WORDS I've come across in reading - some I didn't know at all; with others I needed to check the meaning, and find out about their etymology.
acidulous - sour (of a comment or remark)
adamantine - having the quality of being adamant, unyielding
adventitious - happening as a result of external factors, formed accidentally
aliasing artifacts - In signal processing and related disciplines, aliasing is an effect that causes different signals to become indistinguishable (or aliases of one another) when sampled. It also refers to the distortion or artifact that results when the signal reconstructed from samples is different from the original continuous signal (Wikipedia).
apocatastasis (æpoʊkəˈtæstəsɪs) is restoration to an original condition.
apotheosis - culmination, climax or highest point
approbative - expressing approval or praise
bailiwick - a person's sphere of interest; the jurisdiction of a bailiff.
bedizen - decorate or dress up in a gaudy way. Obsolete dizen - ‘deck out’, probably of Dutch origin
belletrist - a person who writes essays, particularly on literary and artistic criticism, that are composed and read primarily for their aesthetic effect.
beziehungswahn - a psychological term - a delirium of establishing connections. Said of the writer, Bruce Chatwin.
brindle, brindling - having a striped pattern, of an animal. The stripes are usually darker than the coat and irregular.
bokeh (Japanese) In photography the aesthetic quality of the blur produced in out-of-focus parts of an image.[
callipygian - having well-shaped buttocks (Greek - said of a statue of Aphrodite)
canard - a rumour or unfounded story
capacious - roomy; having a lot of space inside
catachresis - the use of a word in an incorrect way; for example , the use of mitigate for militate.
catnip - someone or something that is very attractive or appealing to a particular person or group. (A plant of the mint family that is attractive to cats)
chiasmus - rhetorical inversion of the second of two parallel structures, as in "Each throat / Was parched, and glazed each eye"
(Samuel Taylor Coleridge).
chimichanga - deep-fried burrito, popular in Tex-Mex, SW U.S. cuisine
clerestory - the upper part of the nave, choir, and transepts of a church or cathedral, with a series of windows.
coenobitic - a word used of monks who live a monastic, community life. In contrast, an older style of monasticism, where monks live as hermits, is called eremitic.
combe - a deep, narrow valley
chthonic - related to the underworld
cuspidor - a spittoon. From Latin conspuere via Portuguese.
cynosure - a person or a thing that is the centre of attention
daedal - complex, ingenious, skillful
dieresis — two dots above a letter, as in the way that the New Yorker insists on its use in words with double vowels, like re-elect (“reëlect”) or pre-existing (“preëxisting”).
disjunctive syllogism - historically known as modus tollendo ponens. In classical logic a mode that affirms by denying.
disobliging - uncooperative, unaccommodating
druthers - choices, e.g. 'If I followed my druthers, I'd sit around all day doing very little.'
echolalia - the unsolicited repetition of vocalizations made by another person. (If made by the same person it is called palilalia.)
e.g. "The basic shtick of their echolalic duel to the death depends on Coogan being even more fanatical about getting it right than Brydon is." Clive James, in The Guardian.
egregious - outstandingly bad
encomium - a speech or a piece of writing in which someone or something is praised very highly. cf. panegyric
epiphytic - adjective from 'epiphyte', which is an organism growing on a plant, deriving its moisture and nutrients from the air, rain, water and debris roundabout
epistaxis - nosebleed; anterior epistaxis - nosebleed from front of nose.
etiolated - said of a plant which is pale for lack of light; having lost vigour.
eudaimonism - based on flourishing, well-being, spirit and activity of doing good to others
expatiate - hold forth on a topic, speak or write in detail about something
fuchsia - a flower. Often misspelt. Named after 16th century German botanist Leonhart Fuchs
gibbous - A 'gibbous' moon is more than half full; when its illuminated surface is increasing, it's called waxing gibbous. The word “gibbous” comes from the Latin for “hump” and has been used for centuries to describe rounded or convex shapes, like the back of a camel.
glom - (1) to be attached to, stick to (2) steal
gouache - opaque watercolor - one type of watercolour media
gravid - 1. Technical: carrying eggs; pregnant. 2. full of meaning or a specified quality, e.g. "the scene is gravid with unease"
grenadine - a red syrup used for cocktails, originally prepared from pomegranate juice, sugar, and water.
gubernatorial - related to a governor, especially of a state in USA
Hematite - also spelled as haematite, is a common iron oxide compound with the formula, Fe2O3 and is widely found in rocks and soils. I have some pieces, magnetically attracted to one another.
