There are a bunch of words in the English language that I really like for many reasons, but particularly that they simply sound neat. I have started this list for your enjoyment. Please feel free to send me your favorite words by clicking here. Please enclose the definition of such terms as you submit. Please limit them to REAL words and not made up ones no matter how cool. (I may do a page of the later sometime.) Thanks to the members of the Gunsite Alumni Group, API@, and especially Jeff Tappan for suggesting many of these words.
Abscond - to leave quickly and secretly, and hide
Absquatulate - To flee.
Accouterments - accessories
Acerebal - without a brain.
Acnestis - the part of your body you can't reach to
scratch.
Acrimonious - resentful and angry;
full of or displaying anger and resentment.
Adulation - extravagant praise
Anomaly - irregularity; something
that deviates from the norm or from expectations; peculiarity; something strange
or difficult to identify or classify
Anosognosia - The total unawareness of one's own disease,
disability or defect. (The mental condition of socialists?)
Arcane - secret or hidden
Asinine - failing to exercise intelligence or judgment;
ridiculously below average rationality; Of, pertaining to, or characteristic of
donkeys (or politicians?)
Autochthonous - indigenous, native to a place
Avaricious - characterized by greed
Baliwick - something a person knows a lot about.
Beelzebub - the devil
Boondoggle - to carry out valueless work to give the impression that you are busy.
Brouhaha - a stir; a fuss or uproar
Cachinate - to laugh very loudly
Cantankerous - ill tempered, quarrelsome
Castigate - to subject to severe
punishment, reproof, or criticism
Chagrin - a feeling of embarrassment or humiliation
Coddiwomple - to travel purposely toward an as-yet-unknown destination
Conflagration- an immense fire
Concupiscence - strong sexual desire; lust
Cornucopia - an overflowing store, abundance
Crepuscular - appearing or active at
twilight
Curmudgeon - cantankerous old codger; surly, ill-mannered,
bad-tempered fellow
"The etymology of the word "curmudgeon" is obscure; in fact, unknown. But through frequent recent usage, the term is acquiring a broader meaning, which our dictionaries have not yet caught up to. Nowadays, is likely to refer to anyone who hates hypocrisy, cant, sham, dogmatic ideologies, the pretenses and evasions of euphemism, and has the nerve to point out unpleasant facts and take the trouble to impale these sins on the skewer of humor and roast them over the fires of empiric fact, common sense, and native intelligence. In this nation of bleating sheep and braying jackasses, it then becomes an honor to be labeled "curmudgeon." via Edward Abbey (1927-1989), A Voice Crying In The Wilderness
Dastardly - despicably cowardly
Discombobulated - very confused
Disingenuous - not straight forward, crafty
Dissemble - To conceal one's true motives
Doppelganger - someone who looks exactly like someone else.
Dubbined - an application of tallow or oil for
dressing leather.
Dudgeon - a sullen, angry, or indignant humor
Eclectic - consisting of components from diverse sources
Egregious - negatively exceptional
Eleftheriaphobia - fearful of
freedom
Elucidate - to clarify
Ephemeral - lasting only briefly.
Eponymous - one for whom or which something is or is
believed to be named
Eschew - to shun; to avoid
Esoteric - designed for or understood by the
specially initiated alone
Esurient - hungry; greedy
Eumatic - the quality in a manually operated device whereby it is totally
correlated to the human being who has to use it."
Exacerbate - to make a situation worse than it was.
Exasperate - to irritate or make angry
Excoriate - to censure severely, or to strip skin from a
person or animal
Exigency - an urgent need or demand
Fandango - party with dancing; often used in
other ways, as in "a Colt fandango" for a shooting affray
Fatuous - obnoxiously stupid, vacantly silly, content in
one's foolishness
Feckless - weak, ineffective, worthless, irresponsible
Flummoxed - flabbergasted (itself just as good a word)
Fortnight - a unit of time equivalent to fourteen days
Fortuitous - happening by chance
Frisson - a sudden strong feeling of excitement or fear
Fructify - to bear fruit or to make fruitful or
productive
Funereal - gloomy; very slow;
solemn; mournful or dismal.
Gesticulate - using hand and arm movements during a conversation
Glean -
to collect bit by bit
Gossamer -
something delicate or flimsy
Harridan - a scolding, vicious woman; hag; shrew
Heterodox - holding unorthodox opinions
Hornswoggle - to deceive or trick
Humdinger -something extraordinary
Hyperbole -an exagerated statement used as a figure of speech
Inimitable -
defying imagination, matchless
Insidious - harmful but
enticing, seductive
Irascible - quickly aroused to anger
Invidious - tending to cause animosity or
envy
Jejune - lacking nutritive value or devoid of significance or interest dull , or
juvenile
Kakistocracy - government run by the
worst element of a society
Kerfuffle - a disorderly outburst or tumult
Lackadaisical - lack of interest
Lapalissian - meaning something evident, obvious, clear to anyone
Lassitude - lack of vitality or energy
Lethargic - indifference or apathy
Loquacious - very talkative
Lugubrious - excessively mournful
Lumpen - a member of the crude and uneducated lowest class of society
Lustrum - a period of 5 years.
