# Vocabulary



## Olly Buckle (May 19, 2012)

I always carry a couple of pencils, two in case one breaks, pencils because they don’t leak in the pocket and because they can be rubbed out.

Rubbed out? Yes, because when I am reading and come across a word I am unfamiliar with, or unsure of the exact definition of, I make a note of the page number in the front of the book and a small mark on the page. Later, at home, I look them up then re-read the context, then I rub it all out so the next reader does not have to put up with it. So why the thread? Well I thought it would be good to share my new words.

Synecdoche;
A figure of speech in which a part is used for the whole (as hand for sailor), the whole for a part (as the law for police officer), the specific for the general (as cutthroat for assassin), the general for the specific (as thief for pickpocket), or the material for the thing made from it (as steel for sword)


Ellipsis;
The omission from speech or writing of a word or words that are superfluous or be understood from contextual clues.
A set of dots indicating such an omission.

Homiletic;
With an ‘s’ homiletics is the art of preaching. From context “... homilectic equations such as life: a journey, death: sleep ...” I take it to mean ‘to do with preaching.

Orache;
A weed with spinach like edible leaves.

Skirrets;
Plant sometimes grown for its edible, sweet tasting, roots.

Act of attaintment, or bill of attainder;
Finding a person guilty by act of parliament, or a bill presented to parliament to be voted on for such an act, an alternative to a jury, usually used for high treason.

What have you come across lately?


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## Tiamat (May 20, 2012)

I just learned a new one today, courtesy of Writ using it in the debate forum:

Extranality - A consequence of an economic activity that is experienced by unrelated third parties.


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## squidtender (May 22, 2012)

It's pretty rare that I run across a word that I don't know. Not because my vocabulary is that big, but because most people shy away from using obscure words. I did find one last night in the David Eddings book I'm reading.

Recalcitrant: 
Adjective:
Having an obstinately uncooperative attitude toward authority


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## Skodt (May 22, 2012)

I actually have a few documents on my computer and some in a notebook of just definitions. I read a lot by Darwin, Dawkins, and other sceintist that used a lot of words that went over my head.


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## Cefor (May 22, 2012)

Olly Buckle said:


> Synecdoche;
> A figure of speech in which a part is used for the whole (as hand for sailor), the whole for a part (as the law for police officer), the specific for the general (as cutthroat for assassin), the general for the specific (as thief for pickpocket), or the material for the thing made from it (as steel for sword)



Thanks for this one, Olly, because I can use that in my upcoming English Language A level exam on Language Change. Plus, I love the technical terms for Language change as it is.

Here are a couple that I doubt are in everyone's common vocabulary:

Amelioration;
The name given to the process by which a word takes on a different, more positive, meaning than it had previously, thereby gaining status. For example, pretty once meant sly, whereas now it means attractive.

Pejoration;
Where a word takes on a different, more negative, meaning than it had previously, thereby losing status. For example, idiot once meant private citizen, whereas now it is someone who is being stupid.

There are other semantic shift terms, but they are pretty self explanatory (Weakening, Narrowing, Broadening).

Here's one that I didn't know until fairly recently:

Obstreperous;
Noisy and difficult to control: "the boy is cocky and obstreperous".


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## Olly Buckle (Jul 18, 2012)

Rebarbative :-
  I thought it was going to be something to do with beards, and it is, but it means repellent. unattractive and comes from aa word meaning two men squaring up face to face, or beard to beard.


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## Sam (Jul 18, 2012)

Inveigle - persuade by deception or flattery. 

Didactic - in the manner of teaching, especially so as to be patronising. 

Malefactor - someone who commits a crime or some other wrong.

Plenipotentiary - having full power to take independent action.


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## philistine (Jul 18, 2012)

interlarded - to insert something foreign into: interlarded the narrative with witty remarks


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## Olly Buckle (Jul 18, 2012)

> Didactic - in the manner of teaching, especially so as to be patronising.


That's familiar, Sam. I have been called that before.


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## philistine (Jul 18, 2012)

Olly Buckle said:


> That's familiar, Sam. I have been called that before.



By the bye, there's a great film called _Synecdoche, New York_, starring Philip Seymour Hoffman. It's definitely a 'what the bloody hell did I just watch?' film.


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## Olly Buckle (Aug 1, 2012)

Eschatology: The study of the final things, death, the end of  the world etc.

