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10 Great Words You Should Know and Use – Fall 2015

10 Great Words You Should Know and Use – Fall 2015

Last updated on: October 6, 2015 at 6:59 am by Tim Suttle

10 Great Words You Should Know and Use – Fall 2015 2015-10-06T06:59:52-06:00 Tim Suttle

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“Please, don’t torture me with cliches. If you’re going to try to intimidate me, have the courtesy to go away for a while, acquire a better education, improve your vocabulary, and come back with some fresh metaphors.” ― Dean Koontz

One doesn’t have a good vocabulary; one maintains a good vocabulary. Words come into use, they fall away. Writers get tracked into patterns of speech that amount to a regression toward the mean. We have to work diligently at the use of language. It is the rock we chisel. So here are ten words to spark your imagination…

Adumbrate

a-dəm-brāt (v.) to sketch out in a vague way.
Use: “Mark abhorred the smug assurance with which second-rate left-wing critics find adumbrations of dialectical materialism in everyone who ever wrote from Homer and Shakespeare to whomever they happen to like in recent times.” – Thomas Merton

palliate

pa-lē-āt (v.) to reduce the severity of .
Use: “Organizations for writers palliate the writer’s loneliness but I doubt if they improve his writing.” – Ernest Hemingway

solicitous

sə-lis-ə-dəs (adj.) showing interest, attention, concern.
Use: “Slavery is such an atrocious debasement of human nature, that its very extirpation, if not performed with solicitous care, may sometimes open a source of serious evils.” – Benjamin Franklin

legerdemain

le-jər-də-mān (n.) slight-of-hand, trickery through skillful use of the hands.
Use: “As mystery answered all general purposes, miracle followed as an occasional auxiliary. The former served to bewilder the mind, the latter to puzzle the senses. The one was the lingo, the other the legerdemain.” – Thomas Paine

officious

ə-fish-əs (adj.) offering unwanted advice or services in a domineering or annoying fashion.
Use: ““Jack Torrance thought: Officious little prick.” – Steven King, The Shining

variegated

vair-ee-i-gey-tid (adj.) distinctly marked in appearance or color
Use: ““Second hand books are wild books, homeless books; they have come together in vast flocks of variegated feather, and have a charm which the domesticated volumes of the library lack.” – Virginia Woolfe

wanton

wänt-tn (adj.) uncalled for, malicious, undisciplined, lewd, lustful
Use: ““As flies to wanton boys are we to the gods. They kill us for their sport.” – William Shakespeare

prurient

pro͝or-ē-ənt (adj.) encouraging or possessing an extraordinary interest in sex
Use: “When the prurient and the impotent attack you, be sure you are right.” – Oscar Wilde

pathos

pey-thos (n.) an emotion of sympathy or pity.
Use: “People talk of the pathos and failure of plain women; but it is a more terrible thing that a beautiful woman may succeed in everything but womanhood.” – G.K. Chesterton

imprecation

im-pri-key-shuhn (n.) a spoken curse.
Use: ““As the popularity of science-fiction increases, so inevitably does the volume of clownish imprecation against it.” – Edmund Crispin

*If you are interested in reading a few more “10 Great Words” posts here are a few links:

Ten Great Words – Part 01

Ten Great Words – Part 02

Ten Great Words – Part 03

Ten Great Words – Part 04

Ten Great Words – Part 05

Ten Great Words – Part 06

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