Luthier - a maker of stringed instruments, as violins
Nefarious - extremely wicked or infamous
Nucivorous - a nut eater (like a squirrel)
Meander - to wander
Menagerie - a collection of live wild animals
Mercantile - A general store
Misology - The fear or distrust of reason or logic.
Mollycoddle - To treat with an absurd amount of attention.
Niggardly -
stingy, scanty (for the upset, politically correct folks, the word
derives from nigard, of Scandinavian origin)
Nihilarian -
somebody who engages in useless work
Obfuscate - to confuse with the
purpose of deceiving
Obsequious - a smooth, toadying
sycophant
Obstreperous - Noisily and stubbornly defiant
Opprobrium - reproach mingled with contempt
Oxymoron - a combination of contradictory or
incongruous words
Pareidolia - a psychological phenomenon involving a vague and random
stimulus (often an image or sound) being perceived as significant.
Pavane - a stately court dance by couples that was introduced from southern Europe into England in the 16th
century
Pedantic - obsessed with minor details and rules, or with academic
learning
Penury - extreme poverty
Peregrination - a traveling from place to place
Perfidious
- treacherous
Pestiferous - bearing or bringing disease; infected with or
contaminated by a pestilential disease
Pestilential - plague causing
Plethora - superabundance
Pleonasm - the use of more words than are necessary
to express an idea; redundancy.
Poltroon - an abject coward.
Prestidigitation - the art doing something so skillfully that people are
deceived as to what they see
Prevaricating - saying something that is not completely false, but which
is intended to convey a false meaning.
Provenance (also provenience) - the place of origin of something
or the source and ownership history of a work of art or literature, or of
an archaeological find
Provisions - a stock of necessary supplies
Pugnacious - having a quarrelsome disposition
Pulchritudinous (derived from the noun Pulchritude) used of
persons only; having great physical beauty.
Pusillanimous - lacking in courage and resolution; contemptibly fearful; cowardly.
Quacksalver - someone who pretends they have knowledge or a skill they really
don't have
Quagmire - a difficult or precarious situation
Quandary -a state of uncertainty
Quotidian - commonplace, reoccurring
Quell - to suppress or put down forcibly
Rapacious - greedy, ravenous, or taking by force, plundering
Rumpus - a noisy clamor
Sagacious - possessing or showing sound judgment and keen
perception.
Sanctimonious - hypocritically pious.
Salubrious - favorable to health or well being
Scalawag -
a white Southerner acting in support of the reconstruction governments after the
American Civil War often for private gain. A reprobate
Scuttlebutt - gossip or rumor. Also
a drinking fountain or water barrel on a ship
Serendipity - the effect by which one
accidentally discovers something fortunate, especially while looking for
something else entirely
Sheeple - those people to wimpy and afraid to stand up for themselves.
Shenanigans - prankishness, mischief
Skullduggery - devious, dishonest, or unscrupulous behavior or activity
Slake - satisfy, quench
Smarmy - revealing or marked by a smug, ingratiating, or false earnestness or of low sleazy taste or quality
Specious - having a false look of truth or genuineness
Sophomania - a delusional state in which the suffer believes that they
are of exceptional intelligence
Surreptitious - sneaky, stealthy, having the
ability to creep up on someone undetected.
Sycophant - someone who sucks up to someone in authority
Synergism - the state when two or more things together achieve
something greater that can be accomplished individually
Syzygy - the nearly straight-line
configuration of three celestial bodies (as the sun, moon, and earth during a
solar or lunar eclipse) in a gravitational system
Thwart - to frustrate or oppose something
Tintinnabulation - "
the ringing or sounding of bells
Transmogrify - to change or alter greatly, often with humorous or
grotesque effects.
Ubiquitous - seeming to be everywhere at the same time, omnipresent
Ucalegon - one of the Elders of Troy, whose house was set
on fire by the Achaeans when they sacked the city. Now, a neighbor whose house is on fire
Uxorious - excessively or irrationally submissive or devoted to one's
wife
Vacuous - emptied of or
lacking content, 2marked by lack of ideas or intelligence
Verbose - given to using an excess amount of
unnecessary words. It could also be a synonym for long-winded
Verisimilitude - the quality of seeming to be true
Yammer - to utter or say something in a complaining tone
Widgeon - a species of brown duck
Zephyr - the west wind or something that is airy or insubstantial.
Please email comments or questions to Fr. Frog by clicking here.
| Return to Fr. Frog's Homepage | |
Disclaimer
As far as I know all the information presented above is correct and I have attempted to ensure that it is. However, I am not responsible for any errors, omissions, or damages resulting from the use or misuse of this information, nor for you doing something stupid with it. (Don't you hate these disclaimers? So do I, but there are people out there who refuse to be responsible for their own actions and who will sue anybody to make a buck.)
Updated 2022-09-21 @ 1425