Enthymeme: An argument of which part is missing, eg. ‘With a name like Oliver I am bound to want more.’ The whole argument would be “Oliver Twist wanted more, people with the same name want the same thing, my name is the same as his, therefore I want more

Samizdat: Self publishing, from a movement in the old USSR that copied forbidden books by hand and distributed them

Umbrageous literally , giving shade, figuratively someone who is inclined to take umbrage [offence]

Apothegm: A concise maxim or saying

Kerygma: Preaching, stating religious truths.

Enargia; An extremely vivid description, usually visual.

Strophic: In verses which go with the same melody; in the form of the first of a pair of verses whose form is repeated.


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## Olly Buckle (Sep 27, 2012)

eupeptic, having a good digestive system, the air of health and vitality that comes from that.


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## Bloggsworth (Sep 27, 2012)

philistine said:


> interlarded - to insert something foreign into: interlarded the narrative with witty remarks



Sounds like an Americanisation of the simple larded, why use two syllables when we could use four - Derived from the simple act of adding lard by inserting it under the skin of meat about to be roasted.

At work I was once asked to rewrite a letter to a client, my boss told me that I had used several five and 2 six syllable words and that he wouldn't understand it, such is modern education.

I am a great fan of the late Peter O'Donnell's _Modesty Blaise_ series of books in which Modesty and Willy Garvin play a word game; each uses a new word in context and the other, the next day has to use a sentence which demonstrates that they had noticed the word, found its meaning and understood how to use it correctly - Strikes me that it would be a fun game between literate friends; it is how I learned the word palimpsest.

When BASIC was the computer language de nos jours, the word concatenation was common parlance among the cognoscenti; chuck it into a sentence nowadays and you get a blank look. Our last hope for broadening the vocabulary of the general populace, Terry Wogan, has retired from the airwaves we are untethered, cast adrift with only the anodyne for company...


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## Olly Buckle (Sep 27, 2012)

"concatenation" Why not simply say linked up?
People have been railing against the deterioration of language and education since the year dot, generally old men, this is from Swift,

"My Lord I do here, in the name of all the learned and polite persons of the nation, complain to Your Lordship as First Minister, that our language is extremely imperfect; that its daily improvements are by no means in proportion to its daily corruptions; that the prtenders to polish and rwefine ithave chieflymultiplied abuses and absurdities; and that in many instances it offends against every part of grammar.

I would be willing to bet there were people saying "That Chaucer and all his modern stuff, give me Beowulf any day." 

Anyway, here is one that I just found this morning,

Feck

No nothing to do with Father Ted in this context, it was John Buchan, it is from Scots and means 'The greater part'. "We'll leave the feck behind" was the context. Apparently from the same root as 'effect' and 'feckless'.


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## Deleted member 49710 (Sep 27, 2012)

Olly Buckle said:


> "concatenation" Why not simply say linked up?


Because sometimes you need a noun instead of an adjective
Because maybe you already used the word "linked" earlier in the paragraph and you need something else
Because it's got a good rhythm and you can dance to it
Because why not?

I like big words.


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## Bloggsworth (Sep 27, 2012)

Concatenation has a very precise meaning, it doesn't mean linked, joined at the hip or anything so vague; it means joined in a continuous meaningful manner, like Llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyrndrobwllllantysiliogogogoch (St Mary's church in the hollow of the white hazel near to the rapid whirlpool and the church of St Tysilio of the red cave), or many German technical words. 

Imprecision leads to miscommunication... 

It seems that this site can't handle a word as long as LlanfairPG, it inserts a space before the gogogoch, or somewhere else according to its whim, clearly concatination is not in its spellchecker.


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## Olly Buckle (Nov 19, 2012)

egregious; I knew it wasn't a good thing to say of someone, but I wasn't sure in which way. It means outstandingly bad, outrageously bad in the most obvious of ways, blatantly bad.


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## Bloggsworth (Nov 19, 2012)

Gustative - Relating to the ability to taste sweet, sour etc.


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## Jon M (Nov 20, 2012)

Susurrus - a whispering, murmuring sound


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## Olly Buckle (Feb 16, 2013)

I have been looking a few up prior to rubbing them out and passing the books on.

