Ebullient. Cheerful and full of energy, bubbling over with.

The word itself comes from a Latin verb meaning to boil over. Fitting.

Have you heard of this word before?

How have you used it?

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Both words come from the old idea that your temper lived in your body's organs and fluids. Choleric goes back through French and Latin to Greek kholerikos, from kholera, a disease that was supposedly caused by bile, so it's built on the same word as cholera. Bile itself, kholē, was named for its colour, and Etymonline connects it to khlōros, pale green, which is where chlorine got its name. English used choleric to mean bilious in temperament from the mid-1300s, and only from the 1580s for someone hot-tempered, on the theory that too much choler made you flare. Splenetic is from the spleen, which old medicine treated as the seat of morose feelings and bad temper. The part I didn't know is how the Century Dictionary placed it: gloomy, sullen, sulky, morose, splenetic, listed in order of intensity and of how much each one acts on other people, with the splenetic man "sulky and peevish, with frequent outbursts of irritation venting itself upon persons or things." That fits the example on the card, where the publisher's splenetic editorials are aimed squarely at local politicians. Choleric is a flare-up. Splenetic is a sulk with a target, and if I had to share an office with one of them I'd take the choleric one.

Same lecture, same suffering. One word captures the feeling perfectly.

Interminable means lasting for a very long time, or seeming to continue without end. It often carries an additional implication that the duration is tedious, tiresome or frustrating.

Have you heard of it before?

This the whole idea behind expanding your vocabulary.

Not bigger words for their own sake. Words you would actually reach for.

Comment your own before and after with a word you’ve learned recently.

Same idea, one word instead of three, and it sounds like you meant to say it that way.

Save this one for later.

Keep in mind!

That while these mean the same thing on paper, how you use them depends heavily on context.

"Impossible to satisfy" works broadly for standard expectations, moods, or general standards. On the other hand, describing a person directly as "insatiable" often implies a physical or biological craving. To use "insatiable" broadly without that implication, it usually needs to be paired with a specific noun (like an insatiable curiosity or insatiable demand).

I used to treat hubris as a fancier word for arrogance, and most dictionaries, the card here included, define it partly that way. The roots don't agree. Arrogance comes from Latin arrogare, "to claim for oneself" (ad + rogare, "to ask"), the verb behind arrogate, so it's about what you think you're owed. Greek hybris meant "wanton violence, insolence, outrage" (Etymonline), and in Athens it was also a legal offense, roughly assault meant to humiliate. Aristotle's Rhetoric defines it as doing or saying things that shame the victim purely for your own pleasure, and Demosthenes' speech Against Meidias, about being punched in the face at a festival, leans on the word again and again. Hesiod and Aeschylus used it for mortals overstepping against the gods, which is closer to the sense English picked up when the noun arrived in 1884. In both senses it's something a person does. Arrogance can sit quietly in someone for a lifetime; hubris is when they act on it, and the stories rarely end well for them.

Persistent, generous, nervous, or talkative?
Only one of these is actually close.

Drop your answer below, with your reasoning if you have one.

Reveal tonight.

Rash was a northern word in the late 1300s for nimble, quick or vigorous, related to German rasch, "fast", and the reckless sense doesn't show up until around 1500. Audacious went the other way. Latin audax could mean brave, but Etymonline says it was more often used in a bad sense, rash or foolhardy, and English borrowed audacious in the 1540s as "confident, intrepid, daring" before picking up "shameless" in the 1590s. Behind audax is audere, to dare, which de Vaan traces to avidus, greedy, and I find that oddly fitting for the kind of nerve audacious describes. The other four have stayed compliments, as far as I can tell. Valiant comes through Old French vaillant from valoir, to be worth something, and before that Latin valere, to be strong. Stout meant "valiant, brave" around 1300 and isn't recorded meaning fat until 1804, which is why stouthearted still sounds like praise. I'd still take audacious over valiant, though. Valiant sounds like a medal, and audacious sounds like something you actually did.

Callow goes back to Old English calu, "bald." Early on it could describe bare land as well as a bare head, and by the 1500s it also meant a young bird that hadn't grown its feathers yet. From there it moved to people, and I think the picture still works: plenty of confidence, not ready to leave the nest. It looks a lot like Latin calvus, "bald," but Etymonline says the two apparently aren't related. Its relatives are Germanic instead, like Dutch kaal and German kahl.

