"Geriatric Musical"
That's not one of the words. That's just a phrase I saw on one of the many deliciously hilarious t-shirts that the Chinese shops stock for sale here in Tonga. I wanted to get this party started right (i.e. no centaurs). The geriatric musical way.
Today's post is devoted to words (as opposed to all my other posts, which were devoted to smells), and the slippery meanings thereof.
First, we'll start with a random list of words that were originally coined in the good 'ole U.S. of A. Nothing like a little patriotism to increase the intrigue. This list was compiled by cross-searching my dictionary (what I do in my spare time, because I don't have the internet to show me videos) for the phrase "originally US," which denotes that the word was first recorded in the United States. So what has our great country contributed to the language spoken by Shakespeare, Lincoln, and Cher? 103 words hits come up, but I'll only list a few [read: a lot].
ballyhoo
barf
basket case
bat (as in one's eyelashes)
bebop
blizzard
bogus
bonanza
boogie
boss
caboodle
cafeteria
cagey
cahoots
campus
canoodle
catnip (as opposed to catmint elsewhere)
cavort
cheapskate
con
eggs Benedict
escalator
fan (as in people are fans of the Yankees)
faze
giddy-up
gizmo
glitch
gobbledegook
gunk
highfalutin
hijack
hip (as in being cool)
hoodlum
hootenanny
hornswoggle
humdinger
hunky-dory
jalopy
jamboree
jinx
jive (as in talk deceptively)
levee
moolah
mosey
nerd
oodles
pow
rowdy
splurge
stomp
stunt (as in jumping over flaming cars)
teensy
talkathon
telethon
tizzy
va-va-voom
vim
widget
yip
yuck
zap
Not so bad, hey? Apparently we love to party, what with our ballyhoos, bonanzas, hootenannies, and jamborees, where we love to bebop, boogie, cavort, mosey, and stomp to our hearts' content. Giddy-up, because we're a rowdy bunch. We like to splurge with our oodles of moolah (unless we're cheapskates), and we pull cowboy stunts like the hoodlums that we are. We're all vim and va-va-voom, and we arrive on the scene like POW! We'll get you in a tizzy, because we're hip. We're the boss. The other bogus glitches don't faze us.
That's all hunky-dory.
More worrisome, to me, is how many words we've contributed that amount to pulling the wool over someone else's eyes. We can be cagey, and in cahoots, we can con and jive and hijack your jalopy. We'll hornswoggle you.
We're a teensy bit nerdy, with our gizmos and widgets, but sometimes it's just a bunch of highfalutin gobbledegook. We created telethons and talkathons, and escalators so we don't have to use the stairs to the cafeteria. Well, you know what? I'm a fan. Yeehaw!
My perverse mining of the dictionary's secrets didn't stop there, my friends. Oh, no. I found this definition by chance:
hemidemisemiquaver: half of a demisemiquaver
Er... Right. Duh. How could I not have known that? And I found all these words, which actually do exist, but are usually seen in their negative forms. Well, I'm an optimist. From now on, these words need to be added back into daily speech. No more will these things be unbeknownst to me. It's not an unwieldy amount, and I refuse to be ruthless with my word choice. From now on, I will be ruthful. I will be ruly. But maybe also a little dauntful, since it's so hard to be fearless all the time.
Use these words! Not those words!
couth (not uncouth), wieldy (not unwieldy), gainly (not ungainly), canny (not uncanny), adulterated (not unadulterated), beknownst (not unbeknownst), blinking (not unblinking), kempt (not unkempt), ruly (not unruly), ruthful (not ruthless), dauntful (not dauntless)
You may be thinking (or talking out loud, I don't judge), what's with all the logophilia up in here?
Well, dearest gainly friends of mine, it all started with a little Review called the Princeton Review. I believe I've mentioned this Review before. Just to bring it to mind for you, this is the Review that brought my confidence to a dauntful, adulterated puddle of teardrops.
Because of the paranoia seed thumbed deep into the soil of my brain by the Princeton Review, I find myself questioning...er, myself...about every vocabulary word I come across. Because of their distinction between words you know and words you sort of know (the difference between words you can give an exact dictionary definition for and words you can't) when learning vocabulary for the GRE, every time I come across one of those highfalutin', fancy-shmancy words them literary writers use, I stop and have a panic attack.
All right, not that extreme, but I've picked up this annoying tendency to ask myself, "Self, can you give an exact dictionary definition for the word 'stridulate'?"
And my Self answers, "Self, I can't give an exact dictionary definition for the word 'house,' and you want me to define 'stridulate'? Stop making impossible demands! Start pulling your own weight!"
