English words 2

piquant

Feeling a little saucy? Perhaps a bit provocative — but in a good way? Then it's safe to say your personality is a little piquant. Coming to us from the French word piquer, which means "to prick," something that's piquant certainly piques your interest. Someone who's piquant engages you with charm and wit. A story that's filled with piquant details has plenty of juicy, provocative points. And grandma's homemade gravy? It's certainly zesty and piquant, even with all the lumps.

commodious

If your house has a big and comfortable living room, you could say that you have a commodious space for entertaining. Commodious means roomy. Yes, you see the word, commode — i.e. toilet — in commodious. Both words once had the meaning of convenience attached to them from their Latin roots. Indoor plumbing is in fact convenient when you compare it with the alternative as is having room to spare. But that meaning was left behind years ago.

ruminate

When you ruminate, it means you are thinking very deeply about something. You're likely to be so lost in thought that you stare off into space and don't hear people when they call your name. Another meaning of ruminate is to "chew the cud," which can mean "to turn it over and over in your mind." Or, if you're a cow, to turn food over and over in your stomachs in order to digest it. Whether you're a human or a cow, if you ruminate, it will take a LONG time.

perturbation

When you're on an airplane with your friend who's terrified of flying, you'll be able to sense her perturbation, even if she doesn't say a word about how scared she is. The noun perturbation means "anxiety or uneasiness". Perturbation means "a state of agitation," or it can refer to whatever's causing the anxiety. Your brother's weird haircut could be the perturbation that's upsetting your mom at Thanksgiving dinner. It usually means a personal feeling of upset or nervousness, but perturbation can also be a physical disruption of some kind, like a perturbation in a river that makes the water become choppy and dangerous. In astronomy, perturbation is a change caused by the gravitational pull of a celestial body.

hawk-eyed

having very keen vision

evanescent

A beautiful sunset, a rainbow, a wonderful dream right before your alarm clock goes off — all of these could be described as evanescent, which means "fleeting" or "temporary." Evanescent comes from the Latin ex, meaning "out of," and vanescere, meaning "to vanish." When pronouncing this word, emphasize the third syllable and note that the c is silent. You might want to practice saying evanescent a few times right now; if you stumble over pronunciation when you need this word the most, whatever you're describing — be it a shooting star or a whiff of fragrant perfume — will be gone.

crustacean

A crustacean is a member of a class of arthropods that live in water. Some of your favorite seafood comes from crustaceans — crabs, lobsters, and shrimps. There are plenty of fish in the sea, and there are also plenty of crustaceans: strange-looking aquatic critters who usually have at least four pairs of limbs, plus a segmented body and a chitinous exoskeleton. If you think of a crust as being a little like a shell, that can help you remember crustaceans are essentially critters that have shells. Our word crust is from Latin crusta (shell or crust).

felicitation

A felicitation is when you congratulate someone. Your best friend might express his felicitation on your birthday by giving you flowers. You'll almost always see the noun felicitation in its plural form, felicitations. In fact, when your neighbors announce their upcoming marriage, you can say, "Felicitations!" just as you might say, "Congratulations!" Either way, you're expressing your good wishes. Felicitation comes from the verb felicitate, which means "congratulate," and has a Latin root, felicitas, "happiness," from felix, "happy or fortunate."

panegyric

A formal, high-minded speech can be described with a formal, high-minded word — the word panegyric, which is a very elaborate tribute to someone. You could consider most eulogies as panegyrics. It stands to reason that the original use of the word panegyris, from which panegyric derives, was to describe a public gathering in honor of a Greek god. The Latin, L. panegyricus, altered slightly to mean "public eulogy," which around the 16th Century shifted to the French panégyrique, which meant "laudation." In any case, the word today stands for high praise given in a speech or tribute as highfalutin as the word itself sounds.

mausoleum

A mausoleum is a building that contains a tomb or tombs. The Taj Mahal, built by Shah Jahan as a monument to his third wife, Mumtaz Mahal, is the world's most famous mausoleum. Mausoleion, the Greek source of the Latinized mausoleum, was the name given to the tomb of the King Mausolus, a Persian ruler who died in 353 B.C.E. This vast elaborate structure was one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World. Other notable mausoleums or mausolea include the mausoleum of China's First Qin Emperor -- the site of the famous Terra Cotta Army — and the tombs of Ulysses S. Grant and Abraham Lincoln.

