Real Words I Like
(Or, how to impress the uninitiated)

There are a bunch of words in the English language that I really like for many reasons, but particularly that they simply sound neat.  I have started this list for your enjoyment.  Please feel free to send me your favorite words by clicking here.  Please enclose the definition of such terms as you submit.   Please limit them to REAL words and not made up ones no matter how cool.  (I may do a page of " made up" words when I have the time.)  Thanks to the members of the Gunsite Alumni Group, API@, and especially Jeff Tappan for suggesting many of these words.

Abscond - to leave quickly and secretly, and hide
Absquatulate - To flee.
Accouterments - accessories
Acerebal - without a brain.
Acnestis - the part of your body you can't reach to scratch.
Acrimonious - resentful and angry; full of or displaying anger and resentment.
Adulation - extravagant praise
Anomaly - irregularity; something that deviates from the norm or from expectations; peculiarity; something strange or difficult to identify or classify
Anosognosia -   The total unawareness of one's own disease, disability or defect.  (The mental condition of socialists?)
Arcane - secret or hidden
Asinine - failing to exercise intelligence or judgment; ridiculously below average rationality; Of, pertaining to, or characteristic of donkeys (or politicians?)
Autochthonous - indigenous, native to a place
Avaricious - characterized by greed
Baliwick - something a person knows a lot about.
Beelzebub - the devil
Boondoggle - to carry out valueless work to give the impression that you are busy.
Brouhaha - a stir; a fuss or uproar
Cachinate - to laugh very loudly
Cantankerous - ill tempered, quarrelsome
Castigate - to subject to severe punishment, reproof, or criticism
Chagrin - a feeling of embarrassment or humiliation
Coddiwomple - to travel purposely toward an as-yet-unknown destination
Conflagration- an immense fire
Concupiscence - strong sexual desire; lust
Cornucopia - an overflowing store, abundance
Crepuscular - appearing or active at twilight
Curmudgeon - cantankerous old codger; surly, ill-mannered, bad-tempered fellow

