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Biweekly Memes
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10-Dollar Words
At dahil host ako, ako na mauuna:Insalubrious: not clean or healthy
From The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay:
The plaudits and honors described by the clippings, and the names of the monarchs of Europe and the Near East who had supposedly bestowed them, changed over the years, but the essential false facts of the Mighty Molecule's biography remained the same: ten lonely years studying ancient Greek texts in the dusty libraries of the Old World; hours of painful exercises performed daily since the age of five, a dietary regimen consisting only of fresh legumes, seafoods, and fruits, all eaten raw; a lifetime devoted to the careful cultivation of pure, healthy, lamb like thoughts and to total abstention from insalubrious and immoral behaviors."
At dahil gising pa ako, ako next. HeheheTheosophy: teaching about God and the world based on mystical insight.
From: The Fountainhead by Ayn Rand
"You shouldn't have laughed at theosophy when you spoke to Mrs. Marsh,"he said. "She believes in it."
Third!Verisimilitude: the appearance of being true or real.
from The Mikado by WS Gilbert:
"Merely corroborative detail, intended to give artistic verisimilitude to an otherwise bald and unconvincing narrative. (Poo-Bah)”
And so on!Aporia: an irresolvable internal contradiction or logical disjunction in a text, argument, or theory.
from The Death of the Author by Gilbert Adair:
I proposed that, again, in every text, there would fatally arrive what I called an aporia, a terminal impasse.
And so forth!Antediluvian: (1) of or belonging to the time before the biblical Flood
(2) ridiculously old-fashioned
From Mrs. Dalloway by Virginia Woolf:
“Women's rights, that antediluvian topic.”
taradiddle: a fib; pretentious nonsense"We haven't got time to listen to more taradiddles, I'm afraid, Dumbledore."
— Cornelius Fudge in Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, J.K. Rowling
Uuuy. Mahilig dito si Miguel Syjuco. Harharhar. Carry on. :D
Heterodoxy: The quality or state of not agreeing with established beliefs or standardsFrom: The End Of Faith by Sam Harris
We must begin speaking freely about what is really in these holy books of ours, beyond the timid heterodoxies of modernity—the gay and lesbian ministers, the Muslim clerics who have lost their taste for public amputations, or the Sunday churchgoers who have never read their Bibles quite through.
widdershins: counterclockwise"And the waves beat upon the one hand, and upon the other the dead leaves ran; and the clouds raced in the sky, and the gulls flew widdershins."
— Robert Louis Stevenson, The Song of the Morrow
pusillanimity: lack of courage or determination; timidity“Being young and hotheaded, I felt indignant over the baseness and pusillanimity of the stationmaster who gave away to some high-ranking nobleman the team of horses that had been prepared for me.”
– Aleksandr Pushkin, The Stationmaster
valetudinarian: a person of a weak or sickly constitution; especially : one whose chief concern is his or her ill health“She considered me as if grasping all at once the incredible — and somehow tedious, confusing and unnecessary — fact that the distant, elegant, slender, forty-year-old valetudinarian in velvet coat sitting beside her had known and adored every pore and follicle of her pubescent body. In her washed-out gray eyes, strangely spectacled, our poor romance was for a moment reflected, pondered upon, and dismissed like a dull party, like a rainy picnic to which only the dullest bores had come, like a humdrum exercise, like a bit of dry mud caking her childhood.”
― Vladimir Nabokov, Lolita
enisled: isolated (as if on an island)"Coffees were peculiarly Maycombian in nature. They were given for girls who came home. Such girls were placed on view at 10:30 a.m. for the express purpose of allowing the women of their age who had remained enisled in Maycomb to examine them. Childhood friendship were rarely renewed under such conditions."
— Harper Lee, Go Set a Watchman
pandiculate: to fully stretch the torso and upper limbs, typically accompanied by yawning (like a cat)"I pandiculate, and Alphra Booth swivels around."
— David Mitchell, The Bone Clocks
Fata Morgana: a mirage. Also: an unusual and complex form of superior mirage that is seen in a narrow band right above the horizon [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fata_Mo...]
From Stone Mattress: Nine Tales by Margaret Atwood:
"There's a classic iceberg on the port side, with a centre so blue it looks dyed, and ahead of them is a mirage - a fata morgana, towering like an ice castle on the horizon, completely real except for the faint shimmering at its edges."
gallivant: to go or travel to many different places for pleasure."Ah, but he hasn't been acting very like a father lately, has he? Abandoning his wife and his four little children to go gallivanting off on wild adventures of his own."