shibboleth

A shibboleth is like a motto or catchphrase that members of a group tend to say, like the conservative shibboleth that the only good government is a small government.Shibboleth comes all the way from Hebrew, and originally meant a special word that helped you find out if someone was part of your group, almost like a secret handshake. It still has modicumthat sense of identifying someone as a member of a group. Sometimes it also means "platitude" or "truism," a phrase that is so common everyone thinks it's true, like "crime doesn't pay," or "all dogs go to heaven."

virtuoso

A virtuoso is an incredibly talented musician. You can also be a virtuoso in non-musical fields. A politician who helps pass a lot of bills might be called a legislative virtuoso. A baseball player who hits a lot of home runs is a slugging virtuoso. Usually, this word applies to music. It's very common for a talented pianist or guitarist to be called a virtuoso. Whatever your talent, it's a huge compliment to be called a virtuoso.

impetus

An impetus is the force behind something, whether it's a boulder rolling down a hill or a person making a decision. Very little would get done if there were no such thing as an impetus: an impetus is some kind of force that gets something or somebody moving. If you push a car that's out of gas, you're the impetus that's getting it moving. An impetus doesn't have to be physical. Advertisers hope their commercials will be an impetus to buy the product.

invocation

An invocation is an appeal to a higher power for help, such as a prayer for serenity or a plea to the rain gods during a drought. An invocation often refers to an appeal to something not of this world, such as a god or a spirit, but it can involve an appeal to any higher power, even one that is flesh and blood. During a close basketball game, for example, you may mutter an invocation to the former NBA star Michael Jordan asking that your team's star player somehow gain the power to hit his jump shots. The word invocation can also be used in the sense of invoking a notable authority to support a position. If you say, "But my mom said I should never wear cheap clothing," for example, that is an invocation of your mom in support of your desire to buy designer jeans.

ethical

For someone who is honest and follows good moral standards, use the adjective ethical. An ethical teacher will grade your papers honestly — even if she catches you sticking your tongue out at her. Ethical comes from the Greek ethos "moral character" and describes a person or behavior as right in the moral sense - truthful, fair, and honest. Sometimes the word is used for people who follow the moral standards of their profession. An ethical lawyer or doctor does not try to take advantage of the client or patient's unfortunate situation. If something has happened and you are not sure what the right thing to do is, you are having an ethical dilemma.

pinnacle

Going as far into the sky as you can go on foot, you'll reach the highest point, or pinnacle, of the Himalayas. A successful climb like that might also become the pinnacle, or peak, of your success. Two synonyms for pinnacle also start with the letter "p," "peak" and "point." A pinnacle can be a physical thing, like the top of a high mountain or the antenna on the very top of a building, or it can be a high point that can't be measured with a ruler, like an achievement or a goal. Whatever the pinnacle is, reaching it is almost always a completion of something where you have gone the highest you can go. "Acme" is a great synonym for pinnacle.

idiosyncrasy

If a person has an idiosyncrasy, he or she has a little quirk, or a funny behavior, that makes him or her different. If you only say goodbye in French, never in English, that would be an idiosyncrasy. Idio seems like it means stupid, but really it is Latin for "one's own," as an idiosyncrasy is one's own particular, usually odd, behavior. Putting salt in your hot chocolate or needing the light on to sleep or tapping your head while you think are all idiosyncrasies. A machine such as a DVD player has an idiosyncrasy if you have to do something weird to it to make it work like having to bang it on the back left-hand side to stop it from skipping.

assiduous

If you call someone assiduous, it's a compliment. It means they're careful, methodical and very persistent. Good detectives are classically assiduous types. Assiduous comes from two Latin words: assiduus, meaning "busy incessant, continual or constant," and assidere, meaning "to sit down to" something. (Funnily enough, we also get the word sedentary, meaning someone who doesn't move around much, a lazy couch potato, from this same last word.) Although we tend to think of sedentary types as being the very opposite of assiduous ones, many assiduous activities (like writing, thinking, or detective work) are best done sitting in a chair.

perspicacity

If you devote long hours to the arts of attention and analysis, you might develop the perspicacity required to become a really good detective. Perspicacity comes from the Latin word for penetrating sight. If you have perspicacity, you are good at discerning what is really going on where others might only see surface clues. Perspicacity is a quality that many professionals need, from detectives to doctors to therapists. If someone is perspicacious, we might also say they have a "shrewd mind," or a "keen intelligence."