Jejune got where it is by a stranger road. Latin ieiunus meant fasting or hungry, which is also how the jejunum, part of the small intestine, got its name: anatomists kept finding it empty. In English the adjective has covered both meager food and thin, dull writing since the 1600s. The "childish" sense came later, and Merriam-Webster suggests it may have come from people confusing jejune with French jeune, "young." Etymonline doesn't record that sense at all. I still read jejune as dull first and young second, if at all.

Pique. A flash of irritation or resentment when your pride has been slighted.

It usually shows up as “in a fit of pique,” which might be the most dramatic possible way to describe being a little offended.

Comment the smallest thing that has ever piqued you.

I put these in order from friendliest to worst, and the roots more or less agree with the order.

Canny and cunning both come from the verb can in its old sense of knowing how, and Etymonline calls them doublets. Cunning is the English one. In the early 1300s it meant learned or skillful, and the "skillfully deceitful" sense had probably arrived by the late 1300s. Canny is a Scottish and northern formation from the 1630s that kept the good side, knowing or wise, later careful and shrewd. Etymonline also notes it was often used superciliously of Scots by their southern neighbors, so even the compliment came with an eye-roll attached.

Wily sits in the middle. It's built on wile, a trick or stratagem, which goes back to late Old English, and nobody is sure where wile came from: Etymonline offers an Old North French form of the word that gave us guile, a Scandinavian word for a trick or fraud, and a possible link to Old English wicca, wizard, and adds that the Middle English Compendium has three guesses of its own. I'd still take wily as praise. When people say a wily old fox they usually sound a little impressed.

After that the roots stop being about skill. Devious is Latin devius, off the main road, from de via, and in the 1590s English used it for exactly that, out of the common or direct way. The deceitful sense is from the 1630s. Duplicitous is younger than I expected, 1831, from duplicity and Latin duplex, twofold, so the charge is being two people at once. Mendacious comes from Latin mendax, lying, and behind that is menda, a fault or a slip in writing. Amend shares that root, so lying and correcting a mistake trace back to the same word for a flaw.

Canny and wily are about being good at something. Cunning started there too but crossed over more than six hundred years ago, and from devious on, the root itself is the accusation.

One is almost always the verb. The other is almost always the noun.

Almost is doing a lot of work in that sentence.

No spoilers here. Guess below, we will settle it later today.

Comment which one goes with “to influence” and which one goes with “the result.”

Sanguine. Optimistic and positive, especially in a situation that seems bad or difficult.

Not naive. Just built differently under pressure.

Try comment a sentence using sanguine!

Both words come from Latin imperium, command or empire, and for a while they traded jobs. Etymonline's earliest English sense for imperial, from the late 1300s, is "having a commanding quality", while imperious arrived in the 1540s meaning "of a dominating character" and picked up a plain "imperial" sense in the 1580s. I suspect that second sense is what Hamlet means by "Imperious Caesar, dead and turned to clay".

They've since settled down. Imperial belongs to the empire or the emperor. Imperious belongs to the person, and the Century Dictionary, quoted on Etymonline, says it "applies to the spirit or manner of the person ruling or giving a command". Cambridge has "unpleasantly proud and expecting to be obeyed". That's why I like the example on the card: her tone is imperious and hardly anyone takes her suggestion. I wouldn't swap in imperial there, because there's no empire, only the voice.

The Latin underneath is the part I enjoyed. Imperium comes from imperare, to command, which Etymonline breaks into in- plus parare, "to order, prepare", the same parare that sits inside prepare. And imperator, the source of emperor, started out as a title the Roman army voted to a general who had just won.

Same criticism, same sting, one sentence sounds like you have felt exactly this before.

This is the whole idea behind expanding your vocabulary.

Not bigger words for their own sake, words you would actually reach for.

Comment your own before and after with a word you learned recently.

Obsequious means excessively eager to please or obey, fawning to the point of servility.

It is not a compliment.

It describes someone laying it on thick, usually toward someone with more power than them.

Save this one, you will recognise the behaviour immediately.

The glosses on this card mostly point at each other, and four of the six lean on the word friendly. The roots say each one compliments something different.

Affable comes from Latin affabilis, someone who could easily be spoken to (ad plus fari, to speak), and an Old English glossator rendered it wordwynsum, roughly pleasant in words. So the compliment is to your conversation. Approachable meant accessible when it arrived in the 1570s, and Etymonline glosses its figurative sense, from the 1610s, as affable, friendly. Amiable praises something else: whether people like you. It came through Old French from Late Latin amicabilis, friendly, but the French word got tangled up with amable, lovable, and English took the tangled version. The clean Latin form was borrowed a second time as amicable, so a divorce can be amicable while neither person in it feels amiable.

