Okay. last one.

I'll stick to four words because I have to study for calculus. =(

Apocryphal (adj) untrue; made up
Although reality television shows claim to use unscripted situations, many people believe that it is fundamentally apocryphal.

Ascendancy (noun) controlling influence; domination
The communist party claimed ascendancy over the Soviet Union in the twentieth century.

Assiduous (adj) diligent
I had never seen such an assiduous bacteria. I had taken four different antibiotics, but the bacteria would not stop attacking my immune system.

Assuage (verb) ease or lessen (pain); satisfy (hunger); soothe (anger)
I was ravenous after my abstemious period, so I assuaged my hunger by eating sausage. The pain in my stomach quickly assuaged.

So.
Apocryphal - made up (reality shows are apocryphal)
Ascendancy - complete influence; domination (a cult leader has ascendancy over their followers)
Assiduous - diligent (the diligent bacteria is assiduous)
Assuage - basically to alleviate hunger, pain, or anger (the sausage assuaged my hunger)

The Show Must Go On!

You guys have a bunch of catching up to do.

But as I am in my final homestretch before my SATs, there shall be more words!

Five a day!

Abstemious (adj) sparing in eating and drinking; temperate
Unfortunately, some girls believe that the only way to become a supermodel is to lead an abstemious lifestyle in order to fit into sizes negative forty.

Acquiesce (verb) assent; agree without protesting
Finding it easier to just go with the flow and avoid arguing with his father, Joe acquiesced to going to the carnival with his litter sister.

Affable (adj) easily approachable; warmly friendly
Despite being intimidated by a new school, I was excited to meet all of the affable students and teachers I had heard so much about.

Altruistic (adj) unselfishly generous; concerned for others
It was true that my grandmother was an altruistic woman. She always gave to others even when nothing would be given back to her.

Antediluvian (adj) antiquated; extremely ancient
The archaeologists found a few remaining fossilized bones from antediluvian anteaters.


So the five words are abstemious (like abstinent or anorexic), acquiesce (like succumb to a quest), affable (like aflac the friendly duck), altruistic (a true role model), and antediluvian (like Ancient Aunt Delia).

And here is a story with as many as possible:

A few weeks ago, I came across an antediluvian scroll containing abstruse symbols and faded pictures. Excited with my find, I decided to show the treasure to my trustworthy and affable friend, Loraine. Loraine was flabbergasted, but like the altruistic person she was, she urged me to donate the scroll to the children's museum down the street. Although I really did not want to just donate what could give me great wealth, I knew she was right and acquiesced to her idea, thus evading any hostile disagreements. So, the next day I hopped down to the dilapidated children's museum. As I walked in, the halls immediatley emitted a stench of mac and cheese mixed with throw-up. I gazed at the pitiable and hapless children milling through the hallways and could not help but guess that they lived abstemious lives at home. I wanted to take them all out to eat so that I could ameliorate their ravenous stomachs, but at that moment the museum director strided to my side. With great volume and elocution, he welcomed me to his home away from home (yes, I know, a trite phrase), and then thanked me for my magnificent addition to the "Ancient Scrolls Exhibit." Instantly, I felt at ease with the man and was sure that we had established a strong rapport. As he lead me through the other exhibits, his scintillating eyes showed the excitement and pleasure that his job gave him. "I love my job."
The End.

Review Again and the P's

Let's see if I can remember them all without looking.

Ameliorate - to make better
Elocution - manner of speaking
Trite - Overused saying
Hapless - Unfortunate
Vignette - Short literary sketch; description
Rapport - A harmonious relationship that is not intimate
Scintillate - Lively, gleaming, sparkling; to sparkle

and... haha.

Verisimilitude - the appearance of truth; how real something is
____________________________________________________________________

And now for the new words!

pre⋅var⋅i⋅cate

–verb (used without object), -cat⋅ed, -cat⋅ing. to speak falsely or misleadingly; deliberately misstate or create an incorrect impression; lie.

prevarication - noun
1.		a statement that deviates from or perverts the truth [syn: lie]
2.		intentionally vague or ambiguous [syn: equivocation]
3.		the deliberate act of deviating from the truth [syn: lying]

Sentence: The politicians tremulous reaction and string of prevarications only further proved his inability to be honest and straightforward about the financial scandal.

Prevaricate.

Pants on fire, film at 11.

Dear Word Detective: I was reading your column on “ruckus,” and in that description you used the word “prevaricate.” I have never heard it before and I was wondering if you could expand on where it comes from and its history. I’m surprised that it isn’t used more often, it seems to me to be a more intelligent-sounding alternative to calling someone a “liar” (plus you get to use a big word while accusing them, adding salt to the injury). — Diana T.

