Building and Using a Fascinating Vocabulary Video 4: Funny and Foreign Words

Video recorded in Timicuan Preserve Fort Caroline, Florida on 1/19/23Show more

CUMULATIVE VOCABULARY

Alacrity - cheerful readiness, promptness, or willingness.
Anecdotal - based on personal observation, case study reports, or random investigations rather than systematic scientific evaluation. Don’t equate correlation with causation.
Apocryphal - 1580s, "of doubtful authenticity,”
Archetype - the original pattern or model from which all things of the same kind are copied or on which they are based; a model or first form; prototype. (in Jungian psychology) a collectively inherited unconscious idea, pattern of thought, image, etc., universally present in individual psyches.
Bamboozle - "to cheat, trick, swindle," 1703, originally a slang or cant word, of unknown origin.
Banal - devoid of freshness or originality; hackneyed; trite:
Banshee - (in Irish folklore) a spirit in the form of a wailing woman who appears to or is heard by members of a family as a sign that one of them is about to die.
Beatdown - a violent physical beating, an emphatic or overwhelming defeat
Bellicose - early 15c., "inclined to fighting," from Latin bellicosus "warlike, valorous, given to fighting
Bildungsroman - a type of novel concerned with the education, development, and maturing of a young protagonist.
Bludgeon - a short, heavy club with one end weighted, or thicker and heavier than the other. to strike or knock down with a bludgeon. to force into something; coerce; bully:
Bombast - speech too pompous for an occasion; pretentious words. Obsolete - cotton or other material used to stuff garments; padding.
Braggadocio - empty boasting; bragging. a boasting person; braggart.
Brawl - an angry, rough, noisy fight, especially one engaged in under the influence of alcohol: to engage in angry, rough, noisy fighting, especially while under the influence of alcohol:
Bravado - a pretentious, swaggering display of courage.
Bromide - a platitude or trite saying. A person who is platitudinous and boring.
Brouhaha - excited public interest, discussion, or the like, as the clamor attending some sensational event; hullabaloo: an episode involving excitement, confusion, turmoil, etc., especially a broil over a minor or ridiculous cause
Bubkes - The Yiddish word bubkes (also spelled in both English and Yiddish as bupkes or bubkus) is thought to be short for the colorful kozebubkes, which means 'goat droppings'—something you may want to consider the next time you find yourself saying 'I've got bubkes.
Bugaboo; something that causes fear or worry; bugbear; bogy. Origin - something to frighten a child, fancied object of terror," 1843, earlier buggybow (1740), probably an alteration of bugbear (also see bug (n.)), but connected "Dictionary of American Slang" with Bugibu, a demon in the Old French poem "Aliscans" from 1141,
Bumptious - offensively self-assertive.
Cajole - “deceive or delude by flattery," It may have originated from a French word for trapping a bird in a cage
Chutzpah - informal shameless audacity; impudence. (Yiddish)
Claptrap - pretentious but insincere or empty language: His speeches seem erudite but analysis reveals them to be mere claptrap. Any artifice or expedient for winning applause or impressing the public. 1730, "a trick to 'catch' applause," A stage term.
Clobber - to batter severely; strike heavily: to defeat decisively; drub; trounce: to denounce or criticize vigorously.
Compelling; force or push toward a course of action; overpowering: having a powerful and irresistible effect; requiring acute admiration, attention, or respect:
Dogmatic - asserting opinions in a doctrinaire or arrogant manner; opinionated
Donnybrook - an inordinately wild fight or contentious dispute; brawl; free-for-all
Doppelgänger - a ghostly double or counterpart of a living person.
Dustup - a quarrel; argument; row
Factotum - "one who does all kinds of work for another,” A jack of all trades. Fac - make, and totem - everything. Great resume word.
Feckless - ineffective; incompetent; futile: having no sense of responsibility; indifferent; lazy. Scottish shortened form of effect.
Fracas - a noisy, disorderly disturbance or fight; riotous brawl; uproar.
Gadfly - “fly which bites cattle," probably from gad (n.) "goad, metal rod," here in the sense of "stinger;" but the sense is entangled with gad. (v.) "Rove about" (on the notion, perhaps, of the insect's power of flight or of the restlessness of animals plagued by them), and another early meaning of gadfly was "someone who likes to go about, often stopping here and there" (1610s). Sense of "one who irritates another"
Hackneyed - made commonplace or trite; stale; banal.