ensconce

If you ensconce yourself somewhere, you settle in for quite a while, such as when you're home with the flu and ensconce yourself on the couch with the remote control, tissues, your phone, and a big glass of orange juice. Ensconce dates to the 1580s, when it literally meant "to cover with a fort." It isn't quite clear whether the word can be traced to French or Dutch, which has a word schans that describes "earthwork." Today, you don't need a protective structure like a fort in order to be ensconced, but the idea of being surrounded is key to the word's meaning.

modicum

If you want to describe a small amount of something, try modicum. If you have a modicum of interest in something, you are a little bit interested. Modicum comes from the Latin modicus, for moderate, and modus, for measure. We often use it to mean "any at all," as if "If you had a modicum of sense (i.e. any sense at all), you'd be able to see that the pencil you've spent the last five minutes looking for is tucked behind your ear."

ailment

If you've got a rash or a persistent cough, you can call that an ailment. Some other common ailments are allergies or chronic headaches. They can be a real pain. Literally.

modulate

Is your friend's voice so high-pitched that people are starting to stare? Sweetly ask, "Can you modulate your voice, please? To modulate is to change the pitch of something. You can modulate things other than sound — it still refers to something that's being adjusted. Schools might modulate the number of students in the hallways at the same time by having each grade level start and end each at a different time. Traffic lights can modulate the number of cars that pass through an intersection in a certain interval. Computer modems modulate signals to allow computers to transfer information. In fact, modem gets its name from modulate/demodulate.

mercurial

Mercurial describes someone whose mood or behavior is changeable and unpredictable, or someone who is clever, lively, and quick. With a mercurial teacher, you never know where you stand. Mercury was the ancient Roman god of commerce and messenger of the gods, and the planet Mercury was named after the Roman god. In Middle English, this adjective meant "relating to the planet or god Mercury" and derives from Latin mercuriālis, from Mercurius "Mercury." A mercurial personality has the unpredictability associated with the god Mercury or, in astrology, is supposedly influenced by the planet.

pastoral

Pastoral refers to the countryside, particularly an idealized view of the country. If you draw cheery pictures with lush grassy fields, calm skies, a farm animal or two, and some flowers, you draw pastoral scenes. Pastoral can also mean something done by, you guessed it, a pastor. If a pastor writes a letter to his congregation, it is a pastoral letter. How are they related? Shepherds, of course. Pastors are often referred to as shepherds of their flock (i.e., the members of their church congregation). Actual shepherds, the kind who tend sheep, work in pastoral settings.

Raucous .

Raucous means unpleasantly loud, or behaving in a noisy and disorderly way. It can be hard to give an oral report in the front of a classroom when the kids in the back are being raucous. Raucous is often used to refer to loud laughter, loud voices, or a loud party, all of which can be harsh or unpleasant. Near synonyms are strident and rowdy. This adjective is from Latin raucus "hoarse." Think of raucous as people whose hoarseness can't come on too soon.

sinuous

Sinuous means winding or curvy. If you get lost on a sinuous mountain path, you'll need a compass or a GPS to figure out which direction leads back to camp. The adjective sinuous comes from the Latin word sinus, which means to curve or bend. If you have a sinuous body, then you have lots of curves. Snakes use sinuous movements to travel. Live Oak trees have particularly sinuous branches. We usually use sinuous to talk about physical shapes of bodies or pathways, but you could also describe someone's logic as sinuous if it wanders all over the place when they're trying to explain something.

incessant

Something incessant continues without interruption. When you're on a cross-country flight, it's tough to tolerate the incessant crying of a baby. In Latin, cessare means 'to stop,' so when you add the negative prefix in- you get a word meaning never stopping. A near synonym is continual, but something incessant is more relentless; ceaseless is a closer synonym. It's rare to find incessant used in a positive way. Even incessant sunshine would grow boring.

subsume

Subsume means to absorb or include. A successful company might subsume a failing competitor through a merger, or love may subsume you in the early stages of a romance. Subsume is a verb that comes from the Latin words sub, which means "from below," and sumere, which means "take." So subsume means "to take from below," like a sneak attack by some kind of deep-sea creature. Sailors and scuba divers should beware of monsters from the blackest depths waiting to subsume them.

