"To me, the greatest pleasure of writing is not what it's about, but the music the words make." - Truman Capote

"Words, like nature, half reveal and half conceal the soul within." - Alfred, Lord Tennyson

"My task which I am trying to achieve is by the power of the written word, to make you hear, to make you feel, it is, before all, to make you see. That, and no more, and it is everything."

-Joseph Conrad

Here are a few of my favourite, interesting words:

Mordant - characterised by biting sarcasm

Scathing - severely critical

Discomfited - disconcert, frustrate

Vertiginous - causing vertigo eg. Vertiginous cliffs

Flinty - hard and unyielding, reminiscent of flint

Boorish - ill-mannered

Demur - raise objections

Demure - quiet and serious, or pretending to be so

Feckless - feeble, incompetent, irresponsible

Timorous - timid, timorousness

Asthenic - weak, relating to or exhibiting asthenia, having a slender lightly muscled physique

Perfidious - treacherous, disloyal

Torpid - sluggish and inactive, torpidity

Filial - of, or due from a son or daughter

Laudatory - expressing praise

Convivial - sociable and lively

Rapacious - greedy, grasping, plundering of others

Beguiling - win the attention or interest of

Nebulous - cloud-like, lacking substance

Equivocation - use ambiguous words to conceal the truth

Dichotomy - opposite, contrast, entirely different

Vilify - say evil things about, vilification

Unequivocal - clear, robust

Equivocal - unclear, ambiguous

Pejorative - expressing contempt or disapproval

Inculcate - desire to implant (ideas or habits)

Ignoble - not noble in character, aims or purpose

Nostrum - quick remedy

Fetid - stinking

Recalcitrant - disobedient

Circumspect - cautious or prudent

Indolent - lazy

Ab intra - from within (Latin)

Non sequitur - it does not follow – a comment which is absurd due to not making sense (Latin)

Errant - erring, misbehaving

Onanism - masturbation

Fecundity - producing many ideas

Captious - fond of finding fault or raising objections about trivial matters, captiously

Febrile - feverish

Memento vivere - a reminder of life (Latin)

Prima facie - evidence which is suggestive but not conclusive (Latin)

Res nullius - belongs to no-one (Latin)

Stercus accidit - shit happens (Latin)

Anomalous - deviates from what is standard, normal, or expected

Peremptory - imperious, insisting on obedience

Phlegmatic - not easily excited or agitated

Pejorative - expressing disapproval, disparaging

Wistful - full of sad or vague longing

Perfunctory - done as a duty or routine but without much care or interest

Enamoured - feeling great fondness or love

Hegemony - leadership, particularly by one country

Pernicious - very harmful or destructive

Nescient - ignorant

Antipathy - hatred

Rectitude - moral goodness, correctness of behaviour or procedure

Craven - cowardly

Anodyne - anything that relives pain or distress

Vacillate - waver, keep changing one’s mind

Exculpate - free from blame

Ethereal - light and delicate, particularly in appearance

Arch - consciously or affectedly playful eg. ‘an arch smile…’

Inane - silly, lacking sense

Eponym - a word or name derived from the name of a person, eponymous

Vituperate - use abusive language, vituperative

Exigent - pressing, demanding

Lexical - of, or relating to the words or vocabulary of a language

Parenthesis - a word or phrase inserted as an explanation or after thought

Ossify - to cease developing, become inflexible

Bien-pensant - right thinking, orthodox (French)

Equanimity - calmness, composure

Imperious - arrogant

Imponderable - impossible or very difficult to assess or estimate

Patrician - comes from a family of high social rank, or looks or behaves as though they do

Accretion - a layer of material which gradually forms on top of something

Unctuous - someone who pretends to be full of praise, kindness, or interest, but is obviously insincere

Exiguous -very small

Lapidary - of or relating to the engraving, cutting, polishing of stones and gems , eg ‘ he had lapidary features’.

Perspicacity - having a ready insight into and understanding of things, perspicacious

Perspicuous - an account clearly expressed and easily understood

Sonorous - capable of producing a deep or ringing sound

Concomitant - naturally accompanying or associated

Insouciant - casually unconcerned

Tendentious - calculated to promote a particular cause or point of view

I love poetry and I don't wish to populate this site with too much of it. But I read this recently and can't resist posting it:

Facing you

I am not jealous

If you arrived

With a man on your back,

or a hundred men

hanging in the rigging of your hair,

or a thousand men

sleeping on the soft mound of your belly,

if you were a river

filled with drowned men

met by the furious sea

foaming at its mouth,

by eternal weather -

if you arrived with them all

where I wait for you,

I would not be jealous.

We will always be alone.

We will always be, you and I,

alone on this earth

to begin life.

- Daniel Hardisty