Gambeson
A padded jacket or an armoured jacket, later it came to mean a jacket you wore underneath and hung armour on but that’s rarer. It doesn’t sound that practical, I guess there were better ways.

Sybarite
A self indulgent pleasure seeker, it was a Roman Emperor, one of the less interesting ones.

Acerbities
It means sournesses, acidities, but as of character or words, so metaphorically.

Hubris
Extreme pride or arrogance, or both. He insisted on having a capital letter.	

prime, of day, the first hour of daylight. “They marched overnight, arrived at dawn and occupied the high ground, taking up position during the prime.” It was a winning strategy.

contumacious, stubbornly and wilfully disobedient to authority, now who does that make me think of?

peregrinations, this should be useful to fantasy writers, it means wanderings or journeyings about from place to place, especially on foot

Eupeptic, I like this one, it is the opposite of dyspeptic, literally it means having a good digestion, metaphorically, being of cheerful disposition. 

Feck, no, not that, feck, it means the greater part, it’s a Scots word, I found it in John Buchan, Lord Tweedsmuir, from Glasgow and Canada.


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## AshenhartKrie (Feb 16, 2013)

Wight - Another word for spirit, entity or ghost. (That's my understanding of it anyway).

I was actually surprised and disappointed that I couldn't find it in either of my dictionaries, even though I know it is a word.

Another word that I am fond of is Zeitgeist, 'spirit of the times' is the dictionary definition.


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## moderan (Feb 16, 2013)

AshenhartKrie said:


> Wight - Another word for spirit, entity or ghost. (That's my understanding of it anyway).
> 
> I was actually surprised and disappointed that I couldn't find it in either of my dictionaries, even though I know it is a word.



Wight, in the original, is a living, sentient being. Tolkien made it a wraith and so that has passed into common understanding. George RR Martin followed suit and elaborated upon Professor Tolkien's interpretation.

I like the word sessile. And I like squamous. Plenty of folks eschew erudition, especially insofar as vocabulary, and do not do their homework. I, as Lasm observed, like big words, especially if they are apt. I especially like words that describe things, though. The entire concept of a lintel post, the word uvula or aglet, the precision of the word sententious when speaking of a certain shirt-stuffed sort of pontificating parrot, the derision afforded one when one's active vocabulary contains words such as churlish or popinjay-those are joy to me.
But then I read dictionaries for fun.


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## Bloggsworth (Feb 16, 2013)

_A few words from my personal collection_:

*Corybant:* 'kó-ri,bant. One of the priests of Cybele in Phrygia. The rites of the Corybants were accompanied by wild music, dancing, etc

*Scrimption*_ (n.)_ A small portion; a pittance; a little bit.

*Emicant*: Beaming forth; flashing

*Ambages*: Roundabout or mysterious ways of action/saying things

*Frigorific*: Causing cold; cooling or chilling

*Obnixely*: [fr. L. _obnixus_ strenuous, resolute] _obs. rare _earnestly, strenuously (cf. obnixiously)

*Dandiacal:* of, relating to, or suggestive of a dandy

*Flâneur*: Which has the basic meanings of "stroller", "lounger", "saunterer", "loafer".

*Fissiparous*: Having separated or advocating separation from another entity or policy or attitude. Biology: reproducing by fission

*Sprezzatura:* Italian _“A certain nonchalance, so as to conceal all art and make whatever one does or says appear to be without effort and almost without any thought about it_”.

*Senescent: *se·nes·cent: adj - aging: approaching an advanced age.

*Nonplussed: *Perplexed, confused, puzzled, discombobulated, bewildered, befuddled 

*Muniments* (law) deeds and other documentary evidence of title to land.

*Telepistemology* Telepistemology is the philosophical study and analysis of the merits and ethics of remote access technologies.

*Conniption *A display of bad temper.

*Liminal* (_psychology_) relating to the point (or threshold) beyond which a sensation becomes too faint to be experienced.

*limner *A painter or drawer of portraits.

*Casuistry*: Argumentation that is specious or excessively subtle and intended to be misleading. Moral philosophy based on the application of general ethical principles to resolve moral dilemmas.

*Calque*: An expression introduced into one language by translating it from another language, ‘superman' is a calque for the German 'Übermensch'

*Rhadamanthine*: Completely fair & just.

*Occultatio: *Talking about what you are “not talking about”.

