From “Abattoir” to “Vertiginous”
In high school, at my father’s suggestion, I wrote down and looked up every word and phrase that I came across and didn’t know the meaning of. That exercise helped to increase my vocabulary considerably. Unfortunately, I’ve fallen out of that habit for several years, but now I have begun again. In just a few weeks, I’ve encountered the following unfamiliar words. Though most of them aren’t a part of my vocabulary yet, I’m working on them.
- abattoir
- alembic
- aperçu
- apodictic
- arbitrage
- arbitrageur
- architectonic
- arrogate
- atelier
- bespoke
- bluestocking
- brio
- canard
- cantonment
- catafalque
- catamite
- cognoscenti
- comme il faut
- diaphanous
- empyrean
- eschutcheon
- fatuous
- fiducial
- frisson
- gendarmie
- haptic
- hubris
- ingénue
- limpid
- littoral
- loess
- manqué
- maven
- mesalliance
- ne plus ultra
- pabulum
- pace
- parastatal
- parvenu
- pastiche
- pesher
- petite marmite
- pièce de résistance
- postil
- preterition
- pronaos
- raconteur
- senescent
- seraglio
- sotto voce
- stentorian
- sub-rosa
- tergiversate
- tergiversate
- trompe-l’oeil
- vertiginous
Posted 17 Jan. 2008 at 8:21 am | Permalink
Lincoln,
You might want to change the spelling in your title of “abattoir”—it’s two t’s and one b. And it means a butchery, in French. The verb “abattre” means to cause to fall (as in bowling pins) or slaughter (like an animal).
Btw, on the shelf in Editorial there should be a huge Oxford English-French dictionary :D.
Meg
Posted 17 Jan. 2008 at 8:40 am | Permalink
Thanks for checking my spelling. I’ve corrected the title. Please note that I’m only trying to learning what the words mean, not how to spell them. :-)
Posted 23 Jan. 2008 at 11:53 am | Permalink
Back in distant pre-spell-check, I remember a teacher saying that she caught a plagiarizer because he knew how to spell “catafalque” correctly. Incidentally, I’ve seen Abraham Lincoln’s catafalque.