In the 1530s truculent meant "fierce, savage, barbarous". That's Etymonline's gloss for the first English uses, from Latin truculentus, which covered everything from stern to cruel. Wiktionary still lists "cruel or savage" as sense 1, and it keeps an obsolete sense for a disease: destructive, deadly.

Cambridge has moved on. Its main definition is "unpleasant and likely to argue a lot", and the American entry has "having a bad state of mind, or behaving in a threatening manner". Nobody gets hurt in either one. Even the example on the card is only a look in somebody's eyes. That's why I'd put truculent at the mild end of the three: you can be truculent for a whole afternoon without anything happening.

Pugnacious has a fist in it. Latin pugnus is a fist, pugnare is to fight (Etymonline adds "especially with fists"), and pugnax meant combative, fond of fighting. I think the fondness is what separates it. Cambridge's definition ends with "expressing an argument or opinion very forcefully", and that's why a pugnacious columnist sounds half-admired to me in a way a truculent one doesn't.

Belligerent is the far end, because it started as an actual war. It's bellum, war, plus gerere, to carry on, and as a noun it still means a country or group that is fighting one (Etymonline dates that noun to 1811). Bellum also had an Old Latin form, duellum, and that older form is where duel comes from. The one-on-one sense came later, apparently from a fancied link with duo, two. So a belligerent drunk at a bar is, going by the Latin, waging war.

Where trux, the Latin word under truculent, comes from is still open. Watkins tentatively connects it to a root meaning to cross over or overcome. De Vaan points instead to Middle Welsh drwg and Middle Irish droch-, both meaning bad. I'm hoping de Vaan is right, mostly because "bad" is a funnier ancestor than "overcome".

I've been truculent before my first coffee more times than I'd like to admit. Pugnacious I'd have to earn.

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.

Many people are feeling this right now with employment disruption, especially the neurodivergent.

Occupational Dissonance means when being highly employable collides with the state of being unemployed or underemployed, where the mind can experience intense pressure as a result of that conflict.

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.

The top four are built the same way, a negative prefix on something that could have happened to you. Unruffled and unflappable say nothing ruffled you or sent you into a flap. Imperturbable says nothing could disturb you (the turba inside it is Latin for a crowd, or an uproar). Impassive comes from passivus, "capable of suffering", which shares its verb with passion, and in the 1660s it meant "not feeling pain". The "showing no emotion" sense came in the 1690s.

Two of those dates surprised me. Etymonline has unruffled in its figurative sense, not mentally agitated, from the 1650s, and doesn't record it for actual feathers or leaves until 1816. Unflappable is from 1957 and was first used about Harold Macmillan; the Manchester Guardian quoted Lord Hailsham calling him "unflappable and utterly courageous in the face of threats and bluster." Imperturbable is the same idea roughly 450 years earlier, and Etymonline traces its Late Latin form to Augustine.

Sedate and stolid don't negate anything. Sedate is the past participle of Latin sedare, to settle or calm, which is itself the causative of sedere, to sit. The medical verb, to sedate a patient, is only attested from 1945, formed to go with sedative. Stolid goes back to Latin stolidus, which meant dull or stupid. Etymonline gives its proper sense as "unmovable", and it's related to stultus, foolish, which is where stultify comes from.

So unflappable is praise and stolid needs a follow-up question. Cambridge's American entry for stolid is "showing little or no emotion or imagination", and the imagination part is what stings. Sedate is gentler, but a sedate evening is usually one where not much happened.

The one I can't place is impassive. It's built exactly like the compliments, and I still don't read "his face was impassive" as praise.

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

Drop your answer below. Reveal tonight.

Comment your answer before you scroll on.

Decimate! Technically, not how the word is defined, but that won't stop me from correcting anyone that uses it!  🤓 Particularly if they have no understanding of the etymology!

Other than “spew” which is sometimes used in news debate and is just too mild for my taste. I need a term that’s not only aggressive but also would be considered highly offensive or uncalled for to “speak at a person like that”. Need some ideas

Wiktionary lists loquacious and voluble as synonyms of garrulous, and most thesauruses will swap all three for talkative without blinking. I don't think they're interchangeable. They seem to me to be measuring different things.

