Thursday, February 5, 2015

100 Difficult Words to Build an Excellent Vocabulary


1) puissant- influential, powerful, important

2) encomium- a speech or piece of writing that praises someone or something highly-- like a eulogy, panegyric, accolade, tribute, etc.

3) lusus naturæ-- a person or animal that is markedly unusual or deformed; a freak or monstrosity

4) conceit- a fanciful expression or elaborate metaphor. For example, "the idea of the wind's singing is a prime romantic conceit". It can also be, an artistic device: "the director's brilliant conceit was to film it all in black and white". Or, a fanciful notion: "he was alarmed by the widespread conceit that he spent most of the 1980's drunk".

5) effluvium (singular), effluvia (plural)- an unpleasant or harmful odor, secretion, or discharge. "The swamp's effluvia".

6) chimera- a thing that is hoped or wished for but in fact is impossible to achieve. For example: "the economic sovereignty you claim to defend is a chimera" or "is this great love of hers merely a chimera?". In Greek mythology, the Chimera is a fire-breathing female monster with a lion's body, a goat's body, and a serpent's tale.

7) peccant, adj-- having committed a fault or sin; sinful; offending; violating a rule, principle, or established practice; faulty or wrong. "The minister delivered a stern sermon warning peccant parishioners of the punishments that awaited them in the afterlife." Or: diseased or causing disease.


8) occiput, noun-- the back portion of the head or skull

9) expostulate-- 

execrable
cant
indemnity
seminary
rapine
repletion
parity
restive
pastern
exhort
descanting
lissome
bailiwick
cadre
frisson
farinaceous
myrmidon
suborn
excrescence
incipient
collation
portmanteau
prolix
discursive
episcopacy
archiepiscopacy
effulgent
fasces
argosy
quiescence
unctuous
cabalistic
cabala
heliotropic
sedulous
anathema
pertinacity
munificent/munificence
ebullition
equanimity
privity
empiric
torpid
tarn
tenuity
abeyance
concision
cataleptical
distempered
extirpate
educe
phantasmagoria
pinion
collocate
treacle/trestle
vagary
casement
incubus
meerschaum
orbicular
renumerative
abrogation
avocation
cistern
inchoate
parfleche
halcyon
supernumerary
immanence
peculation
blandishment
bonhomie
asseveration
celerity
salient
salutary
imputation
parsimony
mendicancy
meretricious
oblation
quid pro quo
invocation
indigent
ombudsman
qua
epistemological
cognizance
metaphysical
dialectical
ineffable
dogma
ersatz
expropriating
chimera
iniquity
determinism
atavistic
coppice
paean- song of praise or triumph, example: "the bards sang a paean to the war".
pannier + dérailleur
political and career radiation
quadrangle
erudite
suzerain
panegyric- public speech praising someone or something
genuflect
solipsism
ailurophobic
monolithic
prelature
offertory
vilify
esplanade
canonization
apropos
gibbous
caparisoned
comity
effuse
melange
dolce affettuoso
eructation
tenesmus
purposive
burlesque
trope
adjudicate
sprezzatura