14 Interesting Words 

How many words are in your vocabulary? The average high school graduate is said to know about 10,000 words. The average 4-year college graduate is said to know about 20,000 words. Do you have room for any more words in your vocabulary?Here are some interesting words, which you may not know.Upon learning an interesting word, if you’re like me, you’ll be tempted to work it into a conversation to improve your vocabulary or just to see the expression on your friends’ faces.

Since this is an online conversation, maybe you’re feeling a little motivated now.If after reviewing this list of 14, you feel up for a challenge, please read through to the Word Power Exercise. 

14 Interesting Words

1. Abligurition  - Spending an inconceivably large amount of money on food.

2. Cereologist  - A person who is unctuous and hypocritical.

3. Jectigation – A movement that’s like wagging or trembling

4. Muculency- Acting very snotty

5. Pulveratricious – Dust-colored

6. Rident - Laughing or cheerful

7. Uliginous - Oozy, slimy, swampy

8. Zoilist – A person who takes joy in finding fault

9. Burgoo – A stew or thick soup

10. Ensorcelled – Bewitched, enchanted

11. Hwyl – A stirring feeling of emotional fervor or energy

12.  Termagant – A harsh-tempered or overbearing woman

13. Vellicate – To irritate

14.  Ullage – The unfilled space in a barrel or wine barrel

Word Power Exercise:

See how many of these 14 Interesting Words you can include in a 100 word (or less) comment. The only two rules are:

1. Your comment must make sense, and

2. You may not use any of the EIWs directly beside another one, such as in a list.

Have fun, and add your blog address, so visitors can stop by and say Hi.

For more word fun, check out my Eight Interesting Words post here.

 1. My wife, a termagant, cow, called me a zoilist yesterday.  Although her remark vellicated me, I was too busy stirring with jectigation the uliginous burgoo I had whipped up into a pulveratricious ullage.  Buying ingredients for it was an exercise in abliguration, but, rident as usual, I countered with muculency the hwyl she projected at me.  “You’re just a cereologist,” I told her, munching corn flakes…………………ian in hamburg: http://lettershometoyou.wordpress.com

 

2. Ensorcelled as I was at first, with rident muculency, by this vellicating challenge, as I begin the task, it feels like a zoilist, or cereologist termagant is over my shoulder looking to cause me hwyl, her pulveratricious jaw jectigating with crtiticsm should I fail, just as she might react to my capacityfor abligurition. (For I have a sick penchant for uliginous burgoos.) However, as I complete this, the last eight of my hundred words seem a mere ullage for others to fill with strange words even my spellcheck does not comprehend…………..David: http://davidweedmark.com

 

3. I was so vellicated that I had an ullage in my brain, but now I’m rident because it is filled with these ensorcelling new words. Now I can act muculent around my friends, even though it’s a little cereologist of me to do so. They’ll have a hwyl and act all termagant towards me, especially my uliginous, zoilist friend, Mike. He’s the one with pulveratricious hair who loves burgoo in the winter. He’s like a dog with a jectigating tail when he smells it. In fact, he’s been known to abligurite on it from time to time…..Auhsoj Sivart: http://webs.calumet.purdue.edu/ifs

 

4. I woke up groggy, feeling ensorcelled, when my wife, a termagant decided to vellicate me with chores today.With her being a zoilist I was filled with hwyl and got out of bed. As I left, I yelled “Good Morning!” as she ducked under the pulveratricious comforter. I threw a shoe at the bed bump for her muculency and saw her painful jectigation in response. I wasn’t very hungry after her burgoo ,which was uliginous,  the night before. She has abligurtion so I had to eat something. Being a cereologist at times, I felt rident at my comment and ate Cheerios….Shell Harris http://www.toptenz.net

5. These words fill me with hwyl and I’m rather rident to enter these words to fill the ullage of my mind’s dictionary and applying them in coversations like a muculent termagent to vellicate and ensorcell others. Its sort of like abliguration to be using these uliginious words in coversations, like a cereologist speaking. But at least those zoilist acquaintances of mine would be left jectigating their nerve endings  trying to comprehend the meaning of what I speak. Oh pleasure! Like having pulveratricious soup burgoo on a cold winter evening!   Monika Kadam