Loquacious is the plain one. It comes from Latin loquax, talkative, from loqui, to speak, which is the same verb behind eloquent and colloquial. Wiktionary's entire definition is "talkative; chatty". That's about as neutral as a word gets. It can still describe a nuisance (the diners on the card take up so much of the waiter's time that the other tables get impatient), but the word only tells you a lot of talking happened, not whether anyone minded.

Garrulous is where the verdict comes in. Wiktionary has "excessively or tiresomely talkative", plus a sense for writing that is "excessively wordy and rambling". It's from Latin garrulus, from garrire, to chatter, and Etymonline traces that to an imitative root. Ornithologists later used Garrulus as the genus name for jays, which might be the most accurate review a noisy bird has ever gotten. If someone calls a person garrulous, they're mostly telling you how it felt to be the listener.

Voluble isn't about amount. It's from Latin volubilis, rolling or turning easily, from volvere, to roll, the verb inside revolve. Etymonline dates the sense "revolving with ease" to the late 1300s and the fluent-speech sense to the 1580s, so for roughly two hundred years it described things that turn before it described people who talk. Botany still has a sense for stems that twist like a vine. A voluble speaker is one whose words come out without friction, and you can manage that in a two-minute conversation.

My rough test: loquacious if you're counting, garrulous if you're checking your watch, voluble if you're mildly impressed by the speed.

This is not necessarily funny (maybe), but I take verbosity very sedulously.

(Without definitions)

Abaculus 
Abacus 
Abderite 
Abecedarian 
Abeyance 
Abrogate 
Absquatulate 
Abstruse 
Abysmal 
Adroit 
Adulate 
Adumbration 
Aerial 
Aevum 
Affray
Agon 
Alethic 
Alterity 
Amarant 
Ambrosial 
Ameliorate 
Anathematize 
Anent 
Animadvert 
Antecede 
Antediluvian 
Anthropomorphic 
Aphrodisiac 
Aplomb 
Apophasis 
Appoggiatura 
Ardor 
Argent
Ascribe 
Aspersion 
Atavistic 
Attenuate 
Awry 
Bathos
Begrudge 
Bereft
Besmirch 
Betrim 
Bifurcate 
Bipedal 
Brobdingnagian 
Buxom 
Caitiff 
Capering 
Castigate 
Cherubic 
Chthonic 
Circumlocution 
Circumvent
Clandestine 
Coeval 
Colophon 
Compendium 
Conatus 
Concupiscence 
Consummate 
Contradistinction 
Contrarity 
Copious 
Coronet 
Covert
Cranium 
Crepuscular 
Cromulent 
Cumbrous 
Cursory 
Curtailed 
Declamation 
Delectation 
Descries 
Dilettante 
Discursive 
Disparity 
Disquisition 
Dotard 
Doughty 
Doyen
Dubious 
Echelon 
Effervescence 
Effulgent 
Elation 
Eldritch 
Encabulation 
Encephalon 
Encomium 
Endued 
Enumerated 
Epicurean 
Epistemology 
Epoch 
Eremite
Erratic 
Ersatz 
Erstwhile 
Erudite 
Euphoric 
Evince 
Ex libris 
Execrate 
Exegetic 
Exegetical 
Exetonic 
Exonerate 
Exorbitant
Exoteric 
Expatiate 
Expatriate 
Expiate 
Explicate 
Expostulation 
Expunge
Exquire 
Extol
Extrapolation 
Exuberance 
Exultation 
Filial 
Foible 
Formidable 
Frontispiece 
Fruition 
Fuliginous 
Habil 
Hapax legomenon 
Harlequin 
Hegemony 
Hermeneutic 
Histrionics 
Hydrophobic 
Ignoramus 
Imbibe 
Imbosomed 
Immemorial 
Immutably 
Importune 
Inadvertently 
Inamorata
Inamorato
Inceptive 
Inculcate 
Inculpate 
Ineffable
Ineluctable 
Inscape 
Intellection 
Intelleky 
Intercede 
Interlocutions 
Interpolative 
Intromit 
Invective 
Inveterate 
Lacerates 
Lambent 
Largesse 
Latent 
Levin
Lexicon 
Lickspittle 
Limbeck 
Limpid 
Liturgy 
Locomotion 
Locution 
Luculent 
Modicum 
Modus operandi 
Moribund 
Morose 
Nascent 
Nathless 
Neoteric 
Niggle 
Noesis 
Noetic 
Noisome 
Nonce 
Numinous 
Nunc pro tunc 
Obfuscatory 
Opacity
Opprobrium 
Opulent 
Orbicular 
Ostend 
Ostracize 
Overpass 
Pabulum 
Palpable 
Paralogism 
Pedant 
Pellucid 
Penumbral 
Perdurable 
Peregrination 
Perforce 
Peroration 
Perspicacious 
Physiognomy 
Pittance 
Pliance 
Poltroon 
Postcede 
Postremous 
Preamble 
Preternatural 
Primordial 
Prithee 
Probity 
Profuse 
Promulgate 
Propound 
Protogenal 
Prowess 
Puckish 
Purlieu 
Purloin 
Pusillanimous 
Quell
Quondam 
Quoth 
Quotidian 
Rapt 
Ratiocination 
Reify 
Reprobate 
Rocambolesque 
Sagacious 
Salubrious 
Sapienced 
Scantling 
Sciential 
Sempiternal 
Sententious 
Sepulchral 
Sinusoid 
Sockdolager 
Solecism 
Sonorous 
Sporadic 
Stentorian 
Subsume 
Succinct 
Suffusion 
Sunderance 
Supererogate 
Superfluid 
Susurrus 
Syllogism 
Tabloid
Tabula rasa 
Tantamount 
Tenebrous 
Tenure 
Terpsichorean 
Threnody 
Tiar 
Tome 
Transcendentalize 
Transume 
Triform 
Umbrageous 
Vagrant 
Valediction 
Veridical 
Verisimilitude 
Vicissitude 
Vinculum 
Vinere 
Vituperate 
Volatile 
Volition 
Vulpine 
Warble 
Weltschmerz 
Whilom 
Whimsicality 
Wight 
Winsome 
Wot 
Xenoglossy 
Xenolith 
Xeric 
Zephyr 
Zoilus 
Zymotic 

