disparate \DIS-puh-rit; dis-PAIR-it\ (adjective) - 1 : Fundamentally different or distinct in quality or kind. 2 : Composed of or including markedly dissimilar elements.

"When a poet's mind is perfectly equipped for its work, it is constantly amalgamating disparate experience; the ordinary man's experience is chaotic, irregular, fragmentary." ...Read more

malleable \MAL-ee-uh-buhl\ (adjective) - 1 : Capable of being extended or shaped by beating with a hammer, or by the pressure of rollers; -- applied to metals. 2 : Capable of being altered or controlled by outside forces; easily influenced. 3 : Capable of adjusting to changing circumstances; adaptable.

"The natives proved less malleable and ...Read more

gelid \JEL-id\ (adjective) - Extremely cold; icy.

"The house was silent, filled with a gelid, wintery hush even as lilac and dogwood leaves brushed darkly against the windowpanes." -- Michael Cunningham, 'A Home at the End of the World'

Gelid comes from Latin gelidus, from gelu, "frost, cold."

luculent \LOO-kyuh-luhnt\ (adjective) - Clear; easily understood.

"From the high ground all is clear, interpretable, luculent: this is what this means." -- Thomas Lux, 'The Cradle Place'

Luculent comes from Latin luculentus, from lux, luc-, "light."

pecuniary \pih-KYOO-nee-air-ee\ (adjective) - 1 : Relating to money; monetary. 2 : Consisting of money. 3 : Requiring payment of money.

"The young man of the house was absorbed in his vegetable garden and the possibilities for pecuniary profit that it held." -- Samuel Chamberlain, 'Clementine in the Kitchen'

Pecuniary comes from Latin ...Read more

sapid \SAP-id\ (adjective) - 1 : Having taste or flavor, especially having a strong pleasant flavor. 2 : Agreeable to the mind; to one's liking.

"Chemistry can concentrate the sapid and odorous elements of the peach and the bitter almond into a transparent fluid" -- David William Cheever, 'Tobacco', The Atlantic, August 1860

Sapid comes from ...Read more

potboiler \POT-boi-lur\ (noun) - A usually inferior literary or artistic work, produced quickly for the purpose of making money.

"The play was a mixed blessing. Through it O'Neill latched on to a perennial source of income, but the promise of his youth was essentially squandered on a potboiler." -- Jane Scovell, 'Oona. Living in the Shadows'

...Read more

nimiety \nih-MY-uh-tee\ (noun) - The state of being too much; excess.

"Just as daily life contains all the comforts of what one owns, there is also a natural shedding or forgetting and a natural dulling, otherwise one becomes burdened with a sense of nimiety, a sense (as Kenneth Clark put it in his autobiography) of the 'too-muchness' of life."...Read more

acuity \uh-KYOO-uh-tee\ (noun) - Acuteness of perception or vision; sharpness.

"Horses tend to shy a lot because the construction of their eyes is optimized for a near 360-degree field of view, useful for spotting danger, but the price the horse pays for that is relatively poor acuity and some out-of-focus spots that can cause objects within ...Read more

lubricious \loo-BRISH-us\ (adjective) - 1 : Lustful; lewd. 2 : Stimulating or appealing to sexual desire or imagination. 3 : Having a slippery or smooth quality.

"I was born to be a Turk and spend my days watching exquisite girls perform those lubricious oriental dances that are like the dreams of virtuous men..." -- Victor Hugo, 'Les Misé...Read more

urbane \ur-BAYN\ (adjective) - Polished and smooth in manner; polite, refined, and elegant.

"Taylor comes across as an intelligent man, suave and urbane, articulate and smooth as butter." -- Bill Berkeley, 'The Graves Are Not Yet Full'

Urbane comes from Latin urbanus, "of a city," hence "refined, polished," from urbs, "city." The noun form is ...Read more

Today, let's weed our grammatical garden.

Betty Lundy of West Point, Mississippi, wonders how to say that her son removed weeds yesterday with a Weed Eater. Should she say, "he weed eated the lawn," or "he weed ate the lawn"? ("Weed Eater" is a trademark for a line of lawn care equipment, but, like "kleenex" and "band-aid," it has become a ...Read more

loquacious \loh-KWAY-shuhs\ (adjective) - 1 : Very talkative. 2 : Full of excessive talk; wordy.

"The Frenchman fought him back valiantly that night, with that over- loquacious, over-adrenalized valor which the French are addicted to, and could not avoid..." -- James Jones, 'The Merry Month of May'

Loquacious comes from Latin loquax, "...Read more

effulgence \i-FUL-juhn(t)s\ (noun) - The state of being bright and radiant; splendor; brilliance.

"The setting sun as usual shed a melancholy effulgence on the ruddy towers of the Alhambra." -- Washington Irving, 'The Alhambra'

From Latin ex, "out of, from" + fulgere, "to shine." The adjective form of the word is effulgent.

puerile \PYOO-uhr-uhl; PYOOR-uhl\ (adjective) - Displaying or suggesting a lack of maturity; juvenile; childish.

Political argument is becoming a puerile cartoon about the moral . . . doing battle with the immoral." -- George F. Will, 'The Costs of Moral Exhibitionism'

Puerile comes from Latin puerilis, from puer, "child, boy."

immure \ih-MYUR\ (verb) - 1 : To enclose within walls, or as if within walls; hence, to shut up; to imprison; to incarcerate. 2 : To build into a wall. 3 : To entomb in a wall.

"When I tried to think clearly about this, I felt that my mind was immured, that it couldn't expand in any direction." -- Andrew Solomon, 'The Noonday Demon'

Immure ...Read more

capitulate \kuh-PICH-uh-layt\ (intransitive verb) - To surrender under agreed conditions.

"I am ashamed to think how easily we capitulate to badges and names." -- Ralph Waldo Emerson, 'Self-Reliance'

We say "capitulate" because the terms (of surrender) were drawn up in capitula, which is Latin for "chapters." Chapter itself is related to ...Read more

hauteur \haw-TUR; (h)oh-\ (noun) - Haughty manner, spirit, or bearing; haughtiness; arrogance.

"My silence, I hoped, would be taken as expressive of the hauteur of a man who was above it all -- a man with a mission, in fact, a mission authorized from somewhere on high." -- Jeffrey Tayler, 'Facing the Congo'

Hauteur is from the French, from ...Read more

A few years ago, I was answering listeners' questions on a radio call-in show. Everything was hunky-dory until a caller stumped me by asking, "What's the origin of 'hunky-dory'?"

In my most mellifluous radio voice, I replied, "Uhhhhhh..."

What I meant to say, of course, was this: An old Dutch word for the goal or home base in a children's ...Read more

sybarite \SIB-uh-ryt\ (noun) - A person devoted to luxury and pleasure.

"And when the final blessing of a perfect French cook appeared to make our domestic picture complete, we became utter sybarites, frank worshippers of the splendors of the French cuisine." -- Samuel Chamberlain, 'Clémentine in the Kitchen'

Sybarite is derived from Greek ...Read more