Tuesday, February 3, 2015

Words I love.

Welcome back. When you become smitten with words, prepare to endure unrequited love. Despite my best efforts to remain aloof from words and cold-hearted about them, a few have wormed their way into my heart. I am uplifted, enlivened and never, never bored by them. Here are a few of my favorites:

Vague: Indistinct, unclear

Evanescent: Vanishing, fading away, fleeting (''The evanescent glow of fireflies'')

Glance: A brief look

Diaphanous: Sheer, transparent or translucent

Footfall: Footstep

Aggress: To commit the first act of aggression

Smitten: Struck down, infatuated

Caress: An embrace, a light stroking (I particularly like ''aggress'' and ''caress'' used together. ''Shall I aggress or caress?'')

Ferocious: Fierce, savage, brutal, predatory

Lumpen: Dispossessed, displaced people who have lost social status. (I see lumps of clay. ''These are the lumps of the lumpen.'')

Vicious: Ferocious, brutal, dangerous, aggressive

Agon: A conflict, a struggle (''Job had an agon with God.'')

Bask: Laze, lie, lounge

Parse: To examine critically, to break down in component parts (''How could I begin to parse the sentiment behind that look?'')

Distracted: Preoccupied

Doleful: Sorrowful, mournful

Jiggling: Shaking, wiggling, fidgeting

Wayworn: Fatigued by travel

Flickering: Glimmering, dancing, twinkling, sparkling

Coruscate: Give off or reflect flashes of light (''They pulled up at the farthest end of a loop path that looked out over the great basin of the Rio Grande under brilliant, coruscating stars.'' Bill Roorback writing in Big Bend)

Aglow: Shining, radiating, smoldering

Swoon: To enter a state of ecstasy

Swirl: Whirl, eddy, billow, spiral

Rapture: Joyful ecstasy

Vague: Indistinct, unclear

Confabulation: Easy, unrestrained conversation

Evocative: Tending to evoke (''The fragrance was evocative of languid summer afternoons.'')

Sere: Dry, withered

Wizened: Shriveled, aged, white with age

Languid: Slow, listless

Rheumy: A mucous discharge from eyes or nose (sometimes snot)

Phantasmagoric: Deceptive appearances in a dream or created by the imagination

Languish: To become weak or feeble

Dear Reader, look for more evocative words next month. Send in your favorites.