*Anaphora*: repetition of words or a phrase at the beginning of a clause or sentence.

*Polysyndeton*: overuse of conjunctions.

*Ethos*: attempt to establish authority or connection with the audience.

*Occultatio*: a figure that brings in material while pretending not to talk about it.

*Tricolon*: three units of speech put in a row.

*Exordium*: (rhetoric) The introductory section of an oration or discourse.

*Nucleus*: Central core.

*Peroration*: final part of an argument. (Latin peroratio)


*Chiasmus* or *Antimetabole*: four terms in a criss-crossed relation to each other. 

*Tergiversation:* Falsification by means of vague or ambiguous language *or* The act of abandoning a party for cause.​


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## AshenhartKrie (Feb 16, 2013)

-hi fives moderan- 
Someone else who reads books about words for fun!

Even though none of the words never stick in my horribly holey brain.


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## moderan (Feb 16, 2013)

The way to remember them is to use them. I would take Bloggsworth's list and take it to the LM, and make it a prompt. Use five or six of them in a 650-word story. One or two of those words were unfamiliar to me, and I find that laudable (high fives Bloggsworth). I too remember the simple joys of Basic. But then I still know FORTRAN.


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## Olly Buckle (Feb 16, 2013)

These words are for knowing, not for using Moderan. There is no point using a word your reader will probably have to look up, it's only the freaks like me and Bloggsworth who do that, most people either skim over it or find another book.

There is a great quote from Mark Twain about not giving away ten cent words when the reader is perfectly willing to pay the same price for five cent ones.


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## Bloggsworth (Feb 16, 2013)

I used _sprauncy poodle-faker _in a poem 3 weeks ago, yes, I had to tell the group what they meant, but I bet they remember!


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## moderan (Feb 16, 2013)

Olly Buckle said:


> These words are for knowing, not for using Moderan. There is no point using a word your reader will probably have to look up, it's only the freaks like me and Bloggsworth who do that, most people either skim over it or find another book.
> 
> There is a great quote from Mark Twain about not giving away ten cent words when the reader is perfectly willing to pay the same price for five cent ones.


I disagree. They are for using. And they should be used in such a way that the reader does not have to resort to the dictionary all of the time. If someone wants to find another book, okay then. I'm not ever going to dumb down my vocabulary, and my love of using the precise word for the thing I wish to express in clarity, for the mundane, the commonplace. The words are the blood. Do not allow them to coagulate unused, allow them to flow freely and to mingle.


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## Grape Juice Vampire (Feb 16, 2013)

Exactly what moderan said. 

I enjoy learning new words, always have and since a young age I've viewed the dictionary as my friend (who was surprisingly useful in warding off bullies). I've even used a few of these before, and oddly, I like the blank looks I get. Also, I love looking through the archaic definitions of words and use the word in that way for my writing as well.


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## moderan (Feb 16, 2013)

Indeed. I once had occasion to use the phrase "mustachioed four-flusher" in an appropriate setting and at a propitious moment. Similarly, there was a time when I was able to hurl the epithet "strutting popinjay" at a former wf poster and have the shoe fit.
One cannot always have occasion for such niceties of personal expression. There are times when it is more appropriate to use the vernacular. But it is my belief that one should be able to _ascend_ to the _occurrence_. Preferably without consulting Monsieur Roget's volume.


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## Jon M (Feb 16, 2013)

Some of these words, like _senescent_, are beautiful sounding, but IMO too many words here are just plain ugly. 

I think _wan_ is probably my current favorite.


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## Staff Deployment (Feb 17, 2013)

Jon M said:


> I think _wan_ is probably my current favorite.



Oh god, _susurrus_ is my favourite. Just... the sibilance alone. Mmmm.

EDIT: And... and... its pronunciation _invokes its own meaning, dear lord I can't stand it._ This is now my new favourite word of all the words.


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## Bloggsworth (Feb 17, 2013)

Now the New Year reviving old Desires
The thoughtful Soul to Solitude retires
Where the white hand of Moses on the bough
Puts out, and Jesus from the Ground *suspires*.


Same root.​


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## Staff Deployment (Feb 17, 2013)

Bloggsworth said:


> *suspires*



highlight
click *define*
...

"Literary breathe."

thank you, Apple Dictionary, for that formidably unambiguous definition


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