking things from different sources

Condescend

talk down to

Garrulous

talkative

Loquacious

talkative

Loquacious

talkative; using too many words

Docile

tame; subservient

Lachrymose

tearful; sad

Perjury

telling lies under oath

Moratorium

temporary prohibition or halt to activity

Proclivity

tendency towards

Inclination

tendency; a leaning toward

Penchant

tendency; leaning toward

Propensity

tendency; leaning' predilection

Disposition

tendency; personality

Byline

the line that tells you who wrote an article

minutiae

the small, precise, or trivial details of something

Etymology

the study of word origins

Elite

the upper levels in a society; the privileged ones

Histrionic

theatrical; exaggerated

Larceny

theft; robbery; stealing

Sparse

thin; not thick

Cogitate

think over something; ponder

Ruminate

think over something; ponder

Ominous

threatening

Aural

through the sense of hearing

Derailed

thrown off course

Modicum

tiny amount

Jaded

tired; bored

Jaded

tired; bored; worn out

Languid

tired; slow

Lethargic

tired; without energy

Acquiesce

to agree to; give in to

Pious

very religious

Solicit

to ask for; seek

Conciliate

to bring together; end a dispute

Assuage

to calm

Envenom

to cause bitterness and bad feeling

Scale

to climb

Nullify

to counter; make unimportant

Desecrate

to damage or pollute a holy place

Belittle

to demean

Discern

to distinguish one thing from another

Dupe

to fool someone

Marshal

to gather together

Emulate

to imitate something admired

Allay

to lessen

Illuminate

to light up or make clear

Discriminate

to make a clear distinction; see the difference

Legitimate

to make legal; give approval to

Assuage

to make less

Exemplify

to serve as a good example

Bristle

to show irritation

Congeal

to solidify

Kindle

to start a fire

Instigate

to start; provoke

Deliberate

to think over deeply

Diaphanous

very thin and transparent

Condoning

tolerating

Bombastic

too elaborate; exaggerated

Pinnacle

topmost point

Oblivious

totally unaware

Pellucid

transparently clear

Perfidy

treachery

Perfidy

treachery; betrayal

Encroaching

trespassing

Accolade

tribute; honor; praise

Knack

trick; skill

Ruse

trick; stratagem

Chicanery

trickery

Chicanery

trickery; attempt to deceive

Charlatan

trickster who claims knowledge he doesn't have

Instigator

troublemaker; person who entices others to do something

Bane

troublesome influence

Emaciated

very thin; withered

Candid

truthful

Candid

truthful; honest

Evasiveness

trying to avoid something

Blanched

turned pale

Beret

type of cap

Caucus

type of private political meeting

Epitomized

typified; characterized; personified

Disinterested

unbiased

Dispassionate

unbiased

Dispassionate

unbiased; fair

Impartial

unbiased; neutral

Objective

unbiased; not subjective

Ambiguity

uncertainty; vagueness

Immutable

unchanging; permanent

Ambiguous

unclear in meaning; can be interpreted in different ways;vague

Derogatory

uncomplimentary

Philistine

uncultured person

Ambivalent

undecided; having 'mixed' feelings;unable to decide;unclear

Empathetic

understanding in an insightful way

Ironic

unexpected

Insentient

unfeeling

Ingrate

ungrateful person

Profane

unholy

Inconsequential

unimportant

Inconsequential

unimportant; insignificant; negligible

Redundant

unnecessary; superfluous

Derivative

unoriginal

Fickle

unpredictable; whimsical; easily swayed

Irrational

unreasonable; absurd

Impromptu

unrehearsed; spontaneous

Fly-by-night

unreliable; disreputable

Indomitable

unshakeable; fearless

Provincial

unsophisticated; narrow-minded

Naive

unsophisticated; simple and inexperienced

Pristine

unspoiled

Precarious

unstable; risky

Infelicity

unsuitability; inappropriateness

Agnostic

unsure of the existence of god

Eccentric

unusual; quirky; odd