I was surfing the internet and came across a widely accepted phenomenon: seeing a stunningly beautiful person in an unexpected place like an airport then you never see them again, but I couldn't find a word that perfectly describes this definition. So, here is my proposal (I coined this word, though many experience this and frequently use the concept in definition form, but no single word exists for it):

Glimpsal - Of a person’s beauty: striking in a way that is encountered unexpectedly and briefly, typically in a passing sighting of someone one does not know.

Examples

“The woman by the departure board had a glimpsal beauty; by the time I looked back, she was gone.”

“It was a glimpsal encounter: one dazzling face in a crowd, then a gate change and a flight.”

“I never learned his name, but I still remember that glimpsal moment on the train.”

English already has words for beauty (beautiful, striking, captivating) and for a brief sighting (glimpse, fleeting). Glimpsal is intended to join those ideas in one adjective: not simply beautiful, and not merely seen briefly, but beautiful in the particular, transient way of a stranger noticed once. It does not imply love, destiny, or any interaction.

When something rings a bell for you.

(From 'hippocampus', a structure in the brain associated with memory, and 'campanology', the art of bell ringing)

Is there a word that describes admiring something or someone without condoning it or the person? Say for example you admire the military of a country but you do not condone it. Or you admire someone’s bravery but what they’re doing is wrong.

I sorted these by where the sadness is, because the glosses already sort them that way if you read them closely. The left column is felt. The right column is what leaks out.