Inner turmoil aside, I start chewing my lip every time I encounter one of these words. Is the writer using it in a unique way that's sort of strange because they're a writer and they're allowed to compare clouds to cotton candy, or am I misunderstanding their true meaning because I've got a false definition of the word in my head?
And, with my embarrassing black-eye incident with the word "laconic" always close to my recollection, I'm questioning myself even on words I thought I knew.
(I thought "laconic" meant lazy, and I learned from Princeton Review that it meant "using few words". It happened again with "plausible," which has an obscure second meaning of "glib, smoothly convincing," and prodigal, which I thought was the adjective form of "prodigy" and learned that it meant "extravagantly reckless and wasteful; lavish." And using my keen understanding of Latin roots, I thought "hortatory" meant "having to do with gardens," and was surprised to learn it meant "aiming to exhort." Oops. And did you know that "die" has another meaning, that of a "device used for cutting or moulding metal or stamping designs on coins or medals," and that, therefore, when Caesar said "the die is cast" [jacta est alea!] he wasn't talking about dice?)
For example, I come across the word "eminent," as in an "eminent philosopher". I think to myself, "Self, can you give an exact dictionary definition for the word 'eminent'?"
And my Self answers, "Dammit, Self, no! I'm still trying to think of the name of that band you forgot for the song you heard on the radio, and now you want me to just drop everything I'm doing and start defining things?! Fine! 'Important, noteworthy' Are you happy now?"
I frown. That's not an exact dictionary definition. Those are just synonyms, and I'm not even sure they're correct. After all, how do those words figure into the meaning of "eminent domain"? I think I've found another word for which I've mixed up the meaning by relying only on context clues.
"I'm going to look up the word, just in case, Self."
"Whatever you want, Self," myself responds petulantly.
So I look up the definition in Concise Oxford English Dictionary, and what do you know?
"respected and distinguished within a particular sphere"
I was right!
You'd think I'd feel triumphant that I knew a word I thought I knew, but I just feel slimy. I've wasted all that time typing the word "eminent" into the dictionary on my computer just to find that I could have kept reading the book. I can feel the dictionary laughing at me.
"You don't even know the definition of "eminent"? What are you, obtuse?"
"No!" I cry. "I did know it! I swear I did! But I did!"
Maybe you'd say my real problem is anthropomorphism, and I'll admit to you I do transfer human feelings and qualities to many more things than I should, but in this case I felt too defensive to tell the dictionary to stop laughing at me because it, being a computer program, could feel neither spite nor superciliousness.
It happened countless times. I can only come up with synonyms for the words and think I must not know the answer only to find out that I do. All right, not countless times, but enough times that I got frustrated and wanted to balefully tell the Princeton Review to throw itself off a cliff.
Perhaps it's because the dictionary version I have is the Concise Oxford English Dictionary, but I found that their "exact dictionary definitions" turned out to be my synonyms put into a phrase.
Example: I associate "obdurate" with "stubborn," and, if anyone stopped me on the street and said, "Good day to you ma'am, but by chance do you know the meaning of the word 'obdurate'?" I would nod courteously, say "stubborn" and continue on my way. But say that wayward stranger (I'm assuming wayward; strangers always are, but perhaps he knew exactly where he was going and was a very excogitative person by nature) wanted an exact dictionary definition?
"No, ma'am," this perhaps wayward stranger would say, "but I'm studying for the GRE's, you see, and I need an exact dictionary definition to make sure I KNOW the word."
I'd hem and haw then grimace then bite my lip then shrug.
"I'm sorry, but I can't help. You could try the library; it's just down the street."
"Thank you, but I was just heading there now, and then I have a lunch appointment at one-thirty and then I will walk to the park for a fifteen minute stroll."
(I knew he wasn't wayward!)
But, lo and behold, (or maybe just lo will do, beholding after you've already lo-ed is rather repetitive) the Concise Oxford English Dictionary gives me this exact definition:
"stubbornly refusing to change one's opinion or course of action"
Now, I don't know about you, but that sounds a lot like stubborn. Or obstinate, if you prefer. And, again, I don't know about you, but my brain has a limited capacity and needs also to remember facts like when the War of 1812 was and why Andrew Jackson sacked New Orleans after we'd already "won". (If you haven't solved any of the problems you went to war for, does agreeing to stop killing each other really constitute a victory? And when will those damn British finally stop impressing our red-blooded American sailors? And get out of those forts and out of Canada altogether! Oregon is ours, Great Britain! 54-40 or Fight! or, alternatively, Polk for President!)