Very good article about the word!!!!

http://www.word-detective.com/2008/12/17/prevaricate/

Pragmatic
prag·mat·ic

adj. Dealing or concerned with facts or actual occurrences; practical. Philosophy Of or relating to pragmatism. Relating to or being the study of cause and effect in historical or political events with emphasis on the practical lessons to be learned from them. Archaic Active; busy. Active in an officious or meddlesome way. Dogmatic; dictatorial. n. A pragmatic sanction. Archaic A meddler; a busybody.

Sentence: Although we would love to discuss additional extensions to the house, for now we are only concerned with pragmatic and essential renovations.

Pragmatic Politics, Forged on the South Side

By JO BECKER and CHRISTOPHER DREW

Published: May 11, 2008

The Long Run

"An untraditional politician who at times uses traditional political tactics, Mr. Obama, 46, was portrayed in dozens of interviews with political leaders and longtime associates in Chicago as the ultimate pragmatist, a deliberate thinker who fashions carefully nuanced positions that manage to win him support from people with divergent views."

Read more: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/11/us/politics/11chicago.html

Jeepers!

Woah, four days without new words. This is unacceptable.

hap⋅less –adjective unlucky; luckless; unfortunate.

Description:

Help a hapless genie restore his magical powers one word at a time in this original challenge featuring three great ways to play. Use the genie's clues and your way with words to decipher a series of mystery words in the Genie's Quest. Unscramble letters in the Sultan's Challenge. See how long you can last in 1001 Nights. Collect treasures and awards along the way on your journey from the Lonely Pyramids to the Ivory Palace. A unique lexical challenge full of original puzzles, SandScript(TM) is a thrilling adventure for the word wizards everywhere.

Sentence: The water became extremely violent, and the hapless girl who was caught in the middle of the whirlpool soon became topless.

It's like... happy-less. as in, you're not happy, but you're a poor, poor unfortunate soul.

ver⋅i⋅si⋅mil⋅i⋅tude –noun

1.	the appearance or semblance of truth; likelihood; probability: The play lacked verisimilitude.

2.	something, as an assertion, having merely the appearance of truth.

The Problem of Verisimilitude

The famous problem of verisimilitude flows from this (Musgrave, unpublished):

Realists . . . seem forced to give up either their belief in progress or their belief in the falsehood of all extant scientific theory. I say ‘seemed forced’ because Popper is a realist who wants to give up neither of them. Popper has the radical idea that the conflict between (1), (2), and (3) is only an apparent one, that progress with respect to truth is possible through a succession of falsehoods because one false theory can be closer to the truth than another. In this way Popper discovered the (two-fold) problem of verisimilitude;

(A*) Can we explain how one theory can be closer to the truth, or has greater verisimilitude than another?

(B*) Can we show that scientific change has sometimes led to theories which are closer to the truth than their predecessors?

Note: Closeness to the truth is not the same as the probability of truth. A simple example shows this: A: The time on this stopped watch is correct to within one minute. B: The time of my watch (which is 2 minutes fast) is accurate to within one minute. Both hypotheses are false. But B is closer to the truth than A. But A is more probable than B, because the probability of A being true, though small, is non-zero. But the probability of my watch being accurate to within one minute, given what we know about my watch, is zero.

Sentence: I could understand the concept of the movie, but I found the situation void of verisimilitude.

Scintillate! Scintillating!

Scintillate
scin·til·late

v. scin·til·lat·ed, scin·til·lat·ing, scin·til·lates

v.intr.

1. To throw off sparks; flash.

2. To sparkle or shine. See Synonyms at flash.

3. To be animated and brilliant: dinner conversation that scintillated.

v.tr.

To give off (sparks or flashes).

Scintillating
adjective, 1846
1. brilliantly lively, stimulating, or witty


First of all, I love this word. Second of all, I hope you don't know it.

Third, there seems to be a difference between between the verb scintillate and the adjective scintillating.

Here is another definition I found of scintillating:

Adjective

(of conversation or humor) very lively and amusing

Well, that explains it. Both words define a sort of liveliness and sparkle. The adjective, though, (as I've taken from these two definitions) is used mainly when dealing with conversation.

So, I would say: "Our conversation is ever so scintillating! You're so smart (or scintillating as well, depending on if you have a redundancy phobia)."

On the other hand, I would say "The plane seemingly scintillates as it passes under the sun."

I imagine a huge smile when I think of scintillate and scintillating. Or an elf on a white horse from Lord of the Rings riding under a waterfall with glistening water. Yes, I said it.

