More, More Fun With New Words

In my not-so-subtle-homage to Sheldon Cooper, here's another edition of More Fun With New Words.  To be more accurate, it's More, More Fun With New Words.

Nescience:  This is a more high-falutin way of saying ignorant.  So when someone is being pecurliarly ignorant, I may say "Stop being nescient" and enjoy the confused look it provokes.

Polder:    I had no clue what this was, but it's land that's behind a dike or levy, or land reclaimed from wetlands.  Not what I thought when I first read this word.

Chiasmus:  I knew what this was before I knew what the word was for it.  Chiasmus is when a sentence is flipped to reveal opposite or complimentary meanings, such as:  When the going gets tough, the tough get going.  I think it comes from the Greek for cross. 

Blench:  Technically to have a sudden movement out of fear or pain, it might well be the pair to blanch, which is what some people do after the fear or pain registers with them.

Brandish:  This is to shake or wave menacingly, but it almost always involves using a sword or knife.  People rarely brandish guns, although they could, but etymologically the edge makes more sense since to brandish comes from Middle English or German for the stem of a sword.

Ineluctable:  Inescapable.  Oddly, this comes from the Latin regarding wrestling.  Who knew?

Gruntled:  I looked this up on a lark.  It means pleased, satisfied.  I always wondered if disgruntled actually had a root.  Now I know.

Famulus:  This is a magician's or a scholar's assistant.  It comes from the Italian.  I have little use for it.

Jeremiad:  Coming from the Biblical Jeremiah, it means, as seen on Wikipedia:  the lamentation of the state of society and its morals in a serious tone of sustained invective, and always contains a prophecy of society's imminent downfall.  I've seen this enough I should start to use it, especially since some of my blogposts are jeremiads.

Prepossessing:  Attractive or appealing in appearance, which would make unprepossessing its antonym.  Frankly, I'd go with pretty and ugly instead.  This is too pretentious for my tastes.

Ineffaceable:  Easy enough:  Unable to be erased or forgotten.  Again, just a little too pretentious for my tastes.

Costive:  Depending on the context, it either means slow or reluctant in speech or action or constipated.  Frankly, I think constipated and costive could be interchangeable regardless of context.

Proles:  This comes from George Orwell's 1984, apparently, and it refers to the lower or working class.  It serves me right for never having read it.

Metonymic:  The adjectival version of metonymy, it is a figure of speech in which a thing or concept is called not by its own name but rather by the name of something associated in meaning with that thing or concept.  For example, Wall Street and Hollywood refer to the financial and entertainment worlds, respectively.  This is my favorite new word.

Vinous:  O' gee, yet another word to refer to wine-related things.  

Scabious:  Related to scabs, go figure.  I prefer scabby.

Fettle:  I've always known of the phrase in fine fettle, but I had no idea what fettle meant.  Apparently, this is a relatively recent word, having first appeared in 1881.  It just means shape, for some reason, so I don't know why shape is replaced by fettle, other than it's the Brits who did this.

And that ends our latest foray into More, More Fun With New Words.

(c) 2016 The Truxton Spangler Chronicles