Feb
Word Porn Strikes Again
Remember the deal? Let’s start this vocabulary lesson of wicked, wonky words.
Oppugn
Love the silent g. You gotta love any letter that takes it for the team, that puts aside its own significant coolness to make a word look and sound spiffier. Oppugn means to call into question, contradict, or otherwise oppose. Can we have this word in a sentence please? “All the hipsters reluctantly began to oppugn their indie gods’ rock cred when photos revealed the band gleefully singing along in the front row of a Celine Dion concert.”
Solatium
Sure, this makes one think of sci-fi and Hal and weird, wacky extraterrestrial nonsense. But the actual meaning is nothing to do with the interstellar world. Solatium refers to compensation given as solace for suffering, loss or injured feelings. Hmm. How about: “Despite the glut of babies born with three arms, one eye, and fifteen toes, the company accused of dumping green sludge into every pond, lake and river won the case and did not have to pay the solatium requested by the town’s residents.”
Vulcanize
Surely this one is related to science fiction? A little Spock action, anyone? Yet again, we are dead wrong. Vulcanize denotes the process of chemically treating a material to give it elasticity, strength or some other useful property. Sentence? “Lucy was shocked and dismayed when she learned, from her hospital bed, that dousing herself with chemicals and attempting to vulcanize her body did not, as expected, turn her into a strong and elastic superhero, but might make her sterile and slightly crazy.”
And with that, I wish you a happy Sunday evening and a blissful Oscar telecast.
