Here and There

In light of misunderstandings of the intentions I had when I posted this list of my favorite movies of last year, and seeing as how words are more or less my business, I decided to post my first ever digitized list of words whose definitions I learned and kept track of in 2005.

A more clever person (be he blogger or not) would probably have been able to come up with some cute, poignant prose incorporating all the words. But that’s not me. Maybe I’m too tired. Maybe my mind is already on Mexico, where I’m headed tomorrow. Or maybe I’m simply incapable.

Also, by way of disclaimer, some of these are words I already “knew” but I couldn’t quite get my head around their definition. Many on this list are words I will never use, and many are words I’m still struggling to understand and apply. Either way, for better or worse, here you go:

amanuensis - one employed to write from dictation or to copy manuscript.
anodyne - not likely to provoke dissent or offense; uncontentious or inoffensive, often deliberately so.
apoplectic - of, relating to, or causing stroke.
bloviate - to speak or write verbosely and windily.
cajolery - to persuade with flattery or gentle urging especially in the face of reluctance.
catafalque - an ornamental structure sometimes used in funerals for the lying in state of the body.
cavil - to raise trivial objections to.
celerity - swiftness of movement.
distaff - of or concerning women.
ecumenism - principles and practices especially as shown among religious groups.
ensorcell - from sorcier sorcerer.
ersatz - being a usually artificial and inferior substitute or imitation.
estuarine - of, relating to, or formed in an estuary, which is a water passage where the tide meets a river current.
Euclidian - of, relating to, or based on the geometry of Euclid or a geometry with similar axioms.
halcyon - denoting a period of time in the past that was idyllically happy and peaceful.
internecine - of, relating to, or involving conflict within a group.
lubricious - offensively displaying or intended to arouse sexual desire.
miasma - a highly unpleasant or unhealthy smell or vapor.
perfidy - deceitfulness; untrustworthiness.
perfunctory - (of an action or gesture) carried out with a minimum of effort or reflection.
puerile - childishly silly and trivial.
raffish - marked by or suggestive of flashy vulgarity or crudeness.
recondite - little known; abstruse.
recrudescing - to break out again; recur.
semaphoric - a visual signaling apparatus with flags, lights, or mechanically moving arms, as one used on a railroad.
solecism - an ungrammatical combination of words in a sentence; also : a minor blunder in speech.
spurious - of illegitimate birth.
sartorial - of or relating to tailoring, clothes, or style of dress.

* most (maybe all, I can’t honestly remember) definitions hulled from New Oxford American Dictionary, courtesy of Dictionary.app, which comes with Apple’s OS X 10.4.x Tiger.

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