Synonyms:
glistening, brilliant, exciting, stimulating, glittering, sparkly

Alright, here is the word in use by someone other than myself. Someone who writes on the internet...

Acclaimed by Norman Mailer more than twenty years ago as "possibly the only American writer of genius," William S. Burroughs has produced a body of work unique in our time. In these scintillating essays, he writes wittily and wisely about himself, his interests, his influences, his friends and foes.
(Link)

My sentence!

As I lay in bed and watched the sun scintillate through the morning dew, I pushed myself to think of a scintillating way to describe it; something original and definitely not trite.

~~~

I hope everyone enjoys the blog and the scatter-brained way we present the words.

Remember to leave your own sentence using the day's word!

Let's review!

Our first word was ameliorate. What does it mean?



It means to make better, improve, etc.


Our second word was elocution. Which is...



Elocution would be the way someone speaks.


Our third word was trite!



It means something that is hackneyed (a new word for me too!), like a cliché; a phrase or word that lacks a great effect due to being overused.


And now, since my AP Lang teacher is super awesome, we're going to have words of the day! How exciting. So, I guess I will put them down for today!

Definition: Rapport (noun) - a harmonious relation or connection, not necessarily a relationship that is intimate.
Example:

Rapport – the Key to Influence

Rapport is the key to influence. It starts with acceptance of the other person's point of view, their state and their style of communication. To influence you have to be able to appreciate and understand the other person's standpoint. And these work both ways: I cannot influence you without being open to influence myself.

http://www.1000ventures.com/business_guide/crosscuttings/relationships_rapport.html

Sentence: My language arts teacher established an excellent rapport with the class and thus created an environment where learning was exciting and everyone got along.
Vignette (noun) - brief literary sketch
Example:

Vignette

In literature, poetry, and film, a vignette is a brief, indefinite, evocative description or account of a person or situation. Vignettes are usually meant to give a sense of a character rather than to advance a narrative.

They are frequently impressionistic and poetic, even if rendered in prose or visual form, a tendency reinforced by the term's secondary meaning in photography: a loss in clarity or brightness at the edge of an image due to the occlusion of a lens's circular optics on square or rectangular emulsion.
http://www.gamasutra.com/view/feature/3537/persuasive_games_videogame_.php?page=2

Two Tanka

From outside my house,
only the faint distant sound
of gentle breezes
wandering through bamboo leaves
in the long evening silence.

Late evening finally
comes: I unlatch the door
and quietly
await the one
who greets me in my dreams.
   -- Otomo No Yakamochi, (718-785)
http://www.cs.rice.edu/~ssiyer/minstrels/poems/87.html

Sentence: Although the paragraph did not did not do much to progress the plot, it gave an excellent illustration of the idiosyncrasies of the main character.


Spread the word. Find new words.

That's my point.

My apologies for not crediting Chris for this idea. My bad. =(


And for today's wonderful words:

Definition: Trite (adjective) - lacking in freshness or effectiveness because of constant use or excessive repetition; hackneyed; stale
Example:

Laurence Reisman: Getting trite with overuse

French or Italian. That’s what I thought Google would come up with when I punched in the term “beautiful language,” clicked on the first link, then a second, on the most beautiful written languages.

Arabic and Chinese beat out French among the top three.

English was nowhere to be found on the beautiful list. Perhaps it’s because all of us at least occasionally butcher the language and use hackneyed phrases. Here are some cited by editorial writers across the country.

Issues. “No one has problems any more. We have issues, a classic example of how professional psychology-speak has invaded everyday discourse,” writes Naomi Schalit of Central Maine Newspapers.

Faith-based. Naomi again: “Almost 100 percent of the time this phrase is used, the user means ‘religious’ and they should just suck it up and use the real term.”

Gifting. “‘Gifting’ is a legal term that has infiltrated everyday life with ugly results,” Naomi writes. “We now have ‘gifting clubs’ and ‘re-gifting’ etiquette. How about we take it back and just use the word ‘give’”?

The perfect storm. “Not a bad movie,” writes Kevin Richert of the Idaho Statesman. “An absolutely wretched phrase now attached to every storm under the clear blue sky. Not every storm is perfect. Even in Lake Wobegon.”

The bottom line. “It’s an accounting term that now is used for everything,” writes Susan Parker of The Daily Times in Salisbury, Md.

http://www.tcpalm.com/news/2008/dec/29/laurence-reisman-getting-trite-overuse/

Inside Joke: Good times, good times.
My Sentence: I like to eat, party, go shopping, and say trite things.

Be creative with your responses!!!
Cyazzzz