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(damn you blogger!) macabre: suggesting the horror of death and decay; gruesome (and that's how you get 'he died a macabre death') tenable: defensible - for both arguments and structures (eg. a fortress) (think tendable - we're able to tend it, see?) tepid: lukewarm, halfhearted maestro: master in an art, especially in music heinous: grossly wicked, abominable ossesous: bony (much cooler than plain old bony, really) viand: a (delicious) food item (chocolates are viands. =)) stalwart: firm and resolute; steadfast supporter (i am a h/hr stalwart. 'nuff said.) niggling: to be preoccupied with trifles or petty details; to find fault constantly and trivially (so a niggling thought is a preoccupation with petty details? hmmm.) exfoliate: to remove in flakes and scales; peel (this seriously makes exfoliating your skin sound so much more gross) sentient: having perception, experiencing sensation or feeling (if you were wondering what sentient creatures meant in animorphs...) snooty: snobbishly aloof, haughty (if you were wondering what sushilla has called some people in our class...) jaded: to be worn out by overuse or overindulgence (jy, were you the one who said it meant the feeling after sex?) surfeit: disgust caused by overindulgence or an excess of something (we must not end our meals in surfeit like abraham...) canker: a source of spreading corruption or decay (also, ulcerations of the mouth and lips) (our favourite rnj-inspired descriptive word for hate can now be used to describe those annoying ulcers too!) words inspired by 'o level vocabulary' from casco publications, chockfull of obscure proverbs and words that are supposed to be part of our vocabulary somehow. am planning to continue doing this on a regular basis - maybe even daily. unless, of course, someone tells me that it's boring them to death. (you'd better not delete everything again, blasted blogger!) ---------- ee was enlightened at 8:20 AM ---------- +++++ Thursday, September 04, 2003extirpate: to totally destroy (sounds like a cross between exterminate and constipate to me...) lugubrious: mournful, dismal or gloomy, especially in an exaggerated degree (i've never even heard of this word...) maelstrom: a violent or turbulent situation. taken literally, a huge, violent whirlpool. (ha, i've heard of this one! uh, on a playstation rpg...) love-in: a gathering to promote love (aka a gathering of hippies!) loving-cup: a cup that is passed round a group of people, with each person taking a sip from the cup (whoopee, way to proliferate: to grow, multiply or spread at a rapid rate (hmmm, pro-life-rate, interesting, interesting...) extrapolate: to infer or to fill in the blanks (wonder if we can go 'i can extrapolate from source a that...") exponentially: to multiply greatly (well, we know that from maths...) pulchritudinous: having great physical beauty and appeal (long long word which i probably will not use. thanks jy!) ---------- ee was enlightened at 4:36 AM ---------- +++++ Wednesday, September 03, 2003salient: basically something noticeable or prominent (so they actually mean 'prominent point' when they say "that's a salient point"? interesting.) noxious: harmful [to living things, health, the mind or morals] (i should have guessed, why else do you get 'noxious fumes'?) loquacious: talkative (somehow that word reminds me strongly of longan...) speakeasy: a place where drinks are bought illegally (and you thought it really literally meant to speak easily, hehe.) capricious: unpredictable and impulsive (ah, so that's what they mean by a capricious woman, i always thought it meant evil or something, lol.) crotchety: capriciously (ie unpredictably) stubborn, eccentric or perverse (and here i always thought crotchety old women meant they were always... crocheting.) narcissistic: excessive love and admiration of oneself (just think silly lad who fell in love with beautiful reflection, easy peasy.) jaunty: having a brisk, self-confident air or crisp and dapper in appearance dapper: neatly or stylishly dressed or lively and alert masochistic: derivation of pleasure from abuse (gasp! -thinks dominatrix-) literati: the literary intelligentsia (intellectual elite of a society) (apparently lynn thinks that it means a person obsessed with words, or something to that extent, because she called me that) esoteric: understood only by a special or small group; confidential (so that's how you get 'the strange and the esoteric', hmmm.) vainglory: boastful pride in one's accomplishments or a vain, ostentatious display (surprisingly, the word can be interpreted as it is!) ostentatious: showy and pretentious ---------- ee was enlightened at 3:55 AM ---------- +++++ Monday, September 01, 2003phallic: to do with the phallus okay... what is a phallus then? a quick check with online richard solved the mystery. phallus: the penis so there you have it! phallic means 'to do with the penis' then we have ubiquitous - rather a mouthful, i can't pronounce it, lol. oh, what it means. ubiquitous: being or seeming to be everywhere at the same time; omnipresent now there you have it, two sort-of-words that have become words you know! improving our word power is so much fun, isn't it? ---------- ee was enlightened at 9:20 PM ---------- +++++ |