SOME WORDS WE over-use, some we hardly use at all. Wayne State Univeristy’s Word Warriors have released a list of words that we should be using more, in the wake of words such as tweep and hashtag being added to the dictionary.
Give these old yet beautiful words some love!
A shrill howling or wailing noise.
- ‘As the storm raged on, the caterwaul from the wind as it whipped through the trees kept me from getting any sleep’. Apt for this weather.
The skillful and harmonious arrangement or fitting together of the different parts of something.
- As the choir sang in the vast cathedral, I couldn’t help but marvel at the concinnity of Handel’s Messiah.
Flapdoodle, Nonsense.
- His talk show was a collection of flapdoodle about politics and conspiracies.
A roguish or mischievous act.
- His presidency was founded on malice, lies and knavery.
A mixture of different things.
- Her painting was a melange of colors and shapes that dazzled the eyes.
To walk about.
- During our vacation, my wife and I would wake up early and obambulate around the empty beach.
A person who begins to learn or study only late in life.
- Uninterested in anything intellectual for most of his life, my father turned into an opsimath after retirement, attending lectures and always carrying a book.
A person who is hostile or indifferent to culture and the arts, or who has no understanding of them.
- Ever the philistine, my dad never understood the joy I found in foreign films and classical music.
A mischievous person.
- April Fools’ Day was better than Christmas for the young rapscallion.
Monotonous urban sprawl of standardized buildings.
- As the city grew outward, our charming small town became a subtopia overrun with franchise pharmacies and strip malls.