hamlet

That small settlement you pass through along a country road is not just a cluster of houses. It's a hamlet. You may be familiar with Shakespeare's famous play describing the plight of the doomed prince Hamlet. Remember the meaning of the common noun hamlet this way: Picture an alternate Hamlet cheerfully living in a small village in the country (a hamlet), without family tension or the need to avenge his father. Does that help?

satiety

The noun satiety means a state of fullness. Eating a huge, delicious meal will give you a satisfying feeling of satiety. You don't often hear people using the word satiety in casual conversation. It's more often a technical term used by nutrition experts when they discuss the diet issues of populations or individual patients. Satiety is a state of being completely full, but the related adjective satiated is much more commonly used to describe someone who has eaten enough. The Latin root of satiety is satis, which means "enough."

stint

The noun stint means a set amount of time in which you do something — often work of some sort. "She served a stint in the army, followed by a stint in an office setting, before settling on a career as a lounge singer." Unlike a project or vocation, a stint can refer to the stretch of time spent doing a particular job. You apply for a job, but you refer to your past stint in the Peace Corps. As a verb, stint means to be sparing or frugal, or restrict in a stingy manner ("to skimp"). "The school board chose to make cuts at the administrative level, rather than stint on the children's education."

nostalgia

Think of the noun nostalgia when you long for the good old days of the past. The noun nostalgia was invented by a Swiss doctor in the late 1600s. He put together the Greek nostos "homecoming" and algos "pain, distress" as a literal translation of the German Heimweh "homesickness." Originally, it was a medical diagnosis for mercenary soldiers. Today, it describes a bittersweet longing for the past. Think of the dreamy way your grandpa tells stories of his childhood — he's got nostalgia.

allocate

To allocate is to set aside a certain amount of money for an expense. You usually hear about the government allocating funds for education or the military, but you may personally allocate some of your allowance to buying comic books. Aside from money, a common thing to allocate is time: "The old woman in the shoe had so many children she could only allocate 2.7 minutes per day to talk to each one individually." Resources are also often allocated. Teachers, for example, are continuously allocating their year's supply of resources so they don't run out of glue sticks and paper before the end of the school year.

impious

To be impious is to be disrespectful of god or duty. When someone is being impious they are doing things that their church, synagogue, temple, mosque, school principal, government or parents would find unacceptable. When you don't show reverence for religion or god, you are impious. The adjective impious is related to the word piety, which means religious reverence. To be impious is to be without piety. Being impious is similar to being blasphemous, but it's a little more passive to be impious, while blasphemy is more actively insulting. Also, when you act out against tradition or dutifulness, you could be considered impious. If you dodge a military draft, you will likely be considered impious.

venerable

To be venerable is to be admired and respected because of your status or age. You become venerable by achieving great things or just by living long enough. The adjective venerable means "admired" and "respected" — it should describe how you feel about old folks and bosses, for example. It describes the wise old man at the top of the mountain who tells you the meaning of life. As a noun, the Venerable refers to someone high up in a religion, usually Christian. In fact, Saint Bede, who is sometimes called the Father of English History, is often referred to as Bede the Venerable.

blanch

To blanch is to turn pale, usually as the result of a physical or psychological shock. Nineteenth century literary heroines were frequently blanching — before they fainted, that is. Blanch has also taken on the more general meaning of to cause shock in general. A government can blanch at following through a particular reform, without the implication that an entire cabinet actually turned white. You can blanch an inanimate object, too, when you deprive it of its natural color. White toilet paper has been blanched by using bleach, for example, though environmentalists blanch at the thought.

gouge

To gouge can mean to make a hole or dent in something, or to swindle or steal by overcharging. If your local gas station raises prices because a storm is coming, you may say that the station owner is gouging you — and that's illegal. The verb gouge means to cut or carve. You can use special chisels to gouge linoleum for interesting design in printing. As a noun, a gouge is the tool you would use — instead of a flat-head chisel, a gouge has a trough — to make the gouge marks of the design. Another meaning of the verb gouge is an indentation in the surface of something. If you're not careful with the screwdriver, you'll accidentally gouge a hole in the wall.

sidle

To sidle is to walk, but in a way that's casual, quiet, and a little sneaky. If you want to surprise someone, sidle up to them and say, "Boo!" There's a TV show where a character's coworker has a habit of walking so softly that he constantly startles her — she never notices him coming. So of course she buys wrestling shoes and tries to sidle back! Sidling is a type of walking that is super quiet. If you want to leave a party without people noticing, sidle out the door. Sidling is a good way to slip away.