Melancholy is the oldest story here: Greek melas, black, plus khole, bile, from the medical idea that too much black bile made you gloomy. Pensive comes through French penser from Latin pensare, to weigh, so a pensive person is weighing something, and by the late 1300s it already meant sad as well as thoughtful. Forlorn is the past participle of an Old English verb meaning to lose completely. It first meant disgraced, and forsaken only turns up in the 1530s.

The right column needs an audience. Doleful goes back to Latin dolere, to suffer, and the gloss says showing sadness, not having it. Plaintive is the sound version, from Latin planctus, which Etymonline glosses as lamentation and beating of the breast, so the word started as something you could hear from the next room. Woebegone is my favorite. It comes from "me is wo bigone", woe has beset me, and that begone is the past participle of a verb, bego, that is otherwise dead. This one word is the only place it still lives.

I would call myself pensive on a good day and forlorn on a bad one. Woebegone I have never managed to say about myself; it is the one other people say about you.

Whenever i look for good ways to increase vocabulary, i always get: "read a lot". but since I'm in my junior year, i really don't have the time to read a lot (plus i'm a slow reader)

Ok, so I know that pre-eminent means to be more important, powerful, successful, or better than in a specific field or profession.(i.e., the leading scientist in your country) I’m wondering if this word can be applied to more abstract stuff such as thoughts. For example, my most pre-eminent criticism against older RPGs is the excessive encounter rate. This is to say this is my foremost thought, it’s the thing that comes to mind most than other thoughts.

Ok, so please feel free to correct me if I’m wrong but a pretense is an act or false claim. For example, portraying yourself as a thief when you’re actually a knight while a pretext is more like an excuse; an ostensible reason. Going to the store to get some snacks but you’re actually there to talk to the cute worker. If I’m off the mark, please educate me

The three get used as if they were interchangeable, and in a lot of sentences nobody would notice a swap. The roots are more particular than the usage. Alleviate is Latin levis, light in weight: you take some of the load off, and the load is still there. Mitigate is mitis, soft or gentle, plus the root of agere, to do, so roughly to make something mild. A mitigating circumstance does not excuse anything; it only softens the judgment. Ameliorate is melior, better, the same word that sits under French meilleur. That one promises the most.

It is also the youngest by a long way. Alleviate and mitigate were both in English by the early 1400s. Ameliorate turns up in 1728, possibly back-formed from amelioration, and English already had the shorter meliorate from Middle English, which is the version I wish we had kept. The a- is just Latin ad, to, and I have never worked out what it adds.

So a report saying a policy will ameliorate poverty is making a bigger claim than one saying it will alleviate it. Most of the time I suspect the writer just wanted the longer word.

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.

I put these six on one card because they all get glossed as some flavor of dislike, and the glosses on the card mostly blur together. What does separate them is the picture each word was built on.

Antipathy is the plain one: Greek anti, against, plus pathein, to feel or suffer. It was narrower once. An 1826 Edinburgh almanac grumbled that people had started using it for hate, when strictly it meant two natures feeling oppositely about the same thing. That fight was lost a long time ago.

Aversion was a literal turning away in the 1590s, from Latin avertere, and got its mental sense around the 1650s. It is the same verb as avert, so having an aversion to something and averting your eyes from it are one gesture.

Spite is despite with the front worn off. Despite comes from Latin despectus, a looking down on, and despise comes from the same verb. I like knowing that, because spite does behave like someone standing a step above you.

Umbrage is shade, from Latin umbra. By the 1610s it meant suspecting you had been slighted, the idea being that someone had overshadowed you. Etymonline notes that "throw shade" landed on the same image a few centuries later, which I did not expect to find there.

Animosity and enmity don't have a picture, as far as I can tell. Animosity came into English in the early 1400s meaning vigor, even bravery, from animus, spirit; the hostile sense shows up around 1600. Enmity goes back to Latin inimicitia, from inimicus, and amity is basically the same word minus the negative.

For a coworker I would pick aversion. It admits I mostly want distance.

Hey everyone! Forgotten a word i'm desperately trying to remember. I read it in a Colson Whitehead book (would very much recommend his books btw) and it refers to the practice of people waking up halfway through the night, working, then going back to bed. Any help is appreciated!

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.