Vocabulary List 11/18/09

Front 1

Soporific

Back 1

(adj.) Causing sleep
Example: They were almost an hour behind in their daily schedule, and both women looked tired after a soporific afternoon of three executive meetings.
- Gabriel Garcia Marquez, News of a Kidnapping

Front 2

Irenic

Back 2

(adj.) Promoting peace
Example: With an irenic spirit they join the debate, at times ugly and vicious, about the historicity of the Bible (by which they mean the Hebrew Scriptures, also known as the Old Testament).
-- Phyllis Trible, "God's Ghostwriters", New York Times, February 4, 2001

Front 3

Truculent

Back 3

(adj.) fierce, savage, ruthless
Example: Bitter and truculent when excited, I spoke as I felt, without reserve or softening.
- Charlotte Bronte, Jane Eyre

Front 4

Sommelier

Back 4

(noun) a restaurant employee who maintains and orders the wine sold in the restaurant
Example: If the wine list is not online, drop by the restaurant in advance, look over the list and talk with the sommelier. It's a small investment in time that will pay big dividends.
-- Dorothy J. Gaiter and John Brecher, "Ordering for a Business Meal", Wall

Front 5

Skullduggery

Back 5

(noun) devious, dishonest behavior or activity
Example: And then the inquests, and the coroner's reports, and the hints of diplomatic cover-ups, and skullduggery in high places.
- Hilary Mantel, Eight Months on Ghazzah Street

Front 6

Maunder

Back 6

(verb) to walk incoherently and aimlessly
Example: It is a play with melodramatic themes, but García Lorca has put aside temptation to let it maunder, scream or otherwise let the emotions take over.
-- Richard F. Shepard, "Stage: 'Bernarda Alba' Produced in Spanish", New York Times, November 23, 1979

Front 7

Felicitous

Back 7

(adj.) Suitably applied, appropriate, delightful
Example: We do this sort of thing most weekends anyway, said a lean rebel with gunpowder smudges on his face and the felicitous name of Troy Cool.
-- Tony Horwitz, Confederates in the Attic

Front 8

Abeyance

Back 8

(noun) Suspension
Example: Her plans fell into abeyance when she parted from Franz Josef and traveled for five years.
-- Rebecca West, "Black Lamb and Grey Falcon", The Atlantic, January 1941

Front 9

Billet

Back 9

(noun) Lodging for soldiers; a position of employment
Example: When he was well enough, he was retrieved back to his billet in the American zone.
-- Frances Stonor Saunders, The Cultural Cold War

Front 10

Fungible

Back 10

(adj.) Interchangeable
Example: People think this tax is for Social Security. But tax monies are really fungible. They get raided all the time.
-- Eugene Ludwig, "Motivated to Work," interview by Kerry A. Dolan", Forbes, March

Front 11

Adjuvant

Back 11

(adj.) Serving to help or assist
Example: The new vaccine is made from a single CMV protein that was combined with an experimental adjuvant, a substance that's added to vaccines to boost their efficacy.
-- Serena Gordon, "Trial Vaccine May Protect Against Serious Viral Infection", U.S. News, March 18, 2009

Front 12

Incarnadine

Back 12

(adj.) Having a fleshy pink color
Example: The more he scrubbed it, the more it bled.
It made the seas incarnadine, he said.
-- Judy Driscoll, "Biddy takes pink gin to the country dance", Hecate, May 1, 1993

Front 13

Bifurcate

Back 13

(verb) To divide into two branches or parts
Example: They were strolling up the paved walk which bifurcated the rolling front lawn of her house.
-- Erik Tarloff, The Man Who Wrote the Book

Front 14

Esurient

Back 14

(adj.) Hungry; greedy
Example: The enemy then was an esurient Soviet Union which, having swallowed up Eastern Europe, had imposed a totalitarian system on countries just liberated from Nazism.
-- Arnold Beichman, "As Truman envisioned our role", Washington Times, April 23, 2002

Front 15

Descry

Back 15

(verb) To catch sight of something distant or obscure
Example: On a clear day, if there was no sun, you could descry (but barely) the ships roving out at anchor in Herne Bay and count their masts.
-- Ferdinand Mount, Jem (and Sam)