Vocabulary Week 1

Vocabulary Week 28 GoldWord 1: Jaunt Def: To make a usually short journey for pleasure Sent: It's kind of jarring to have to pop out after a jaunt in the woods and have to walk along a busy road. Ben Rose

Word 2: Fractious Def: Tending to be troublesome : unruly Sent: Congress has been polarized, is fractious, as the president and others have observed. Richard Lugar

Word 3:Tawdry Def: Showy but cheap and of poor qualitySent However, what they have been building the last 30 years is the standard, tawdry strip developments. The government's vision is to start again and do it right.Andres Duany

Word 4: Egregious Def: Outstandingly bad; outrageous, flagrant, offensive Sent: Nature is constantly sending even its oldest scholars to the bottom of the class for some egregious blunder.Alfred Austin

Word 5: Lummox Def: A clumsy, stupid person Sent: That great, overgrown lummox of a Colonel McCormick, mediocre in ability, less than average in brains and a damn physical coward in spite of his size. Harold L. Ickes

Word 6: Arcane Def: Understood by very few; mysterious; secret; obscure Sent: True literacy is becoming an arcane art and the United States is steadily dumbing down.Isaac Asimov

Word 7: Evocative Def: Bringing strong images, memories, or feelings to mind Sent: The sense of smell can be extraordinarily evocative, bringing back pictures as sharp as photographs of scenes that had left the conscious mind. ~Thalassa Cruso

Word 8: Tenuous Def: Lacking a sound basis, as reasoning; unsubstantiated or having little substance or strength Sent: The overriding factor is what the global economic situation is -- and it is tenuous at best.Michael Boss

Word 9: Didactic Def: Intended to teach, particularly in having moral instruction Sent: I try to make people think about the limitations of technology in a way that isn't obvious or didactic.Ken Goldberg

Word 10: Degrading Def: An experience that makes someone feel ashamed Sent: The whole commerce between master and slave is the most unremitting despotism on the one part, and degrading submissions on the other. Thomas Jefferson

Word 11: Megalomania Def: Mental illness when one thinks they are powerful and important when one really isnt Sent: If the national mental illness of the United States is megalomania, that of Canada is paranoid schizophrenia.Margaret Atwood

Word 12: NonentityDef: An unimportant person or thingSent: What am I in the eyes of most people--a nonentity, an eccentric, or an unpleasant person--somebody who has no position in society and will never have.Vincent van Gogh

Word 13: Allegory Def: Is when a book represents as a whole a specific moral, political idea or historical event Sent: It's very unusual. It's an allegory, basically. There are a lot of layers of meaning. It's a story about living and being a human being. Brian White

Christian Allegory

Pre-WWII Stalinist Russia AllegoryWord 14: Apparition Def: A supernatural appearance of a person or thing, especially a ghost; a specter or phantom; wraith Sent: When people talk of Ghosts I don't mention the Apparition by which I am hauntedLogan Pearsall Smith

Word 15: Caustic Def: 1 Capable of burning, corroding, or destroying living tissue 2. Severely critical or sarcastic Sent: If it's a woman it's caustic, if it's a man it's authority, If it's a woman it's too pushy, if it's a man it's aggressive in the best sense of the word.Barbara Walters

Word 16: Derision / Derisive Def: Expressing contempt or ridicule Sent: No other profession is subject to the public contempt and derision that sometimes befalls lawyers. Irving R. Kaufman

Word 17: Edifice Def: A building, especially one of imposing appearance Sent: They have spent their lives working to erect the stature and posture of the U.S. as a leader in the world ... and we simply see that edifice crumbling.Phyllis Oakley

Word 18: Orifice Def: A hole, especially in the body like your mouth Sent: "Apparently, being human involves more than just two arms, two legs and the occasional major orifice.

Word 19: Erroneous Def: Characterized by error : mistaken Sent: A man's conscience and his judgment is the same thing; and as the judgment, so also the conscience, may be erroneous.Thomas Hobbes

Word 20: Insidious Def: Proceeding in a gradual, subtle way, but with very harmful effects Sent: The television, that insidious beast, that Medusa which freezes a billion people to stone every night, staring fixedly Ray Bradbury