— Madeleine L'Engle, A Wrinkle In Time
What if one book has a lot of ten-dollar words? valid pa din yung entry? Heheheobsequious:too eager to help or obey someone important (in short, sipsip. Haha)
From: The Fountainhead by Ayn Rand
He was not a good designer, but he has connections; he was obsequious to Keating in the office, and Keating was obsequious to him after office hours.
^Madami sa The Fountainhead! Even the architectural terms :)
roué:a debauched man, especially an elderly one.From Stone Mattress: Nine Tales by Margaret Atwood
"He must think that naive, bland, North American Wilma finds him decadent and glamorous, quite the roué; he must think she swallows this stuff whole."
rapscallion: rascal; an idle worthless person"The devil fetch ye, ye ragamuffin rapscallions; ye are all asleep. Stop snoring, ye sleepers, and pull."
– Herman Melville, Moby Dick
hemidemisemiquaver: sixty-fourth note ; a musical note with the time value of 1⁄64 of a whole note"An eternity in purgatory, a hemidemisemiquaver in heaven."
— Paullina Simons, In the Summer Garden
incarnadine: To cause to be red or crimson.Will all great Neptune's ocean wash this blood
Clean from my hand? No; this my hand will rather
The multitudinous seas incarnadine,
Making the green one red.
- William Shakespeare, Macbeth
libertine: One who acts without moral restraint; a dissolute person.I do not mean to justify myself, but at the same time cannot leave you to suppose that I have nothing to urge--that because she was injured she was irreproachable, and because I was a libertine, SHE must be a saint.
- Jane Austen, Sense and Sensibility
apoplexy: 1. the sudden loss of the ability to feel or move parts of the body caused by too little blood going to the brain (medical) 2. great anger and excitement"For instance, there is apoplexy--that lightning-stroke which strikes but does not destroy you, and yet which brings everything to an end."
- The Count of Monte Cristo, Alexandre Dumas
obstreperous: difficult to control and often noisy; unruly“Yemembey was most obstreperous, and probably spontaneous."
— Ursula K. Le Guin, The Left Hand of Darkness
sang-froid: self-possession or imperturbability especially under strain (French: literally, cold blood)So now, in a situation threatening to become every moment more scaly, I did not lose my head. I preserved the old sang-froid. Smiling a genial and affectionate smile, and hoping that it wasn't too dark for it to register, I spoke with a jolly cordiality:
- Right Ho, Jeeves, P.G. Wodehouse
pince-nez: a pair of old-fashioned eyeglasses that do not have pieces that fit over the ears and that are worn by being clipped onto the nose"A dead man, dear, with nothing on but a pair of pince-nez. Mrs. Throgmorton positively blushed when she was telling me. I'm afraid people do get a little narrow-minded in country vicarages."
- Whose Body?, Dorothy L. Sayers
farinaceous : having a mealy (rough) texture or surface“Mr. Pumblechook's premises in the High-street of the market town, were of a peppercorny and farinaceous character, as the premises of a corn-chandler and seedsman should be.”
— Charles Dickens, Great Expectations
prevaricate: to lieIn Henry Fielding's novel Tom Jones, Squire Allworthy demands of Mr. Dowling, "Do not hesitate nor prevaricate; but answer faithfully and truly to every question I ask."
bogart: to selfishly appropriate or keep; to use or consume without sharing; to selfishly control something, refuse to share. From Into The Fire by Suzanne Brockmann
"Dave had included a link to a New York Times article, and Murphy bogarted the mouse in order to click on it as quickly as possible."
phantasmagoria: a bizarre or fantastic combination, collection, or assemblage“My grandmother and I used to scream words off her back porch a night, when I would stay over. That's something I remember. We screamed the longest words we could think of. 'Phantasmagoria!' I screamed.”
— Jonathan Safran Foer, Everything is Illuminated
stertorous: characterized by a harsh snoring or gasping sound“The bouncer breathed stertorously and his hand was limp.”
— Raymond Chandler, Farewell, My Lovely
Love this! It's like bingeing on the Word of the Day podcast sans the etymologies.Hi Gwaxa! :)
tintinnabulation: the sound of ringing bellsHear the sledges with the bells -
Silver bells!
What a world of merriment their melody foretells!
How they tinkle, tinkle, tinkle,
In the icy air of night!
While the stars that oversprinkle
All the heavens seem to twinkle
With a crystalline delight;
Keeping time, time, time,
In a sort of Runic rhyme,
To the tintinnabulation that so musically wells
From the bells, bells, bells, bells,
Bells, bells, bells -
From the jingling and the tinkling of the bells.
— Edgar Allan Poe, The Bells
flummox: to confuse; perplex(Mr. Weller speaking in Cockney English)
"And my 'pinion is, Sammy, that if your governor don't prove a alleybi, he'll be what the Italians call reg'larly flummoxed, and that's all about it."
