Week 8: vocabulary

1.      palpable: plain; distinct; obvious.

Andre Garner and Dan Sklar . . . have clarion voices and the kind of palpable emotional heat and fiery commitment that can transform a song into a full-fledged little drama.

-- review of Songs for a New World , Chicago Sun-Times , December 8, 1998

2.      billingsgate: foul, abusive language.

The campaigns of the two Roosevelts were colorful and gave the press plenty of material but, generally speaking, deft humor seems to have replaced outright billingsgate.

-- George E. Reedy, "When Vilification Was in Flower", New York Times, July 15, 1984

3.      anodyne: serving to relieve pain.

Numbness . . . may have replaced pain as the complaint of our century now that aspirin analgesia, nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory agents (NSAIDS), and other anodynes can take away the pains of the civilized world.

-- Howard M. Spiro, Facing Death

4.      schadenfreude: a malicious satisfaction in the misfortunes of others.

That the report of Sebastian Imhof's grave illness might also have been tinged with Schadenfreude appears not to have crossed Lucas's mind.

-- Steven Ozment, Flesh and Spirit

5.      euphonious: pleasing or sweet in sound.

Early in life, on the basis of my easy grasp of biological nomenclature and what I consider aesthetic reasons -- all those euphonious names -- I resolved to be a medical doctor.

-- Paul Theroux, Fresh Air Fiend: Travel Writings, 1985-2000

6.      quaff: to drink heartily.

Instead they consume caviar, feed off foie gras, chomp exotic cheeses, and quaff champagne.

-- "Internet Shopper", Times (London), August 11, 2000

7.      ostensible: appearing to be true, but not necessarily so.

We might define play as pleasurable activity in which the means is more important than the ostensible end.

-- Karl Meninger, Love Against Hate

8.      xenophobia: fear or hatred of what is strange or foreign.

In the embattled atmosphere of wartime France, Apollinaire's quenchless appetite for the new was not widely shared. Xenophobia reigned.

-- Ruth Brandon, Surreal Lives: The Surrealists 1917-1945

9.      recrimination: a counter accusation.

This news has broken the compulsive back-and-forth of our recriminations, I thought.

-- Tim Parks, Destiny

10.  malleable: capable of being shaped; also, adaptable.

The natives proved less malleable and far less innocent than the Europeans imagined, so much so that early colonial history is filled with countless stories of monks who met hideous deaths at the hands of their flocks.

-- Juan Gonzalez, Harvest of Empire

11.  perdurable: very durable; long lasting.

In her first book, Lisa See . . . tackles a family -- her own -- whose intricate genealogy, bravura entrepreneurship, bitter adulteries and perdurable rivalries might have intimidated a lesser chronicler into euphemism.

-- Elizabeth Tallent, "Chinese Roots", New York Times, August 27, 1995

12.  onus: burden; also, blame; stigma.

The critical point, however, was that the Times story freed other publications from the onus of being the first to print the gossip, and everyone felt freer to leap in.

-- Gail Collins, Scorpion Tongues

13.  triskaidekaphobia: fear of the number 13.

Thirteen people, pledged to eliminate triskaidekaphobia, fear of the number 13, today tried to reassure American sufferers by renting a 13 ft plot of land in Brooklyn for 13 cents . . . a month.

-- Daily Telegraph, January 14, 1967

14.  bravado: a real or pretended show of courage or boldness.

His mom was a nurse, incredulous at his bravado. "Why would anybody want to go to war?" she asked.

-- Mark Bowden, Black Hawk Down: A Story of Modern War

15.  littoral: pertaining to the shore of a lake, sea, or ocean.

There was an exuberant fierceness in the littoral here, a vital competition for existence.

-- John Steinbeck, The Grapes of Wrath

16.  redivivus: living again; revived; restored.

As for Neeson -- of the nose-heavy, asymmetrical countenance and shrewdly darting, soul-searching eyes, he is a lopsided Gary Cooper redivivus -- hardly something to sneeze at.

-- John Simon, "Michael Collins", National Review, November 25, 1996

17.  paladin: a champion of a cause.

Once in power, though, Clinton stumbled repeatedly over obstacles created by the schizoid campaign he had conducted, in which he had cast himself simultaneously as the champion of a more conservative Democratic credo and as a paladin  of the party's traditional activism.

-- Robert Shogan, The Fate of the Union

18.  bootless: unavailing; useless.

I have seen a swan

With bootless labour swim against the tide.

-- Shakespeare, Henry VI, Part III

19.  gimcrack: a showy but useless or worthless object.

Yet the set is more than a collection of pretty gimcracks.

-- Frank Rich, Hot Seat

20.  munificent: very generous.

Another munificent friend has given me the most splendid reclining chair conceivable.

-- George Eliot, Letters

21.  hobnob: to associate familiarly.

Charlie joined the elite Tanana Men's Club, and he hobnobbed with lawyers and bankers.

-- Lois W. Banner, Finding Fran: History and Memory in the Lives of Two Women

22.  fiduciary: relating to the holding of something in trust for another.

Congress is faced with a great challenge in protecting workers who need help, while employing our fiduciary responsibility to guard the taxpayer dollar.

-- Representative Jennifer Dunn, The Seattle Times, October 1, 2001

23.  indelible: incapable of being removed or erased.

It was part of his image, indelible as the ink stains under the breast pocket.

-- Mark Childress, Gone for Good

24.  fortuitous: happening by chance.

But Edward Bok has always felt that he was materially helped by fortuitous conditions not of his own creation or choice.

-- Edward Bok, The Americanization of Edward Bok

25.  diktat: an authoritative decree or order.

And it would begin to encroach on another, more treasured, freedom: the right of the networks to broadcast what they choose independent of government diktat.

-- "Back to the smoke-filled room?", The Economist , February 25, 1995