Word Of The Day

What is your favourite word of the day? The epitome of the ambiguity of the English language, a word the protagonist of your novel might use, when driven to extremis, meeting his nemesis. 

Reminder to myself:

• Take to every meeting your manual and, in case you are called upon to be grammarian. Attach to the back of the manual two or three words of the day.

• On a weekend or evening, or day, when you have no other work, create some words of the day, written in large felt tip pen, or printed large.

• When reading newspapers and magazines note down unusual or interesting words.

• Check new words in the dictionary.

Depending on the language abilities of the audience, you might search for three syllable words with Latin or Greek roots, explaining the word's origin.

For example:



On looking in the dictionary for extremes, I found exuberant.
Today I have found:

acme
anagram
arachnophobia - fear of spiders
bravado
caution
destitute
disinterested - contrast with uninterested
egregious
epitome
extremis
exuberant
nemesis
iconic
ode - poem of praise?
oxymoron - contradiction, sometimes for irony -
recompense

Many technical terms will be new to some in the audience, especially if you are teaching in a school:
Anthropology, anthropolgist
ode - poem of praise
sociology
sonnet - Elizabethan or Shakespearean: rhyming scheme - abab cdcd ee (Demonstrate and explain - I once gave a talk about poetry and an Indian in the audience told me he did not understand what the letters meant.)
statistician