All right, I know that's about forty years of American history in a few short sentences, but I've always been more of a fox than a hedgehog.
Tangent: If you want to read about a real empire-builder, look up President Polk. He poked across America. Tangent Complete.
If I walk around remembering long-winded--prolix, if you will, and I do hope you will--dictionary definitions when a synonym will do, Andrew Jackson's modus operandi will get squeezed out, and I'll think for the rest of my life that he was just obtuse. A great disservice to Old Hickory, if you ask me.
Tangent: looking up the definitions has been helpful for the pronunciation of many words, which I don't use in polite company--even if they're the absolute perfect word for the meaning I'm trying to convey!--because I'm afraid I'll pronounce it wrong. Tangent Complete.
The point of this post?
To introduce a list of new vocabulary I learned while reading. I won't tell you which ones I already knew and which ones I didn't. I'm trying to learn to care less what others think, and so I don't care if you think I'm stupid for not knowing a particular word you happen to know. Feel superior. Honestly, do. It will help me with my self-improvement efforts when I scoff your feelings away with a flick of my wrist.
Also, though, it helps me learn when I present the information to others, so really you, my faithful readers, are but means to my vocabulary-building end.
So, for all you studying for the GRE or planning to read Catch-22 (where two thirds of these words came from), read on, friend, read on.
[Author's Note: All definitions come from Concise Oxford English Dictionary. As always. Because I don't have internet. There are, as titularly stated, 100 words. Feel free to skip on down, should you not suffer from an inferiority complex with your dictionary, as I acutely do. Alternatively, read only a few definitions, and desultorily, at that. I suggest #9, in regards to how you should feel about this blog, #15, in regards to how you should view my prose style, #75, the group I'm in here in Peace Corp Tonga, and #88, the year I was propitiously born.]
1. acrimonious: characterized by acrimony; angry and bitter
2. acute: (1)critical; serious; coming sharply to a crisis; severe; (2) perceptive; shrewd; highly developed; (3) (of an angle) less than 90 degrees; (4) (of a sound) high; shrill
3. adroit: clever or skilful
4. afflatus: a divine creative impulse or inspiration
5. a fortiori: with a yet stronger reason than a conclusion previously accepted
6. antipodal: the direct opposite of something
7. aplomb: self-confidence or assurance
8. apophthegm: (United States: apothegm) a concise saying or maxim
9. apotheosis: (1) the highest point in the development of something; (2) elevation to divine status
10. apotropaic: supposedly having the power to avert evil or bad luck
11. argosy: a large merchant ship
12. assay: (1) the testing of a metal or ore to determine its ingredients and quality; (2) a procedure for measuring the biochemical or immunological activity of a sample; (3) (archaic) attempt
13. avuncular: like an uncle in being kind and friendly towards a younger or less experienced person
14. babbitt metal: a soft alloy of tin, antimony, copper, and usually lead, used to line bearings
15. badinage: witty conversation
16. baleful: menacing; having a harmful effect
17. bear garden: a scene of uproar and confusion
18. bilious: (1) affected by or associated with nausea or vomiting; lurid or sickly; (2) spiteful or bad-tempered
19. campanile: a bell tower, especially a free-standing one
20. captious: tending to find fault or raise petty objections
21. chignon: a knot or coil of hair arranged on the back of a woman's head
[Author's Note: What the heck, Oxford? Men can't have chignons?]
22. circumspect: cautious or prudent
23. colloquium: an academic conference or seminar
24. concupiscence: lust
25. congeries: (plural same) a disorderly collection
26. convalescent: recovering from an illness or medical treatment; a convalescent person
27. coruscate: flash or sparkle
28. corvée: (1) a day's unpaid labour owed by a vassal to his feudal lord; (2) forced labour exacted in lieu of taxes
29. coryphée: a leading dancer in a corps de ballet
30. crepuscular: relating to or resembling twilight
31. croup: inflammation of the larynx and trachea in children, associated with infection and causing breathing difficulties
[Author's Note: as well the rump of a horse, as we learned last time.]
