Week 6: vocabulary

1.      enervate: to weaken.

Beatriz de Ahumada soldiered on to produce nine more children, a tour of duty that left her enervated and worn.

-- Cathleen Medwick, Teresa of Avila: The Progress of a Soul

2.      condign: deserved; adequate.

In a story as old as the Greeks, overweening pride brought condign disaster.

-- David Frum, How We Got Here

3.      blandishment: flattering speech or action.

But she had not risen at all to the law fellow's blandishments, his attempts to interest her in his ideas and persuade her to set forth her own.

-- John Bayley, Elegy for Iris

4.      plenary: full; complete.

Tito called a plenary session of the Central Committee.

-- Milovan Djilas, Fall of the New Class

5.      cosset: to treat with excessive indulgence; to pamper.

Assunta played a larger role in the lives of her children, whom she cosseted and cared for as best she could.

-- Patricia Albers, Shadows, Fire, Snow: The Life of Tina Modotti

6.      sang-froid: coolness in trying circumstances.

Gaviria knew Alberto as an impulsive but cordial man capable of maintaining his sangfroid under the most stressful circumstances.

-- Gabriel Garcia Marquez, News of a Kidnapping

7.      brio: vigor; vivacity.

Though my judgment was no doubt affected by all the wine we'd consumed, I remember being elated by our performance that night: our inspired spur-of-the-moment dialogue, the actors fleshing out their roles with such brio.

-- Gail Godwin, Evensong

8.      vociferous: clamorous; noisy.

Claudio has work to do and I have a vociferous son demanding a story.

-- Ariel Dorfman, Heading South, Looking North: A Bilingual Journey

9.      protean: readily assuming different shapes or forms.

The [Broadway] musical was ceaselessly protean in these years, usually conventional but always developing convention, twisting it, replacing it.

-- Ethan Mordden, Coming Up Roses

10.  eschew: to shun; to avoid.

In high school and college the Vassar women had enjoyed that lifestyle, but afterward they had eschewed it as shallow.

-- Nina Burleigh, A Very Private Woman

11.  somniferous: causing or inducing sleep.

He has gone outside the usual channels of stodgy academic journals and somniferous lectures.

-- David Gibson, "Separating Christ from Christianity", The Record (Bergen County, NJ), June 9, 1996

12.  gregarious: seeking and enjoying the company of others.

My efforts to cultivate an identity as a strong silent type have consistently been undermined by my gregarious nature and my delight in conversation.

-- Marty Jezer, Stuttering: A Life Bound Up in Words

13.  lassitude: lack of vitality or energy.

The feverish excitement . . . had given place to a dull, regretful lassitude.

-- George Eliot, Romola

14.  inchoate: partly but not fully in existence or operation.

Mildred Spock believed that, at about the age of three, her children's inchoate wills were to be shaped like vines sprouting up a beanpole.

-- Thomas Maier, Dr. Spock: An American Life

15.  esurient: hungry; greedy.

The enemy then was an esurient Soviet Union which, having swallowed up Eastern Europe, had imposed a totalitarian system on countries just liberated from Nazism.

-- Arnold Beichman, "As Truman envisioned our role", Washington Times, April 23, 2002

16.  subterfuge: a deceptive device or stratagem.

In the end, however, all the stealth and subterfuge were for naught, as the young publicity agent couldn't keep the secret.

-- Larry Tye, The Father of Spin

17.  gastronome: a lover of good food and drink.

Even though Paris was then considered the culinary capital of Europe, the food at the Cercle was so highly revered that many well-known gastronomes regularly made the trip to Lyon to eat there.

-- Daniel Rogov, "Three culinary tales for Hanukka", Jerusalem Post, December 6, 1996

18.  affable: easy to speak to; also, gracious.

Johnny's father, while strict with his children, usually was affable and relaxed.

-- Paul C. Nagel, John Quincy Adams

19.  precipice: a very steep, perpendicular, or overhanging place.

Barbara got as close to the edge as she dared and looked down over the precipice.

-- Catherine Whitney, The Calling: The Year in the Life of an Order of Nuns

20.  purblind: having greatly reduced vision.

On and on the weary litany of purblind negativity proceeds.

-- Eric Evans, "The Theory Man.", History Today, June 1997

21.  fulminate: to issue or utter verbal attacks or censures.

This mass culture--global, immediate, accessible, and buoyant, with shared heroes, models, and goals--is immensely intoxicating. Ayatollahs fulminate against it; dictators censor it; mandarins try to slam the door on it.

-- Lawrence M. Friedman, The Horizontal Society

22.  cogitate: to think; to ponder.

Doc Leach shifted his pipe from one corner of his mouth to the other and blinked a couple of times. That meant he was cogitating.

-- Monty Roberts, The Man Who Listens To Horses

23.  lambent: playing on the surface; flickering.

She wanted to tell him how she felt and feel that lambent look that was better than sunshine, his look of offering all that was in him.

-- Anna Shapiro, "The Scourge", USA Today, July 23, 2001

24.  Zeitgeist: the spirit of the time.

The best writers of that predawn era were originals who had the zeitgeist by the tail.

-- Gary Giddins, Visions of Jazz: The First Century

25.  pugnacious: combative; quarrelsome.

Roberto's pugnacious grandmother lived across the meadow and would yell threats and curses helplessly from her balcony.

-- Tag Gallagher, The Adventures of Roberto Rossellini