Not Just ANY Excellent, but MOST Excellent

20 May 2024 Leave a comment

by CharlesB in NYCDOE, vocabulary Tags:

The NYCDOE division of human resources is offering an award for outstanding service, and I suppose the division director, or Charles Peeples (the person the award is named after), loved Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure.

Here is the award info

And here is a most excellent clip from Bill and Ted’s.

House of the Seven Gables

12 Sep 2023 Leave a comment

by CharlesB in literacy, vocabulary Tags:

Words, words, words. The English language is filled with the most beautiful words, so many of which are seldom used in modern times. Case in point: I just finished reading Nathaniel Hawthorne’s House of the Seven Gables. On almost every page there was a word I did not know. So naturally I wrote down the sords on my papers for future defining. At about page 90, I realized I should indicate the page number as well, so after defining I could go back and reread the sentence again, this time with better comprehension.

Here is the original paper:

Here are the words. How many do you know?

traditionary

presentment

propinquity

metes

invidious

averment

punctilious

impalpable

obeisance

pendent

immitable

vicissitude

latterly

obviate

fain

matutinal

escritoire

hardihood

festoon

galvanic

emoulment

tremulous

recondite

importunity

contemptuous

contumaciously

pettish

pertinacious (all five vowels!)

subtile

festile

apothegm

asperity

meed

sybarite

unctuous

effulgence

Ixion

immitigable

chary

inveteracy

irrefragably (copied down this word twice)

continguity

hymettus

gallinaceous

apposite

scapegrace