6. Sitting at my pulveratricious couch after abligurition at the grocery store, I watched tv.  My daughter watched as the cereologist looked in her mirror. While the termigant queen’s attempts vellicate SnowWhite a bit, good triumphs finally.  The woodsman with jectigation finds an impasse via hwyl.  She thought his words were full of muculency but she was wrong.  An uliginous forest left her rident and singing, King Zoilist himself, Grumpy, would prove ensorcelled.  She made a burgoo for the dwarves after work.  Snow White was first Disney’s barrel, since his death many filled the ullage. Damien Riley – http://www.damienriley.com/ 

  

 

 

 

Curiosity Corner: Debris clouds are growing

(submitted to Rob’s Megaphone)

By Dr. Jerry D. Wilson, Emeritus Professor of Physics, Lander University

          There are some 400 military and civilian satellites orbiting above us, along with clouds of debris – all traveling at thousands of miles per hour. NASA estimates there are 18,000 objects in orbit larger than a softball, 300,000 larger than a nickel and millions that are even smaller. They all lie in a zone called the Low Earth Orbit (LEO), which is 100 miles to 1,000 miles above the Earth.

          Where did all this space junk come from? We know how satellites got up there, but what about the debris? You guessed it – from satellites. For example, in 2007, the Chinese military shot down one its defunct satellites. (Well, not shot “down.” The pieces are still orbiting up there.) And, as you may recall, in February of this year, a 1,980-pound defunct Russian military satellite collided with a 1,500-pound phone network satellite. This left quite a few pieces “floating” around. The incident took place at an altitude of 490 miles.

          Can this space trash cause problems? Yes. Small pieces of debris might harm orbiting satellites, such as those of the GPS (Global Positioning System). In 1983, a small piece put a gash in a Space Shuttle’s window. Recently, the crew of the International Space Station was forced to take refuge in the escape module because of a close call with a piece of debris.

          Who controls the LEO space? No one, really. The United Nations has a Committee on the Peaceful Uses of Outer Space, but they merely maintain a voluntary registry where nations can chose to reveal the orbital parameters of their satellites. The committee has no authority to create or regulate space highways.

          Are pieces of debris going to come raining down? Not likely. Most of the pieces in decaying orbits burn up in the Earth’s atmosphere. The probability of a piece getting through and hitting someone is very, very low. There is one recorded instance of a piece of debris hitting a person. In 1997, a woman in a park in Tulsa, Okla., was hit by a piece of metal mesh from a spent Delta rocket, but there was no injury.

          This is all something to think about, but you needn’t wear a hard hat yet.

Update. One of the topics of a previous column was how rice put into saltshakers counteracts the humidity so the salt flows freely. I received a note from a column reader with another suggestion. Lisa Brown Price, who is originally from Saluda and reads the Curiosity Corner in the Saluda Standard-Sentinel, now lives in Central Florida, which she describes as the capital of humidity. She found that rice grains would sometimes escape from her large kitchen saltshaker, adding a bit of unwanted crunch to certain dishes. The solution: replace the rice with an egg noodle. Eureka! Rice escape problem solved along with no clumping of salt. (I haven’t tried this, so check it out. My salt-substitute doesn’t clump.)

C.P.S. (Curious Post Script):  Whenever man comes up with a better mousetrap, Nature comes up with a better mouse.  ~James Carswell

Curious about something? Send your questions to Dr. Jerry D. Wilson, College of Science and Mathematics, Lander University, Greenwood, SC, 29649

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Looking up at the American flag today, I cannot help but see the men and women who died fighting to protect my country.

I can see:
the 6,000 patriots who died in the Revolutionary War in our first struggle for independence.
the 500,000 who perished in the Civil War who fought and died in defense of liberty.

I can see the Star spangled banner as it was hoisted in a dramatic expression of pride by brave American soldiers at Iwo Jima .

I see the 116,000 Americans who fell in WWI and the 405,000 who perished in World War II.
the more than 54,000 who lost their lives in the Korean Conflict
and the 58,000 soldiers who died in the jungles of Vietnam.

I see the 293 Americans killed in Desert Storm
the 1,672 Americans who lost their lives in Operation Iraqi Freedom
and the 190 killed in Enduring Freedom

I remember each soldier who paid the ultimate price for our nation. Though they died; they were not defeated for the Stars and stripes continues to wave. They rest in peace while we enjoy the freedom they secured for us.

