Expanding Our Verbal Repertoire

I love words the way painters must adore colors and musicians cherish music notes. I honor the way they look, the dots and lines and whorls. I’m grateful for their heroic, and doomed, attempts to make concrete what is ultimately abstract and immeasurable. Their lonely collections of letters, of solidified ambiguity, of contentiousness between aural and visual, of confined epistemologies and solidified prejudices: I heart them all.

If you, like me, think of each word as a weapon in your arsenal, as a different color in your painter’s palette, then you’ll appreciate what I’ve decided to do for myself. Below is a list of words I’ve encountered from time to time and yet never manage to staple to my long-term memory. Heck, maybe the public acknowledgement of my poor verbal retention will help shame me into memorizing these elusive little buggers. Fingers crossed.

I grabbed these definitions from Dictionary.com (unmarked) and Merriam Webster online (marked with an asterisk).

Assiduous: marked by careful unremitting attention or persistent application*

Only through a campaign of assiduous inquiries, chats, and gifts did Elle’s partner eventually win her over.

Concupiscent: lustful or sensual

Elle’s concupiscent relationship with hair, particularly of the curly and brown varieties, remained a secret no longer.

Desultory: 1. lacking in consistency, constancy, or visible order, disconnected; fitful: 

2. digressing from or unconnected with the main subject; random

Until this very moment, Elle had no idea that her haphazard approach to blogging could be characterized as “desultory.”

Hufflepuff

Erstwhile: former

Hufflepuff, Elle’s erstwhile furchild, lives his own little happily-ever-after in Southern California.

Fulsome: offensive to good taste, especially as being excessive; overdone or gross

Really, don’t you find Elle’s obsession with Hello Kitty a little, well, fulsome? I mean, the woman has a Hello Kitty nose stud, for god’s sake!

Meretricious: alluring by a show of flashy or vulgar attractions; tawdry

Of course, Elle’s also a little meretricious in her v-necked Hello Kitty t-shirt, amiright?

Munificent: extremely liberal in giving; very generous

People everywhere agreed Elle’s latest post reflected her magnificently munificent nature.

Perspicacious: having keen mental perception and understanding; discerning

“You’re quite the perspicacious student,” Elle gushed.

Perspicuous: clearly expressed or presented; lucid

“Oh, Dr. Hill, that’s only because your sociology lectures are so perspicuous!” exclaimed the starry-eyed student.

The refulgent eye of Elle is upon you

Refulgent: shining brightly; radiant; gleaming

Elle’s refulgent eyes glared back at the computer screen.

Verisimilitude: the appearance or semblance of truth; likelihood; probability

Elle sincerely hoped none of her readers would research the verisimilitude of her use of L.A. geography in her various novels.

Have a refulgent day, my perspicacious three readers.