32. cynosure: a person or thing that is the centre of attention or admiration
33. desultory: lacking purpose or enthusiasm
34. diaphanous: light, delicate, and translucent
35. dissipated: overindulgent in sensual pleasures
36. down: gently rolling hill
37. effulgent: shining brightly
38. effusive: (1) expressing gratitude, pleasure, or approval in an unrestrained manner; (2) relating to or denoting igneous rocks poured out as lava and later solidified
39. eminent: (1) respected and distinguished within a particular sphere; (2) notable; outstanding
40. epigram: a concise and witty saying or remark; a short witty poem
41. ersatz: made or used as an inferior substitute for something else; not real or genuine
42. escarpment: a long, steep slope at the edge of a plateau or separating areas of land at different heights
43. etiolated: (1) pale and weak due to a lack of light; (2) having lost vigour or substance; feeble
44. execrable: extremely bad or unpleasant
45. expiate: atone for
46. farinaceous: made of the flour or meal of cereal grains, nuts, or starchy roots; powdery
47. fatuous: silly and pointless
48. fungible: replaceable by another identical item; mutually interchangeable
49. fustian: (1) a thick, hard-wearing twilled cloth with a short nap; (2) pompous speech or writing
50. gabardine: (1)a smooth, durable twill-woven worsted or cotton cloth; (2) (historical) a loose, long upper garment worn particularly by Jews
51. glib: fluent but insincere and shallow
52. homily: (1) a religious discourse; (2) a tedious moralizing lecture
53. hortatory: tending or aiming to exhort
54. implacable: (1) unable to be appeased; (2) unable to be stopped
55. inchoate: not fully formed or developed; rudimentary; confused or incoherent
56. indelible: (1) unable to be removed; (2) unable to be forgotten
57. ineffable: (1) too great or extreme to be expressed in words; (2) too sacred to be uttered
58. inexorable: (1) impossible to stop or prevent; (2) impossible to persuade by request or entreaty
59. infundibuliform: shaped like a funnel
60. inscrutable: impossible to understand or interpret
61. integument: a tough protective layer, especially of an animal or plant
62. intransigent: unwilling to change one's views or to agree
63. lay: (1) a short lyric or narrative poem meant to be sung; (2) a song
64. lissome: slim, supple, and graceful
65. maudlin: self-pityingly or tearfully sentimental
66. moil: (1) work hard; (2) move around in confusion
67. musette bag: (United States) a small knapsack
68. neoteny: the retention of juvenile features in the adult animal
69. numinous: having a strong religious or spiritual quality
70. otiose: (1) serving no practical purpose; (2) (archaic) idle
71. paddock: (1) a small field or enclosure where horses are kept or exercised; (2) an enclosure adjoining a racecourse or track where horses or cars are gathered and displayed before a race
72. palimpsest: (1) a parchment or other surface in which later writing has been superimposed on effaced earlier writing; (2) something bearing visible traces of an earlier form
73. paramnesia: a condition involving distorted memory or confusions of fact and fantasy
74. parturient: about to give birth; in labour
75. peremptory: insisting on immediate attention or obedience; brusque or imperious
76. perfunctory: carried out with a minimum of effort or reflection
77. peroration: the concluding part of a speech; the summing up
78. phlegmatic: unemotional and stolidly calm
79. plausible: smoothly convincing; glib
80. portentous: (1) of or like a portent; (2) overly solemn
81. prodigal: (1) wastefully extravagant; (2) lavish
82. prolix: (of speech or writing) tediously lengthy
83. propitious: (1) giving or indicating a good chance of success; favourable (2) (archaic) favourably disposed towards someone
84. proprietary: (1) relating to or characteristic of an owner or ownership (2) marketed under a registered trade name
85. pullulating: breed or spread so as to become extremely common; be very crowded; be full of life and activity
86. puissance: (1) a competitive test of a horse's ability to jump large obstacles in showjumping; (2)great power, influence, or prowess
87. raffish: jaunty; dashing; casually confident
88. redoubtable: formidable, especially as an opponent
89. relict: (1) an organism that has survived from an earlier period; (2) (archaic) a widow
90. ribald: coarsely or irreverently humorous
91. sedulous: showing dedication and diligence
92. sententious: given to moralizing in a pompous or affected manner
93. solicitude: care or concern
94. solipsism: (1) the view or theory that the self is all that can be known to exist (2) self-centeredness or selfishness
95. stanchion: an upright bar, post, or frame forming a support or barrier
96. stertorous: (of breathing) noisy and laboured
97. stochastic: having a random probability distribution or pattern that can be analysed statistically but not predicted precisely
98. stolid: calm, dependable, and showing little emotion or animation
99. stridulate: make a shrill sound by rubbing the legs, wings, or other parts of the body together
100. thrall: (1) the state of being in another's power (2) (archaic) a slave, servant, or captive
So what's the peroration of this fatuous, otiose post? Be glad you have internet, or you'll end up like me. A thrall to my dictionary (and an execrably mannered one, at that).
~~~Tyt~~~
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