Hesychasm - a mystical tradition of contemplative prayer in the Eastern Orthodox Church.
incommensurable - not able to be judged by the same standards; having no common standard of measurement.
e.g. In Kuhn's view, Newtonian mechanics and Einsteinian relativism were incommensurable.
from late Latin - incommensurabilis
ikigai - a reason for getting up in the morning, giving you a boost (Japanese)
interstitial - an advertisement that appears while a website or page is downloading
kvetch - to complain (Yiddish)
'He marvels, for example, at the lambent, kinetic description of a train platform .... '
lenticular - lenticular printing is a technology in which lenses are used to produce images with an illusion of depth, or the capacity to change as the image is seen from different angles.
ligature - a thing used for tying or binding. “The critic’s chief loyalty is to the duet of beauty and wisdom”, he writes, “to the well-made and usefully wise, and to the ligatures between style and meaning.” (William Giraldi, as cited in Michael le Ponte, Death of the Critic? Times Literary Supplement, 23 April 2019.
macaronic - involving two or more languages, in the vernacular
malaphor is an informal term for a mixture of two aphorisms, idioms, or clichés
mavin - an expert, knowledgeable person
melisma - the singing of a single syllable of text while moving between several different notes in succession.
mendacity - a tendency to lie, untruthfulness, deceit, hypocisy (n); adjective - mendacious
mimophant - a word coined by Arthur Koestler to describe the chess player, Bobby Fischer. "A mimophant is a hybrid species: a cross between a mimosa and an elephant. A member of this species is sensitive like a mimosa where his own feelings are concerned and thick-skinned like an elephant trampling over the feelings of others." — David Edmonds and John Eidinow, Bobby Fischer Goes To War, p.24
minatory - conveying a threat
Mid 16th century: from late Latin minatorius, ‘threatened’ (vb.minari)
on the lam (USA) - slang for 'on the run'. A fugitive was sometimes known as a 'lamster'.
otiose - describing a word or phrase that is unnecessary, serving no practical purpose
from Latin, otiosus - having leisure or ease, unoccupied, idle, not busy
pabulum - bland or insipid intellectual matter, entertainment, and so on
passerine - the kind of bird that perches, with three toes pointing forward and one pointing back
pellucid - translucently clear. Said, for example, of prose, water or sound.
per procurationem - on behalf of - when someone signs a letter on behalf of someone else
perichoresis - a Greek term used to describe the triune relationship between each person of the Godhead. It can be defined as co-indwelling, co-inhering, and mutual interpenetration. From περιχώρησις. Also, in Latin, circumincession.
pescetarian - a person who eats vegetables and fish, but no other meat
philippic - a fiery, damning speech; a tirade
philtre - a drink supposed to arouse love and desire
piastre - a monetary unit of several Middle Eastern countries
plangent - loud, with a mournful tone
Potemkin - fraudulent or counterfeit. Potemkin was the surname of a Russian soldier and statesman, Grigori Aleksandrovich (1739-91). First used in the phrase “Potemkin Village”, it described a fake settlement, built only to impress.
porphyry - a variety of igneous rock consisting of large-grained crystals such as feldspar or quartz, dispersed in a fine-grained feldspathic matrix or groundmass. The larger crystals are called phenocrysts. In its traditional, non-geologic use, the term "porphyry" refers to the purple-red form of this stone, valued for its appearance. Later, the name was generalized to igneous rocks with large crystals. (New World Encylopedia). The word "porphyry" is derived from a Latin term that means "purple." Purple was the color of royalty, and the "Imperial Porphyry" was a deep brownish-purple igneous rock with large crystals of plagioclase.
scalar - a term in physics for a physical quantity that has only magnitude, e.g. speed, volume, density, mass, time
scilicet - (Latin) that is to say, namely: supplying an explanation when there is ambiguity or an obscure reference.
sclerophyll - a type of vegetation that has hard leaves
simoniac - related to the buying and selling of ecclesiastical privileges
soupçon - a tiny amount of something, a trace, the slightest pinch. From the French.
stochastic - having a random probability distribution or pattern that may be analysed statistically but may not be predicted precisely.
Stendahl's Syndrome - a state of being overcome by beauty
synecdoche - a part of speech in which a part represents the whole, e.g. New Zealand won by three runs. 'New Zealand' stands for the New Zealand cricket team.
syllogism
an instance of a way of reasoning in which a conclusion is drawn from two propositions
tendentious - expressing a partisan or controversial point of view
tergiversation - evasion of straightforward action or speech
traducer - a slanderer
trebuchet - A trebuchet (French: trébuchet) is a type of catapult that uses a long arm to throw a projectile. It was a common powerful siege engine until the advent of gunpowder.
trireme - an ancient vessel and a type of galley that was used by the ancient maritime civilizations of the Mediterranean, especially the Phoenicians, ancient Greeks and Romans.