Word of the Day Archive
September 2001
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- plaintive: expressive of sorrow or melancholy.
- tremulous: shaking, quivering; also, affected with fear.
- doughty: valiant; brave.
- contretemps: something inopportune or embarrassing.
- arbiter: one having the power of judging and determining.
- pablum: something (as writing or speech) that is trite, insipid, or simplistic.
- milksop: an unmanly man.
- cajole: to coax.
- hardscrabble: barren, marginal; also, marked by poverty.
- potentate: one who possesses great power or sway.
- moil: to labor; to toil; to drudge.
- redact: to edit.
- privation: the state of being deprived of something.
- venerate: to regard or treat with reverence; revere.
- starveling: one who is starving or being starved; also, poor in quality.
- etiolate: to blanch or bleach; to make sickly.
- wiseacre: a smart aleck.
- quagmire: a predicament.
- dictum: an authoritative statement.
- quixotic: foolishly impractical; also, capricious, impulsive.
- maunder: to talk or wander aimlessly.
- vade mecum: a book or other thing that one regularly carries about.
- amicable: characterized by friendliness and good will.
- effrontery: shameless boldness; insolence.
- cabal: a group that seeks power usually through intrigue.
- forcible: effected by force used against resistance; also, powerful.
- neoteric: recent in origin; new.
- indigence: extreme poverty.
- frangible: capable of being broken; easily broken.
- grandiloquent: expressed in a lofty style; pompous; bombastic.
