Week 3_ vocabulary (children literature)

1.      Indomitable, adjective: incapable of being subdued or overcome.

Because of his strength and toughness as well as his constant attention to the welfare of his army, his soldiers affectionately called him Old Hickory. Hickory was as tough a substance as they knew, and General Andrew Jackson was, in their minds, indomitable.

-- Robert V. Remini, The Battle of New Orleans

2.      Argot, noun: a specialized vocabulary peculiar to a particular group.

In the argot of geology, paleomagnetic specialists are sometimes called paleomagicians.

-- John Mcphee, Annals of the Former World

3.      Impugn, verb: to call in question; to make insinuations against.

After hearing that her brother had been impugned by his political rivals, she also wrote a verse defense of his honor, entitled "Lines on reading an attack upon the political career of the late Albert Baker Esqr."

-- Caroline Fraser, God's Perfect Child

4.      Lascivious, adjective: lewd; lustful.

Harry . . . volunteered with a lascivious leer, flirting as usual.

-- Jackie Collins, Thrill!

5.      Parsimony, noun: excessive sparingness in the expenditure of money.

He never spent more than was necessary on anything; but his economy was a sign not of parsimony but of an almost instinctive sense of measure.

-- Howard Pollack, Aaron Copland: The Life and Work of an Uncommon Man

6.      Atrabilious, adjective: irritable; ill-natured.

Captain Aubrey's steward [was] an ill-faced, ill-tempered, meagre, atrabilious, shrewish man who kept his officer's uniform, equipment and silver in a state of exact, old-maidish order come wind or high water.

-- Patrick O'Brian, The Hundred Days

7.      Peccadillo, noun: a slight offense; a petty fault.

And besides "what do they say?' Don't judge lest you be judged.' Everybody has their peccadilloes."

-- "Tyson has a friend in his corner", Irish Times, October 21, 1999

8.      Logorrhea, noun: excessive talkativeness.

Mr. King, who possesses an enviable superabundance of imagination, suffers from a less enviable logorrhea.

-- Michele Slung, "Scare Tactics.", New York Times, May 10, 1981

9.      Travail, adjective: painful, arduous work; also, agony, anguish.

The author of the Book of Jeremiah, for example, notes the "cry of a woman in travail, the anguish of one bringing forth her first child, gasping for breath, stretching out her hands crying 'Woe is me!'"

-- Donald Caton, What a Blessing She Had Chloroform

10.  Acquiesce, verb: to accept or consent passively or without objection.

At the same time, sellers might acquiesce to mafia involvement in their business as a way of ensuring payment for goods: if the buyer defaults, the mafioso will collect.

-- Louis S. Warren, The Hunter's Game

11.  Elucidate, verb: to make clear or manifest.

He thought that film's promise and purpose was to elucidate the real, to reveal the patterns already before us, and he believed that unity of space and time were paramount.

-- Nancy Reisman, House Fires

12.  Recalcitrant, adjective: stubbornly resistant to and defiant of authority or restraint.

If they lingered too long, Clarice hurried them along in the same annoyed way she rushed recalcitrant goats through the gate.

-- Kaye Gibbons, On the Occasion of My Last Afternoon

13.  Abstemious, adjective: temperate; abstinent; refraining from indulgence.

For a man who trafficked in excess, he was surprisingly abstemious.

-- Ralph Blumenthal, Stork Club

14.  Gravitas, noun: high seriousness.

At first sight the tall, stooped figure with the hawk-like features and bloodless cheeks, the look of extreme gravitas, seems forbidding and austere, the abbot of an ascetic order, scion of an imperial family who has foresworn the world.

-- John Lehmann, "T.S. Eliot Talks About Himself and the Drive to Create", New York Times, November 9, 1953

15.  Ides, noun: the fifteenth day of March, May, July, and October, and the thirteenth day of the other months.

A soothsayer bids you beware of the Ides of March.

-- William Shakespeare, Julius Caesar

16.  Mendacious, adjective: untruthful; also, untrue.

His writings, speeches, and decisions supply crucial evidence but also contain mendacious elements, gaps, and camouflage.

-- Richard Breitman, Official Secrets

17.  Verdure, noun: greenness.

The first white settlers in the area started as yeomen, scouring the land of trees and verdure to create and homesteads.

-- Claude Andrew Clegg III, An Original Man

18.  Emblazon, verb: to display pompously; to decorate.

Signs in Chinese characters emblazon tailor shops, banks, restaurants and boutiques painted with bright yellows, cobalt blues and deep reds.

-- Harriet King, "Near Vancouver, the Chinese Stake Is Growing.", New York Times, September 7, 1996

19.  Collude, verb: to act in concert; to conspire.

Chance contingencies, millions of them, bring him to power, and all men now seem to collude in asserting his authority.

-- Leo Tolstoy, War and Peace

20.  Risible, adjective: exciting or provoking laughter.

Before long, I began to read aloud with my father, chanting the strange and wondrous rivers -- Shenandoah, Rappahannock, Chickahominy -- and wrapping my tongue around the risible names of rebel generals: Braxton Bragg, Jubal Early, John Sappington Marmaduke, William "Extra Billy" Smith, Pierre Gustave Toutant Beauregard.

-- Tony Horwitz, Confederates in the Attic

21.  Surcease, noun: cessation; stop; end.

One of his clearest remembrances from childhood was the feeling that swept over him when, on a Saturday morning, the sun had sequestered itself behind a cascade of clouds and rain, thick, relentless walls of rain, came pounding down with no promise of surcease, black greasy rain that eradicated all hopes of an outdoor day.

-- Stanley Bing, Lloyd: What Happened

22.  Adumbrate, verb: to foreshadow; prefigure.

The four composers represented here were all born in the 16th century, and, with the exception of Viadana, whose works adumbrate the lush Italian baroque which was to follow, are pure and classical Renaissance.

-- Classical reviews, Billboard, 1931.

23.  Elysium, noun: paradise.

Elysium can be found somewhere on the southern Pacific coast of Oaxaca, about as far from the United States as you can get and still be in Mexico.

-- Keith Kachtick, "Donde Esta Paradise?", Esquire, January 1, 1999

24.  Demagogue, noun: a leader who obtains power by means of appeals to the emotions and prejudices of the populace.

A consummate demagogue, McCarthy played upon cold war emotions and made charges so fantastic that frightened people believed the worst.

-- Arthur Herman, Joseph McCarthy

25.  Augury, noun: an omen; prediction.

Mr. Lee's new book, "A Moment of War: A Memoir of the Spanish Civil War," is a bleak monument to a conflict that is remembered now mainly as an augury of World War II.

-- Verlyn Klinkenborg, "One Poet's War", New York Times, July 25, 1993