Greetings, QRW friends! If you’re anything like me (admit it, my acolytes, you are) you’re counting down the hours until holiday weekend liftoff, and planning on some celebratory cocktails/snacks/congeniality.

There’s plenty to celebrate today. For those of us in Chicago, this weekend is the unofficial kickoff to summer, full of crowdedstreet fests, beer gardens, BBQs, and debauchery. In my small corner of the world, I’ve had some great work and new assignments of late, providing maximum variety and challenge. And in the QRW world, we’ve just finished a lovely week of head-scratching-and-turning-outside-out examination of the Secrets of (Un)Success, greeted plenty of new subscribers (‘elo, guvnahs!), and carried on some rich comment discussions in our burgeoning community.

What better time for word porn, I ask? Strip down and let’s get to it.

Insuperable
Ooo, sounds like insufferable, which is such a cool insult lobbied in 19th century books and movies (“the insufferable lout! I shall hate him with every breath of my heaving bosom”). But actually, insuperable means incapable of being surmounted or solved. Sentence, please:

The couple was connecting and growing closer every day, discovering the secrets within each other, finding the beauty of simple touches and gestures, and envisioning a future of spiritual and physical meshing beyond any other. Then Steve referred to Battlestar Galactica as ‘that cheesy b-show with, like, puppets and robots and the dude from the A-Team.’ Dave faced an insuperable barrier, and coldly disengaged from the relationship with a text message.

Ensconce
I do like this one, and try to slip it into normal writing and conversation, to mixed results (“why you gotta use such big words, Amy?” – my sweet, silly, smart brothers). The most common meaning for this one is to establish or settle.

Jamie wanted to create a heroine for children, a character that would ensconce herself firmly in the hearts and minds of young readers, and translate into big buckaroonies for the bank account. Her choice of a talking cigarette character for her book then, joined by walking and talking gin-and-tonics, was not a wise one.

Capitulate
This is one of those words that makes your mouth work. It’s all spitting syllables and oddly shaped lips, and it results in a word that sounds harsh and unforgiving. The meaning isn’t too far from that sound: capitulate means to surrender or cease resisting.

“I capitulate!” Amy said, throwing her cards across the table and knocking a few drinks askew in the process. The group groaned, again. “Amy, you were winning,” said Ryan. “Oh,” said Amy. “Go Fish is hard.”

[Full disclosure – the Amy in this tale is me. I am notoriously bad at the card games. I may hold my own in the smarts department, but somehow I am ridiculously, remarkably, inconceivably deficient in the card-playing gene. It provides much amusement, and disgust, to my friends]

Good word porn, everyone! Stay tuned for some ranty goodness.

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