Dastardly - despicably cowardly
Discombobulated - very confused
Disingenuous - not straight forward, crafty
Dissemble - To conceal one's true motives
Doppelganger - someone who looks exactly like someone else.
Dubbined - an application of  tallow or oil for dressing leather.
Dudgeon - a sullen, angry, or indignant humor
Eclectic - consisting of components from diverse sources
Egregious - negatively exceptional
Eleftheriaphobia -  fearful of freedom
Elucidate - to clarify
Ephemeral - lasting only briefly.
Eponymous - one for whom or which something is or is believed to be named
Eschew - to shun; to avoid
Esoteric - designed for or understood by the specially initiated alone
Esurient - hungry; greedy
Eumatic - the quality in a manually operated device whereby it is totally correlated to the human being who has to use it."
Exacerbate - to make a situation worse than it was.
Exasperate - to irritate or make angry
Excoriate - to censure severely, or to strip skin from a person or animal
Exigency - an urgent need or demand 
Fandango -  party with dancing; often used in other ways, as in "a Colt fandango" for a shooting affray
Fatuous - obnoxiously stupid, vacantly silly, content in one's foolishness
Feckless - weak, ineffective, worthless, irresponsible
Flummoxed - flabbergasted (itself just as good a word)
Fortnight - a unit of time equivalent to fourteen days
Fortuitous - happening by chance
Frisson - a sudden strong feeling of excitement or fear
Fructify - to bear fruit or  to make fruitful or productive
Funereal - gloomy; very slow; solemn; mournful or dismal.
Gesticulate - using hand and arm movements during a conversation
Glean - to collect bit by bit
Gossamer - something delicate or flimsy
Harridan - a scolding, vicious woman; hag; shrew
Heterodox - holding unorthodox opinions
Hornswoggle - to deceive or trick
Humdinger -something extraordinary
Hyperbole -an exagerated statement used as a figure of speech
Inimitable - defying imagination, matchless
Insidious - harmful but enticing, seductive
Irascible - quickly aroused to anger
Invidious - tending to cause animosity or envy
Jejune - lacking nutritive value or devoid of significance or interest dull , or juvenile
Kakistocracy - government run by the worst element of a society 
Kerfuffle - a disorderly outburst or tumult
Lackadaisical - lack of interest
Lapalissian - meaning something evident, obvious, clear to anyone
Lassitude - lack of vitality or energy
Lethargic - indifference or apathy
Loquacious - very talkative
Lugubrious - excessively mournful
Lumpen - a member of the crude and uneducated lowest class of society
Lustrum - a period of 5 years.
Luthier - a maker of stringed instruments, as violins
Nefarious - extremely wicked or infamous
Nucivorous - a nut eater (like a squirrel)
Meander - to wander
Menagerie - a collection of live wild animals
Mercantile - A general store
Misology - The fear or distrust of reason or logic.
Mollycoddle - To treat with an absurd amount of attention.
Niggardly - stingy, scanty  (for the upset, politically correct folks, the word derives from nigard, of Scandinavian origin)
Nihilarian - somebody who engages in useless work
Obfuscate - to confuse with the purpose of deceiving
Obsequious - a smooth, toadying sycophant
Obstreperous - Noisily and stubbornly defiant
Opprobrium - reproach mingled with contempt
Oxymoron - a combination of contradictory or incongruous words
Pareidolia - a psychological phenomenon involving a vague and random stimulus (often an image or sound) being perceived as significant.
Pavane - a stately court dance by couples that was introduced from southern Europe into England in the 16th century
Pedantic - obsessed with minor details and rules, or with academic learning
Penury - extreme poverty
Peregrination - a traveling from place to place
Perfidious - treacherous
Pestiferous - bearing or bringing disease;  infected with or contaminated by a pestilential disease
Pestilential - plague causing
Plethora - superabundance
Pleonasm -  the use of more words than are necessary to express an idea; redundancy.
Poltroon - an abject coward.
Prestidigitation - the art doing something so skillfully that people are deceived as to what they see 
Prevaricating - saying something that is not completely false, but which is intended to convey a false meaning.
Provenance (also provenience) -  the place of origin of something or  the source and ownership history of a work of art or literature, or of an archaeological find
Provisions - a stock of necessary supplies
Pugnacious - having a quarrelsome disposition
Pulchritudinous ­ (derived from the noun Pulchritude) used of persons only; having great physical beauty.
Pusillanimous - lacking in courage and resolution; contemptibly fearful; cowardly.
Quacksalver - someone who pretends they have knowledge or a skill they really don't have
Quagmire - a difficult or precarious situation
Quandary -a state of uncertainty
Quotidian - commonplace, reoccurring
Quell - to suppress or put down forcibly
Rapacious - greedy, ravenous, or taking by force, plundering
Rumpus - a noisy clamor
Sagacious - possessing or showing sound judgment and keen perception.
Sanctimonious - hypocritically pious.
Salubrious - favorable to health or well being
Scalawag -  a white Southerner acting in support of the reconstruction governments after the American Civil War often for private gain.  A reprobate
Scuttlebutt - gossip or rumor. Also a drinking fountain or water barrel on a ship
Serendipity - the effect by which one accidentally discovers something fortunate, especially while looking for something else entirely
Sheeple - those people to wimpy and afraid to stand up for themselves.
Shenanigans - prankishness, mischief
Skullduggery - devious, dishonest, or unscrupulous behavior or activity
Slake - satisfy, quench
Smarmy - revealing or marked by a smug, ingratiating, or false earnestness or of low sleazy taste or quality 
Specious - having a false look of truth or genuineness
Sophomania - a delusional state in which the suffer believes that they are of exceptional intelligence
Surreptitious - sneaky, stealthy, having the ability to creep up on someone undetected. 
Sycophant - someone who sucks up to someone in authority
Synergism - the state when two or more things together achieve something greater that can be accomplished individually
Syzygy - the nearly straight-line configuration of three celestial bodies (as the sun, moon, and earth during a solar or lunar eclipse) in a gravitational system 
Thwart - to frustrate or oppose something
Tintinnabulation - " the ringing or sounding of bells 
Transmogrify - to change or alter greatly, often with humorous or grotesque effects.
Ubiquitous - seeming to be everywhere at the same time, omnipresent
Ucalegon - one of the Elders of Troy, whose house was set on fire by the Achaeans when they sacked the city. Now, a neighbor whose house is on fire
Uxorious - excessively or irrationally submissive or devoted to one's wife
Vacuous - emptied of or lacking content, 2marked by lack of ideas or intelligence
Verbose - given to using an excess amount of unnecessary words. It could also be a synonym for long-winded
Verisimilitude - the quality of seeming to be true
Yammer - to utter or say something in a complaining tone
Widgeon - a species of brown duck
Zephyr - the west wind or something that is airy or insubstantial. 

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Disclaimer

As far as I know all the information presented above is correct and I have attempted to ensure that it is. However, I am not responsible for any errors, omissions, or damages resulting from the use or misuse of this information, nor for you doing something stupid with it. (Don't you hate these disclaimers? So do I, but there are people out there who refuse to be responsible for their own actions and who will sue anybody to make a buck.)

Updated 2024-05-17 @ 1100