Even though I didn’t get a chance to post any words of the week last week, I’m still only going to post five words.  I’ve exhausted my list! Here are this week’s words:

1. Virtu: excellence or merit in objects of art, curios, and the like.
2. Vitiate: to impair the quality of; make faulty; spoil.
3. Vituperate: to use or address with harsh or abusive language; revile.
4. Vivify: to give life to; animate; quicken.
5. Zeitgeist: the spirit of the time; general trend of thought or feeling characteristic of a particular period of time.

Happy birthday, Lori!

Here are this week’s words:

1. Untoward: unfavorable or unfortunate.
2. Vagary: a whimsical, wild, or unusual idea, desire, or action.
3. Vapid: lacking or having lost life, sharpness, or flavor; insipid; flat.
4. Venal: willing to sell one’s influence, esp. in return for a bribe; open to bribery; mercenary.
5. Virago: a loud-voiced, ill-tempered, scolding woman; shrew.

Happy birthday, Brandi!

Since I didn’t get a chance to post any words of the week for the last three weeks, I’m going to post twenty words instead of five this week.  Here are this week’s words:

1. Sinecure: an office or position requiring little or no work, esp. one yielding profitable returns.
2. Somniferous: bringing or inducing sleep, as drugs or influences.
3. Sophistry: a subtle, tricky, superficially plausible, but generally fallacious method of reasoning.
4. Specious: apparently good or right though lacking real merit; superficially pleasing or plausible.
5. Spurious: not genuine, authentic, or true; not from the claimed, pretended, or proper source; counterfeit.
6. Supercilious: haughtily disdainful or contemptuous, as a person or a facial expression.
7. Supine: lying on the back, face or front upward.
8. Surfeit: to supply with anything to excess or satiety; satiate.
9. Sybarite: a person devoted to luxury and pleasure.
10. Taciturn: inclined to silence; reserved in speech; reluctant to join in conversation.
11. Temerity: reckless boldness; rashness.
12. Trenchant: caustic; cutting.
13. Truculence: fierce; cruel; savagely brutal.
14. Turbid: confused; muddled; disturbed.
15. Turgid: swollen; distended; tumid.
16. Tyro: a beginner in learning anything; novice.
17. Ubiquitous: existing or being everywhere, esp. at the same time; omnipresent.
18. Umbrage: offense; annoyance; displeasure.  (I wonder where Umbridge got her name. )
19. Unctuous: of the nature of or characteristic of an unguent or ointment; oily; greasy.
20. Undulate: to move with a sinuous or wavelike motion; display a smooth rising-and-falling or side-to-side alternation of movement.

Happy belated birthday, Ali and Wyatt!

Here are this week’s words:

1. Ruminate: to chew again or over and over.
2. Salient: prominent or conspicuous.
3. Salubrious: favorable to or promoting health; healthful.
4. Scintilla: a minute particle; spark; trace.
5. Sedulous: diligent in application or attention; persevering; assiduous.

Happy birthday, LeAnn and Christopher!

Since I didn’t get a chance to post any words of the week for the last two weeks, I’m going to post fifteen words instead of five this week.  Here are this week’s words:

1. Recondite: beyond ordinary knowledge or understanding; esoteric.
2. Recrudescent: growing raw, sore, or painful again.
3. Redoubtable: that is to be feared; formidable.
4. Refractory: hard or impossible to manage; stubbornly disobedient.
5. Regale: to entertain lavishly or agreeably; delight.
6. Regicide: the killing of a king. (This reminds me of fratricide from Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat.)
7. Repast: a quantity of food taken or provided for one occasion of eating.
8. Repine: to be fretfully discontented; fret; complain.
9. Reprobate: (of God) to reject (a person), as for sin; exclude from the number of the elect or from salvation.
10. Repudiate: to cast off or disown.
11. Requite: to make repayment or return for (service, benefits, etc.).
12. Restive: impatient of control, restraint, or delay, as persons; restless; uneasy.
13. Retinue: a body of retainers in attendance upon an important personage; suite.
14. Ribald: vulgar or indecent in speech, language, etc.; coarsely mocking, abusive, or irreverent; scurrilous.
15. Risible: causing or capable of causing laughter; laughable; ludicrous.

Since I didn’t get a chance to post any words of the week last week, I’m going to post ten words instead of five this week.  Here are this week’s words:

1. Propinquity:nearness in place; proximity.
2. Prosaic: commonplace or dull; matter-of-fact or unimaginative.
3. Puerile: childishly foolish; immature or trivial.
4. Pugnacious: inclined to quarrel or fight readily; quarrelsome; belligerent; combative.
5. Pusillanimous: lacking courage or resolution; cowardly; faint-hearted; timid.
6. Quixotic: extravagantly chivalrous or romantic; visionary, impractical, or impracticable.  (I’m guessing this is in reference to Don Quixote.)
7. Quotidian: usual or customary; everyday.
8. Raconteur: a person who is skilled in relating stories and anecdotes interestingly.
9. Rapacious: given to seizing for plunder or the satisfaction of greed.
10. Recalcitrant: hard to deal with, manage, or operate.

Happy birthday, Brooklyn!

Since I didn’t get a chance to post any words of the week last week, I’m going to post ten words instead of five this week.  Here are this week’s words:

1. Plumb: a small mass of lead or other heavy material, as that suspended by a line and used to measure the depth of water or to ascertain a vertical line.
2. Polyglot: able to speak or write several languages; multilingual.
3. Ponderous: of great weight; heavy; massive.
4. Portend: to indicate in advance; to foreshadow or presage, as an omen does.
5. Presage: to portend, foreshow, or foreshadow.
6. Preternatural: outside of nature; supernatural.
7. Prevaricate: to speak falsely or misleadingly; deliberately misstate or create an incorrect impression; lie.
8. Probity: integrity and uprightness; honesty.
9. Profligacy: shameless dissoluteness.
10. Prolix: extended to great, unnecessary, or tedious length; long and wordy.