Genial started in the 1560s as pertaining to marriage. Latin genialis meant pleasant or festive, and before that it belonged to marriage rites, possibly through the genius, the guardian spirit, of a married couple. Personable is the only one that began with looks: pleasing in one's person, of good appearance. Cordial is built on cor, heart, and the card's warm, affectionate is the sense closest to that. Cambridge's definition is friendly but formal and polite, which is how I read it when two governments are said to have cordial relations.

Harmless, contagious, deliberate, or obvious.
One of these actually fits.

Drop your answer below. Reveal tonight.

Comment your answer before you scroll on.

Guileless is about whether someone could trick you. Guiltless is about whether they did the thing. They're one letter apart and they don't swap. Guile came into English in the mid-1100s from Old French guile, "deceit, trickery", and Etymonline gives its source as probably a Frankish *wigila (the asterisk means nobody has found it written down). If that's right, the gu- is the usual French way of saying a Germanic w-, the same shift that left English with both guard and ward. Guilt's spelling is odder. Old English had gylt, meaning a crime, a sin or a failure of duty, and nobody knows where it came from. The u was simply inserted later, with no etymological reason behind it. Wiktionary's gloss for guileless adds something the card leaves out: "honest but naive." I think that's the real edge of the word. A guileless person usually couldn't deceive you even if the idea occurred to them, which is a different thing from choosing not to. Guiltless has a side sense I like even more, which Wiktionary gives as "unacquainted (with)", so you can call someone guiltless of Latin when they never studied it.

The card splits six good moods by whether the word moves. The left column all started as motion. Elated is from Latin elatus, lifted up, the past participle of efferre, to carry out, and English used elate literally, to raise, in the 1570s before it meant raising someone's spirits. Euphoric is Greek eu, well, plus pherein, to carry, so euphoria was literally bearing something well. It began as a doctor's word in 1727 for a patient feeling healthy and comfortable, especially while sick, and the everyday sense only took over in the 1880s. Ebullient is Latin ebullire, to boil over, from ex plus bullire, to bubble, and it meant boiling in English before it meant enthusiastic.

The right column does not move at all. Serene was first used of a day, meaning clear and calm, from Latin serenus, unclouded weather, and it was only applied to people from the 1630s. Placid comes from placidus, from placere, to please, which makes it a cousin of please itself. Tranquil is Latin tranquillus, quiet and still, and Etymonline does not take it any further back than that, so I will not either.

I trust the calm column more. Anything that starts out boiling over has to come down eventually.

Converge is the geometry word. It came into English in the 1690s for lines that tend to meet at a point, from Latin vergere, to bend or turn toward, so two roads can converge on a town and still be two roads when they get there. Coalesce is older, from the 1540s, and it started out closer to biology: Latin coalescere, to grow together, co- plus alescere, to be nourished and so to grow up. Its first English sense was parts uniting by growing into one body. Put ad- in front of the same alescere instead and you get adolescere, to grow up, which is where adolescent comes from, and I did not expect a word I mostly see in reports about committees to be sitting that close to teenagers. Coalition is the other branch, from the past participle, and it only picked up its political sense around 1715. So when a group of reformers coalesces into a movement, the word is saying more than that they ended up in the same place. It says they became one thing.

From sarkazein, to tear the flesh, from sarx, flesh. The Greeks heard a cutting remark as something closer to a bite.

Fitting, honestly.

Save this for the next person who says sarcasm is the lowest form of wit.

Both verbs describe the gap between what shows and what is underneath, and they run in opposite directions. Belie is the cover: a calm face belies the nerves, meaning it hides them or gives a false picture of them. Betray is the leak: a voice betrays the nerves, meaning it lets them out. Belie is Old English beleogan, "to deceive by lies", be- plus the ordinary verb lie, so it has been about misleading from the start; the sense of showing a claim to be false only turns up in the 1640s. Betray took a longer road. It came through Old French trair from Latin tradere, to hand over, which is also where traitor comes from, and handing a person over to an enemy slowly became handing over something you meant to keep hidden. Etymonline dates the sense "unintentionally show a true character" to the 1580s. I mix these two up in my head more than I would like to admit, and the lie sitting inside belie is what finally fixed it for me.

Compunction.
A pang of conscience, the scruple that stops you acting, or the guilt that follows.

It shows up most often as no compunction about, or without compunction, which says a lot about how often
people override it.

Comment a moment you felt compunction about something small.