St. Drakas' Words
of 2008
- Adduce: v.tr: to offer as example, reason, or proof
in discussion or analysis
- Appurtenance: n: a subordinate part or adjunct
- Attaint: v.tr: corrupt, striped of civil rights usually
due to treason
- Argent: n: the heraldic color silver or white
- Argentine: adj: silvery
- Argot: n: an often more or less secret vocabulary and
idiom peculiar to a particular group
- Arriviste: n: one that is a new and uncertain arrival
(as in social position)
- Assiduity: n: persistent personal attention
- Austringer: n: a person who trains and flies short-winged
hawks, as the goshawk
- Baleful: adj: foreboding or threatening evil
- Bant: v: to lose weight by practicing Bantingism (a
Victorian forerunner to Atkins)
- Besotted: adj: infatuated (or drunk)
- Bêtise: n: an act of foolishness or stupidity
- Bildungsroman: n: a novel about the moral and psychological
growth of the main character
- Boondoggle: n: a wasteful or impractical project or
activity often involving graft
- Camisole: n: a short negligee jacket for women
- Cancrine: adj: reading the same backwards as forwards
(same as Palindromatic)
- Chevron: n: a heraldic charge consisting of two diagonal
stripes meeting at an angle usually with the point up
- Circumambient: adj: being on all sides
- Circumlocution: n: the use of an unnecessarily large
number of words to express an idea
- Convivial: adj: relating to feasting, drinking, and
good company
- Coruscate: v.itr: to be brilliant or showy in technique
or style
- Cyclonic: adj: related to cyclones
- Deisil: adv: clockwise
- Delirium: n: frenzied excitement
- Diaphanous: adj: characterized by such fineness of
texture as to permit seeing through
- Didactic: adj: designed or intended to teach
- Digamy: n: a second marriage after the termination
of the first
- Edacious: adj: of or relating to eating
- Efficacy: n: the power to produce an effect
- Egalitarianism: n: a social philosophy advocating
the removal of inequalities among people
- Eructation: n: an act or instance of belching
- Esculent: adj: edible
- Excursus: n: an appendix or digression that contains
further exposition of some point or topic
- Fascicles: n: one of the divisions of a book published
in parts
- Flagitious: adj: marked by scandalous crime or vice
(villainous)
- Folderol: n: a useless ornament or accessory
- Fulminate: v.itr: to send forth censures or invectives
- Furtive: adj: done by stealth
- Gadabout: n: a person who flits about in social activity
- Gambit: n: a calculated move
- Gaol: n: chiefly British variant of jail
- Gomer: n: an undesirable hospital patient
- Grog: n: alcoholic liquor; especially : liquor (as
rum) cut with water and now often served hot with lemon juice and sugar
sometimes added
- Haptic: adj; relating to or based on the sense of touch
- Horripulation: n: goose-bumps
- Incipient: adj: beginning to come into being or to
become apparent
- Incunabulum: n: a book printed before 1501
- Interrobang: n: a punctuation mark designed for use
especially at the end of an exclamatory rhetorical question (combination
of !?)
- Inwit: n: Inward sense; mind; understanding; conscience
- Jactitation: n: a tossing to and fro or jerking and
twitching of the body
- Jaculation: v: to throw or hurl
- Jejune: adj: devoid of significance or interest
- Jeremiad: n: a prolonged lamentation or complaint
- Josser: n: fellow, esp. one who is or is made to appear
foolish or simpleminded
- Katzenjammer: n: hangover
- Limpid: adj: marked by transparency
- Lour: v.itr: To look angry, sullen, or threatening
- Lugubrious: adj: exaggeratedly or affectedly mournful
- Lumpen: adj: of or relating to dispossessed and uprooted
individuals cut off from the economic and social class with which they
might normally be identified
- Malaise: n: a vague sense of mental or moral ill-being
- Macilent: adj: Lean; thin
- Mandarin: n: a pedantic official
- Manqué: n: short of or frustrated in the fulfillment
of one's aspirations or talents —used postpositively
- Maudlin: adj: drunk enough to be emotionally silly
- Maunder: v.itr: to wander slowly and idly
- Matutinal: adj: of, relating to, or occurring in the
morning
- Mimsy: adj: Prim or affected; over-refined; mincing
- Mulct: n: fine or penalty
- Orotund: adj: marked by fullness, strength, and clarity
of sound (also pompous and bombastic)
- Palliate: v.tr: to cover by excuses and apologies,
to moderate the intensity of
- Pasquinade: n: a lampoon posted in a public place
- Petrichor: n: the small of rain on the ground
- Pseudepigrapha: n.pl: Spurious writings, especially
writings falsely attributed to biblical characters or times
- Psychotropic: adj: acting on the mind (usually hallucinagenic)
- Pyknic: adjL characterized by shortness of stature,
broadness of girth, and powerful muscularity
- Quidnunc: n: a person who seeks to know all the latest
news or gossip
- Rantipole: n: A wild, romping young person
- Ratiocination: n: the process of exact thinking
- Redolent: adj: exuding fragrance
- Rickshaw: n: a small covered 2-wheeled vehicle usually
for one passenger that is pulled by one man
- Roborant: adj: Restoring vigor or strength
- Scrimshaw: n: a carved or engraved article, esp. of
whale ivory, whalebone, walrus tusks,
- Sinecure: n: an office or position that requires little
or no work and that usually provides an income
- Smaragdine: adj: emerald-green in color
- Strident: adj: commanding attention by a loud or obtrusive
quality
- Symploce: na; repetition of a word or phrase at the
beginning and another at the end of successive clauses
- Tautology: n: needless repetition of an idea, statement,
or word
- Termagant: n: an overbearing or nagging woman
- Thelemic: adj: Permitting people to do as they like.
- Thesbian: adj/n: relating to the drama (actor)
- Trenchant: adj: vigorously effective and articulate
- Trounced: v.tr: to thrash or punish severely
- Twitterpated: adj: confused by affection or infatuation
- Undulant: adj: Undulant
- Vaccary: n: A cow house, dairy house, or cow pasture.
- Viviparous: adj: producing living young instead of
eggs (also, having had children)
- Volitation: n: the act or power of flying
- Warison: n: a bugle call to attack
- Welkin: n: the vault of the sky : firmament
All Definitions taken
from dictionary.com and m-w.com. When a word has multiple definitions
my favorite or intended definition is used.
