1. gastronome
\GAS-truh-nohm\ , noun;
1.
A connoisseur of good food and drink.
Quotes:
If "poultry is for the cook what canvas is for a painter," to quote the 19th-century Frenchgastronome Brillat-Savarin, why paint the same painting over and over again?
-- John Willoughby and Chris Schlesinger, "From Poussin to Capon a Chicken in Every Size", New York Times, September 22, 1999
Even though Paris was then considered the culinary capital of Europe, the food at the Cercle was so highly revered that many well-known gastronomesregularly made the trip to Lyon to eat there.
-- Daniel Rogov, "Three culinary tales for Hanukka",Jerusalem Post, December 6, 1996
I am no gastronome at the best; moreover, I have, over the years, eaten in so many unpropitious circumstances and from so many truly awful kitchens that I have come to consider myself almost as much a connoisseur of bad food as other men are of good.
-- James Cameron, "Albania: The Last Marxist Paradise", The Atlantic, June 1963
Origin:
Gastronome is ultimately derived from Greek gaster, "stomach" + nomos, "rule, law."
2. egregious
\ih-GREE-juhs\ , adjective;
1.
Conspicuously and outrageously bad or reprehensible.
Quotes:
The most egregious offender is alleged to be a Heber City, Utah, man, who said he was a certified public accountant and requested $393 million in refunds, including a $210 million refund for one customer.
-- "Nashville woman banned from preparing tax returns", Nashville Business Journal, February 1, 2010
Our objective is to get the most egregious flops, the ones where the player's just flat taking a dive, Jackson said.
-- Associated Press, "NBA to introduce flop rule, fines next season", USA Today, May 30, 2008
As far as we're concerned, the most egregious fouls committed during Sunday's Super Bowl will involve tortilla chips and melted cheese.
-- Bonnie S. Benwick and Joe Yonan, "Super Bowl smackdown: Nachos vs. nachos", Washington Post, February 3, 2010
Origin:
Egregious derives from Latin egregius, separated or chosen from the herd, from e-, ex-, out of, from + grex, greg-, herd, flock. Egregious was formerly used with words importing a good quality (that which was distinguished "from the herd" because of excellence), but now it is joined with words having a bad sense. It is related to congregate (to "flock together," from con-, together, with + gregare, to assemble, from grex); segregate (from segregare, to separate from the herd, from se-, apart + gregare); and gregarious (from gregarius, belonging to a flock)
3. hypnagogic
\hip-nuh-GOJ-ik; -GOH-jik\ , adjective;
1.
Of, pertaining to, or occurring in the state of drowsiness preceding sleep.
Quotes:
It is of course precisely in such episodes of mental traveling that writers are known to do good work, sometimes even their best, solving formal problems, getting advice from Beyond, having hypnagogicadventures that with luck can be recovered later on.
-- Thomas Pynchon, "Nearer, My Couch, to Thee",New York Times, June 6, 1993
. . .the phenomenon of hypnagogic hallucinations, or what Mr. Alvarez describes as "the flickering images and voices that well up just before sleep takes over."
-- Christopher Lehmann-Haupt, "The Faces of Night, Many of Them Scary", New York Times, January 9, 1995
His uncensored and uncensoring subconscious allows him to absorb the world around him and in him, and to spit it out almost undigested, as if he were walking around in a constant hypnagogic state.
-- Susan Bolotin, "Don't Turn Your Back on This Book", New York Times, June 9, 1985
Origin:
Hypnagogic (sometimes spelled hypnogogic) ultimately derives from Greek hupnos, "sleep" + agogos, "leading," from agein, "to lead."
4. vivify
\VIV-uh-fy\ , transitive verb;
1.
To endue with life; to make alive; to animate.
2.
To make more lively or intense.
Quotes:
Can the writer isolate and vivify all in experience that most deeply engages our intellects and our hearts?
-- Annie Dillard, "Write Till You Drop", New York Times, May 28, 1989
Stories not only provide context for statistical statements but can illustrate and vivify them as well.
-- John Allen Paulos, Once Upon a Number
They collaborated on, and for our benefit specialized in, like paleontologists, the painstaking reconstruction of vanished jokes from extant tag lines. They couldvivify old New Yorker cartoons, source of many tag lines.
-- Annie Dillard, An American Childhood
Origin:
Vivify comes from French vivifier, from Late Latin vivificare, from Latin vivus, alive.
5. cupidity
\kyoo-PID-uh-tee\ , noun;
1.
Eager or excessive desire, especially for wealth; greed; avarice.
Quotes:
Curiosity was a form of lust, a wandering cupidity of the eye and the mind.
-- John Crowley, "Of Marvels And Monsters",Washington Post, October 18, 1998
At the end, all but rubbing his hands with cupidity, Rockefeller declares he will now promote abstract art--it's better for business.
-- Stuart Klawans, "Rock in a Hard Place", The Nation, December 27, 1999
This strain of cupidity sprang from the mean circumstances of his youth in the Finger Lakes district of upstate New York.
-- Jack Beatty, "A Capital Life", New York Times, May 17, 1998
For such is human cupidity that we Thoroughbreds have but one chance to survive it -- to run so fast and to win so much money that we are retired in comfort in our declining days.
-- William Murray, "From the Horse's Mouth", New York Times, August 8, 1993
Origin:
Cupidity ultimately comes from Latin cupiditas, from cupidus, "desirous," from cupere, "to desire." It is related to Cupid, the Roman god of love.
6. vitiate
\VISH-ee-ayt\ , transitive verb;
1.
To make faulty or imperfect; to render defective; to impair; as, "exaggeration vitiates a style of writing."
2.
To corrupt morally; to debase.
3.
To render ineffective; as, "fraud vitiates a contract."
Quotes:
MacNelly is one of the few contemporary political cartoonists who can use humor to accentuate, notvitiate, his points.
-- Richard E. Marschall, "The Century In Political Cartoons", Columbia Journalism Review, May/June 1999
It seems churlish to say of a book that is beautifully written, richly allusive, learned, elegant, Proustian in tone and mode, that precisely these qualities vitiateits ostensible purpose, distracting attention from the subject and focusing it upon the very gifted author.
-- Gertrude Himmelfarb, "A Man's Own Household His Enemies", Commentary, July 1999
Whatever a "real contradiction" might be, "apparent contradictions" are quite sufficient to vitiate a doctrine of biblical authority that is based on the supposedly apparent reading of the text.
-- Robert M. Price, "The Psychology of Biblicism", Humanist, May 2001
Origin:
Vitiate comes from Latin vitiare, from vitium, fault. It is related to vice (a moral failing or fault), which comes from vitium via French.
7. gelid
\JEL-id\ , adjective;
Quotes:
The weather is gelid on a recent Thursday night--so uninviting that it's hard to imagine anyone venturing out.
-- Letta Tayler, "The Accent's on Brooklyn",Newsday, April 6, 2000
Last January a major crisis arose when the Argentine naval supply ship Bahia Paraiso foundered near an island off the Antarctic Peninsula, creating a diesel-oil spill that inflicted untold damage on the ecosystems clinging to the edges of the icy continent or swimming in its gelid seas.
-- Christopher Redman Paris, "Could anything be more terrible than this silent, windswept immensity?", Time, October 23, 1989
The house was silent, filled with a gelid, wintery hush even as lilac and dogwood leaves brushed darkly against the windowpanes.
-- Michael Cunningham, A Home at the End of the World: A Novel
Origin:
Gelid comes from Latin gelidus, from gelu, "frost, cold."
