These words I came across when reading The Voyages of Dr. Dolittle:
Obstreperous– \”He was such an enormous man there was no knowing what he might do if he got really obstreperous.\”
Definition: noisy, aggressively defiant and difficult to control
Embrocation– \”… the Doctor took a large bottle of embrocation and began rubbing the sprain.\”
Definition: an ointment or lotion
Enteric– \”They would go back to their old unsanitary ways: bad water, uncooked fish, no drainage, enteric fever, and the rest.\”
Definition: of the intestines
These words are from The Snowflake:
Nanoscale– \”Yet self-assembly is hard to fathom because it usually involves either nanoscale objects, like the molecules in a crystal, or tremendously complex objects, like living things.\”
Definition: on a scale of nanometers, which is one billionth of a meter
Morphogenesis– \”A flower is a biological example of morphogenesis, the spontaneous creation of form- nature using chemistry and self-assembly to generate complexity.\”
Definition: formation of the structure of an organism, or a part thereof
And from the books I\’m currently reading, Search for the Golden Moon Bear:
Igneous– \”In a great igneous spine, they run for more than six hundred miles from the northeastern corner of Cambodia up along the border of Vietnam and Laos.\”
Definition: formed by molten rock cooling
Lyse– \”The chemicals would lyse, or burst the cells, and cause them to release their DNA.\”
Definition: to cause the disintegration of cells, by a chemical substance, antibody or enzyme
Montane– \”If Africa is a good analogy, montane rain forest spread down, but the lowland forest became savanna in what is now the Congo Basin.\”
Definition: of a mountain area
and Daughters of the Sunstone:
Compunction– \”I was busy,\” he said lamely, wondering how he had turned her away twice with no compunction.
Definition: uneasiness caused by guilt; feeling of regret
Inimical– \”He should have known before he encountered the arrogant Bullens, should have known before he challenged the Arnimi force curtain, that the Arnimi would be inimical to him.\”
Definition: harmful, injurious; hostile or unfriendly
Insipid– \”Tastes and scents grew insipid, colors dull, textures bland.\”
Definition: lacking in flavor, tasteless
Venality– \”Or did the women who governed them see that their venality was directed entirely outward?\”
Definition: susceptible to bribery, corruption; using a position of trust for dishonest gain
Compendium– \”She was the oldest mare of her herd and she carried the knowledge of their kind in the very tissues of her body, carried it like a compendium of redmane wisdom.\”
Definition: a summary of a larger work
Ostentatious– \”It was a crude weapon, but she worked on it ostentatiously, hefting it, testing its balance.\”
Definition: showy, pretentious. That doesn\’t quite seem to fit here. Does anyone know another definition?
Extemporize– \”It means our fathers were the same man once,\” Danior said, extemporizing. \”Though they are no longer, of course.\”
Definition: to do something without preparation or practice
That\’s a lot of new words! To see more, visit the host of this meme, Bermudaonion.
3 Responses
That is a lot of new words, but you've been doing some pretty heavy reading. The only one I think I can use is insipid. Thanks for participating!
I love these word lists – yay for bermudaonion for hosting this meme. I love learning new words, and being reminded of old ones I haven't used for a while. Like inimical. Inimical. What a wonderful word.
What a list. I only knew the first one!Wednesday: Wondrous Words/A-Z wednesday