truncated

Truncated is an adjective that means "cut short," like a truncated picnic, caused by the sudden downpour. The word comes from the root truncate, which is of Latin origin, and means "cut off." When an object is truncated, its end or point is cut off, like a truncated arrow that is safe for kids to play with. Truncated can also refer to something that ends earlier than planned — everyone was angry at the truncated concert until they learned that the singer had broken his leg when he fell on stage.

indigenous

Use indigenous to describe a plant, animal or person that is native or original to an area. Though Switzerland is known for its chocolates, chocolate, which comes from the cocoa plant, is indigenous to South America. Indigenous, aboriginal, and native all mean the same thing. Aboriginal, however, is commonly used in connection with Australia, and native with North America. The most neutral of the three terms, indigenous comes from the Latin word, indigena meaning "a native." An indigenous ceremony or religion is one traditionally used by a certain group of people.

lascivious

Use lascivious to describe a person's behavior that is driven by thoughts of sex. If someone gives you a lascivious smile, they've got only one thing in mind. Latin-based lascivious and the Old English word lust both share the same Indo-European root las- "to be eager, wanton." The much older word lust originally meant "desire, pleasure" and over time developed to mean sexual desire. Lascivious, on the other hand, entered the English language in the early 15th century complete with the meaning "lewd, driven by sexual desire."

quixotic

Use quixotic for someone or something that is romantic and unrealistic, or possessed by almost impossible hopes. Your quixotic task is easy to understand, if difficult to achieve: establish world peace.What a wonderful word quixotic is! While it is most often used to mean equally impractical and idealistic, it also has the sense of romantic nobility. Its source is from the great Spanish novel "Don Quixote," whose title character is given to unrealistic schemes and great chivalry. In the middle of a recession and high unemployment, it would be quixotic to imagine that you could quit your job and find another easily.

sagacious

Use the formal adjective sagacious to describe someone who is wise and insightful like an advisor to the president or a Supreme Court justice. Someone like an inspirational leader or an expert in a field who seeks knowledge and has foresight can be described as sagacious. If you comment on something at a deeper level, you are making a sagacious observation. The word is a descendent of Latin sagus "prophetic" and is related to the Old English word seek. Synonyms include discerning, insightful and another formal word perspicacious.

figment

When something is a figment of your imagination, it means that you made it up. It's something that might seem real, but is really not. What does a fig- (not the fruit fig) have to do with something made up inside your head? It has to do with Latin, as usual — both figment and fiction derive from the same Latin word. But it might help to think of figment as a fig leaf — a figment is something flimsy and easily blown away.

abnegation

When you purposely deny yourself something, especially in favor of the needs of others, you would describe this act as an abnegation. This has to be your choice, not the choice of others — so it's not abnegation when your parents don't let you stay out all night. The noun abnegation definitely has the sense of self-denial and self-sacrifice. So you wouldn't use abnegation to refer to the fact that you are giving up candy in order to eat more fruit. Instead, you would use the word if you were giving up desserts in order to donate to charity all the money you saved by not eating them for a month or two. Some religions have fast days and you would definitely use abnegation if you've given up all food or something you like to eat in order to follow the rules and requirements of your beliefs.

therapeutic

Whether you're talking about a therapeutic drug or a therapeutic exercise plan, something that is therapeutic helps to heal or to restore health. The adjective therapeutic can be traced all the way back to the Greek word therapeutikos (from therapeuein, meaning "to attend" or "to treat"). Although the word relates to healing or soothing, therapeutic isn't reserved only for drugs or medical treatments. You've probably heard particular activities referred to as therapeutic, which just means that doing that activity makes you feel rejuvenated. You might consider shopping for shoes, for example, to be a therapeutic activity — at least until the credit card bill arrives.

incipience

beginning to exist or to be apparent

dromedary

one-humped camel of the hot deserts of northern Africa and southwestern Asia

perspicacious

perspicacious is an adjective that means "shrewd" and "wise." A perspicacious child can't be fooled when her parents try to keep a secret by talking in Pig Latin. The adjective perspicacious is a long word for a short definition: "keen" or "shrewd." This word is descended from the Latin word perspicere, which means "to look closely." In other words, if you look closely at something you are paying attention to it and know it well. A definition of perspicacious that is out of date but still relevant is "having keen eyesight" and people who can see clearly are also aware and attentive!