Gullibility

unwariness; trustfulness; being easily fooled

Gratuitous

unwarranted

Rectitude

uprightness

Rant

use bombastic language

Deplete

use up; lessen

Futile

useless; hopeless

Futile

useless; waste of time and effort

Futility

uselessness

Laconic

using few words; brief; to the point

Circumlocution

using too many words; long-windedness

Jingoism

using words to stir up exaggerated patriotism

Conventional

usual; customary; common

Evacuate

vacate; empty; abandon

Nebulous

vague

Motley

varied; miscellaneous

chivvy

verb annoy continually or chronically

discomfit

verb cause to lose one's composure

bawl

verb cry loudly; shout loudly and without restraint; make a raucous noise

pule

verb cry weakly or softly

adumbrate

verb give to understand; describe roughly or briefly or give the main points or summary of

burgeon

verb grow and flourish

smite

verb inflict a heavy blow on, with the hand, a tool, or a weapon; affect suddenly with deep feeling; cause pain or suffering in

inveigle

verb influence or urge by gentle urging, caressing, or flattering

ask

verb make a request or demand for something to somebody; consider obligatory; request and expect; inquire about

purloin

verb make off with belongings of others

conflate

verb mix together different elements

extol

verb praise, glorify, or honor

deracinate

verb pull up by or as if by the roots; move (people) forcibly from their homeland into a new and foreign environment

arrive

verb reach a destination; arrive by movement or progress; succeed in a big way; get to the top

cower

verb show submission or fear; crouch or curl up

bruit

verb tell or spread rumors

Livid

very angry

Reprehensible

very bad

Exceptionable

very bad (something which we should object to)

Meticulous

very careful; painstaking

Explicitly

very clear; nothing hidden

Prohibitive

very expensive

Hilarious

very funny

Fastidious

very fussy; excessively concerned (esp. about cleanliness)

Sacrosanct

very holy; inviolable

Momentous

very important

Prodigious

very large

Ebullient

very lively; cheerful; jovial; happy

Cacophonous

very noisy; unpleasant sounding

Mutinous

very rebellious

Mercurial

volatile; changeable

Ramble

wander aimlessly

Meander

wander from side to side

Digress

wander off the subject

Nomadic

wandering from place to place

Erratic

wandering; irregular

Bellicose

war-like; aggressive

Parry

ward off; avoid

Chary

wary of; cautious about; reluctant to give

Squander

waste

Atrophy

waste away from lack of use

Profligacy

wasteful and immoral behavior

Prodigal

wasteful; extravagant

Attenuate

weaken

Debilitated

weakened

Debility

weakness; incapacity

Affluence

wealth and status

Opulent

wealthy; rich; magnificent

Ponderous

weighty; slow and heavy

Finagle

wheedle; wangle; trick

Capricious

whimsical; changeable

Maelstrom

whirlpool; storm in the ocean

Holistic

whole; entire (Holistic viewpoint = seeing things as a whole)

Nefarious

wicked; immoral; disreputable

Impious

wicked; profane

Eradicate

wipe out

Negate

wipe out

Efface

wipe out; remove all trace of

Annihilated

wiped out

Obliterated

wiped out

Effacement

wiping out; (self-effacement = excessive modesty)

Eradicating

wiping out; destroying

Prudence

wisdom; caution

Sagacious

wise

Prudent

wise; cautious

Astute

wise; mentally sharp

Retraction

withdrawal; cancellation of a statement

Peerless

without equal

Ascetic

without luxuries; severely simple

Incessant

without stopping

Indiscriminate

without thought; random; careless

Bereft of

without; deprived of

Overwrought

worked up; in an emotional state

Flustered

worked-up; not calm

Apprehensive

worried; fearful

Apprehension

worry; nervousness

Deteriorate

worsen; decline

Revere

worship

Hallowed

worshipped; consecrated

Erroneous

wrong

Remiss

wrong

Misnomer

wrong name

Misnomer