Newscasters must demonstrate credibility to garner trust in viewers.
I think these folks illustrate the point I’m trying to make.

A few racey remarks in this one

RANDOM FACTS

Twelve or more cows are known as a “flink.” A group of frogs is called an army. A group of rhinos is called a crash. A group of kangaroos is called a mob. A group of whales is called a pod. A group of ravens is called a murder.

Every time you lick a stamp, you’re consuming 1/10 of a calorie.

The phrase “sleep tight” derives from the fact that early mattresses were filled with straw and held up with rope stretched across the bedframe. A tight sleep was a comfortable sleep.

111,111,111 x 111,111,111=12,345,678,987,654,321

If a statue in the park of a person on a horse has both front legs in the air, the person died in battle; if the horse has one front leg in the air, the person died as a result of wounds received in battle; if the horse has all four legs on the ground, the person died of natural causes.

A snail can sleep for 3 years.

No word in the English language rhymes with month, orange, silver, and purple.

Clans of long ago that wanted to get rid of their unwanted people without killing them used to burn their houses down – hence the expression “to get fired.”

There are two credit cards for every person in the United States.

RANDOM THOUGHTS

HOW IMPORTANT DOES A PERSON HAVE TO BE BEFORE THEY ARE CONSIDERED ASSASSINATED INSTEAD OF JUST MURDERED?

WHY DO YOU HAVE TO “PUT YOUR TWO CENTS IN”.. BUT IT’S ONLY A “PENNY FOR YOUR THOUGHTS”? WHERE’S THAT EXTRA PENNY GOING TO?

WHY IS IT THAT PEOPLE SAY THEY “SLEPT LIKE A BABY” WHEN BABIES WAKE UP LIKE EVERY TWO HOURS?

IF THE PROFESSOR ON GILLIGAN’S ISLAND CAN MAKE A RADIO OUT OF A COCONUT, WHY CAN’T HE FIX A HOLE IN A BOAT?

DO THE ALPHABET SONG AND TWINKLE, TWINKLE LITTLE STAR HAVE THE SAME TUNE?

WHY DID YOU JUST TRY SINGING THE TWO SONGS ABOVE?

Here are some of Rob’s Megaphone’s favorite silly pics – No Captions Required.

Rob’s Rules for Writing

(This deep-links post revisits some of my previous posts)

Good writing requires tools, rules, and jewels.

 I hope you’ll find a new tool here to help craft your next masterpiece. Many of us have the same tools in our writing toolbox, but some may have gotten a little rusty. Rules were made to be broken, but when communication is key, rules are more of a friend than a foe. Dust off the manual next time you’re in trouble and you’ll achieve precision and clarity. Many of us stop writing too soon. Polish those pearls of wisdom, your ideas deserve your best writing, and from time to time you’ll uncover a real gem.

1. English Handbook for the game of your life - Nobody needs to memorise all the grammar rules, just know when to refer to the manual.

2. If Punctuation Marks Were People – they might be easier to understand.

3. We hear and read incorrect grammar so often that Does it sound right? doesn’t work anymore

4. The Problem with Pronouns is that they can be tricky

5.  Tools for Fine Tuning helps polish those gems

6. Layers of Revision is an often neglected step that can catch careless errors.

7. Evolving Language offers a basic foundation for building . . . . and a quiz or two

8. Got Style - there are more rules for writing than just grammar. Do you have style?

9. Commonly Confused Words can ambush an otherwise articulate article – take the challenge!

10. Using News Values - consider these tools when gathering material for your writing.

11. Overcoming Writer’s block - we all need to refresh, reset, and refocus from time to time.

12. To improve writing, first improve listening

Good writing is like serving a tennis ball. If you practice everday, but you never learned the correct way to serve in the first place, you may simply get really good at serving incorrectly.

Up for an eye challenge?  Begin by staring at the picture from just a few inches away. With “relaxed” eyes slowly back up until you’re about 10-12 inches from the image. Allow several minutes to decipher the “3D” from what you see. (Hint: allow your eyes  to lose focus as you stare). Move mouse over image to identify hidden clue.