Word of the Day Archive
October 1999
- affable: easy to speak to; also, gracious.
- noisome: offensive or disgusting; also, harmful; unwholesome.
- exacerbate: to aggravate; to make worse.
- misnomer: a misnaming.
- lackadaisical: lacking spirit or liveliness.
- hauteur: haughtiness; arrogance.
- skulk: to hide in a sneaking manner.
- voluble: characterized by a ready flow of speech.
- ostracize: to banish or expel.
- autocrat: a ruler with unlimited authority.
- beholden: obliged; indebted.
- aplomb: confidence; coolness.
- disheveled: in loose disorder; disarranged.
- precocious: characterized by or characteristic of exceptionally early development.
- reticent: inclined to keep silent.
- legerdemain: sleight of hand.
- vituperate: to overwhelm with wordy abuse.
- foment: to nurse to life or activity; to incite.
- contumely: rudeness compounded of haughtiness and contempt.
- philomath: a lover of learning; a scholar.
- aesthete: one who cultivates great sensitivity to beauty.
- nefarious: wicked in the extreme.
- proclivity: a natural inclination.
- flout: to treat with contempt and disregard.
- sesquipedalian: (of words) long; having many syllables.
- inchoate: partly but not fully in existence or operation.
- circumlocution: the use of many words to express an idea that might be expressed by few.
- wayworn: wearied by traveling.
- potable: drinkable; also, a beverage, especially an alcoholic one.
- crepuscular: pertaining to twilight.
- doppelganger: a ghostly double.