— Charles Dickens, The Pickwick Papers
automaton: a moving mechanical device made in imitation of a human beingAnd the boy, this automaton, he was made of the very mud of the region and sees far less than you.
- Invisible Man, Ralph Ellison
rapacious: 1. excessively grasping or covetous 2. living on preyThe Victorians, especially southern Victorians, needed a lot of room to stray away from each other, to duck tuberculosis and flu, to avoid rapacious lust, to wall themselves away from sticky emotion.
― Sharp Objects, Gillian Flynn
remonstrance: a protest or complaint about somethingThe priest gave a little smile, lightly touched with censure, remonstrance gentled.
-Suttree, Cormac McCarthy
oblique: indirectly stated or expressed; not straightforwardAll art is a kind of confession, more or less oblique. All artists, if they are to survive, are forced, at last, to tell the whole story, to vomit the anguish up.
- Nobody Knows My Name, James Baldwin
nihilism: the belief that all values are baseless and that nothing can be known or communicated. But there was also about him an indescribable air which no mechanic could have acquired in the practice of his handicraft however dishonestly exercised: the air common to men who live on the vices, the follies, or the baser fears of mankind; the air of moral nihilism common to keepers of gambling hells and disorderly houses; to private detectives and inquiry agents; to drink sellers and, I should say, to the sellers of invigorating electric belts and to the inventors of patent medicines.
- The Secret Agent, Joseph Conrad
ennui: a feeling of utter weariness and discontent resulting from satiety or lack of interest; boredom"The only horrible thing in the world is ennui, Dorian. That is the one sin for which there is no forgiveness."
- The Picture of Dorian Gray, Oscar Wilde
defenestration: a throwing of a person or a thing out of a window"I once defenestrated a guy. The cops got all pissed off at me. I was drunk, but they said that was no excuse."
"Ah well," Virgil said. Then, "The guy hurt bad?"
"Cracked his hip. Landed on a Prius. Really fucked up the Prius, too."
"I can tell you, just now is the only time in my life I ever heard 'defenestration' used in a sentence," Virgil said.
"It's a word you learn after you done it," Morton said. "Yup. The New Prague AmericInn, 2009."
Virgil was amazed. "Really? The defenestration of New Prague?"
— John Sandford, Mad River
insouciance: a relaxed and calm state; a feeling of not worrying about anythingFrom: The Discovery of India by Jawaharlal Nehru
India has known the innocence and insouciance of childhood, the passion
and abandon of youth, and the ripe wisdom of maturity that comes from long experience of pain and pleasure; and over and over a gain she has renewed her childhood and youth and age.
egregious: very bad and easily noticedFrom: A Letter to A Christian Nation by Sam Harris
If God exists, either He can do nothing to stop the most egregious calamities, or He does not care to. God, therefore, is either impotent or evil.
mollycoddle: a pampered or effeminate man or boyFrom: Angels & Demons by Dan Brown
'So as this child's father, you would give him some basic, good advice and then let him go off and make his own mistakes?'
'I wouldn't run behind him and mollycoddle him if that's what you mean.'
'But what if he fell and skinned his knee?'
'He would learn to be more careful.'
flibbertigibbet: a silly flighty person"I’m sitting-sitting on my eggs. Eight of them. Got to keep them toasty-oasty-oasty warm. I have to stay right here, I’m no flibberty-ibberty-gibbet. I do not play when there are eggs to hatch. I’m expecting goslings."
— The Goose in reply to Wilbur’s invitation to play in E.B. White’s Charlotte’s Web
mercurial: rapid and unpredictable changes in moodFrom: The Summer Without Men by Siri Hustvedt
The transience of human feeling is nothing short of ludicrous. My mercurial fluctuations in the course of a single evening made me feel as if I had a character made of chewing gum.
homunculus: a little manFrom: The Summer Without Men by Siri Hustvedt
Then, easily distracted twit that I am, I had, soon after, found myself on maternal heights, where I had practically swooned with pleasure as I bobbed and fondled the borrowed homunculus next door. I had eaten well, drunk too much wine, and embraced a young woman I hardly knew.
infra dig: not appropriate for a person's social position; beneath someone's dignity"There's nothing infra dig about snitching (stealing) pigs. If I were differently situated, I'd do it like a shot."
— P.G. Wodehouse, Uncle Fred in the Springtime
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I'm Gwaxa and I will be the host for our meme in the first week of September.
This meme is based on this quote from Hemingway:
So.....let's show Hemingway (and Faulkner, I guess) that we also know those words, and of course, that we also know how to use them.
Instructions are simple: find an unusual and complex word, list its meaning and quote a sentence from a book where it is used.
Post away, peoples. Remember: more entries, more chances of winning. Hohoho.