- Abluvion
- Substance or things that are washed away
- Abyssal
- Accismus
- The feigning of disinterest in something while actually desiring it
- Adamantine
- Airling
- A person who is both young and thoughtless
- Alembic
- A vessel with a beaked cap or head, formerly used in distilling
- Anything that transforms, purifies, or refines
- Alexithymia
- Difficulty describing emotions
- Alizarin
- Alveary
- Anodyne
- Not likely to provoke dissent or offense, often deliberately so
- Relieving pain
- Soothing to the mind or feelings
- Anserine
- Aporia
- A philosophical puzzle or state of puzzlement
- Apricity
- The warmth of the sun in winter
- Arsonist
- Ataraxia
- Freedom from emotional disturbance and anxiety
- Aventail
- A flexible curtain of mail attached to the skull of a helmet that extends to cover the throat, neck and shoulders
- Belletristic
- Of, pertaining to, or having the characteristics of belles-lettres, written or appreciated for aesthetic value rather than content
- Blithe
- Bristles
- Cacography
- Deliberate comic misspelling
- Callow
- Cant
- Monotonous talk filled with platitudes
- Hypocritically pious language
- The special vocabulary peculiar to the members of an underworld group; argot
- Whining speech, such as that used by beggars
- Caravansary
- Catachresis
- Misapplication of a word, especially in a mixed metaphor
- Use of an existing word to denote something that has no name in the current language
- Cavort
- Cedarn
- Celandine
- Chrysocolla
- Chrysoprase
- Citrine
- Clepsydra
- Coelecanth
- Columbarium
- Coracle
- Corsair
- Corybantic
- Crashworthiness
- The degree to which a vehicle will protect the occupants from the effects of an accident
- Cricket
- Cypress
- Darkling
- Deliquesce
- To become liquid by absorbing moisture from the air
- To melt away
- (Botany) to form many small divisions or branches
- Deuteragonist
- Diablerie
- Reckless mischief, charismatic wildness
- Sorcery assisted by the devil
- Diapason
- A full, rich outpouring of harmonious sound
- The entire range of an instrument or voice
- Either of the two principal stops on a pipe organ that form the tonal basis for the entire scale of the instrument
- Diaphanous
- Dissonance
- Dulcimer
- Eft
- Ensorcell
- Eristic
- Of, relating, or given to controversy or logical disputation, esp for its own sake
- Epicene
- Having characteristics of both sexes or no characteristics of either sex; of indeterminate sex
- Epiphany
- Esculent
- Eviscerate
- Excelsior
- Farouche
- Sullen, shy, and repellent in manner
- Fantasist
- Fatuous
- Fey
- Doomed, fated to die
- Appearing to be under a spell; marked by an apprehension of death, calamity, or evil
- Supernatural, unreal, enchanted
- Being in unnaturally high spirits, as were formerly thought to precede death
- Whimsical, strange, otherworldly
- Fimble
- To move the fingers lightly and frequently over anything
- To touch lightly and frequently with the ends of the fingers
- Finifugal
- Shunning the end of anything
- Flay
- Fleam
- Handheld instrument used for bloodletting
- Fleer
- To make a wry face in contempt, or to grin in scorn
- Fleshment
- The sense of excitement that comes from an initial success
- Florid
- Covered with flowers
- Very flowery in style
- Elaborately decorated
- Tinged with red
- Marked by emotional or sexual fervor
- Healthy
- Manifesting a complete and typical clinical syndrome
- Frauendienst
- An exaggerated sense of chivalry toward women
- Fraught
- Fulminate
- Develop suddenly and severely (of a disease)
- Explode with a loud noise
- Express vehement protest
- Kill with lightning
- Grimalkin
- Hamartiology
- The theological study of sin
- Haruspex
- (In ancient Rome) a religious official who interpreted omens by inspecting the entrails of sacrificial animals
- Harvest
- Heady
- Intoxicating or stupefying
- Serving to exhilarate
- Tending to upset the mind or the balance of senses
- Hierophany
- A manifestation of the sacred
- Hurst
- A hillock, sandback, wood, or wooded rise
- Husk
- Ilk
- Incisive
- Indicatrix
- Ineffable
- Concerning ideas that cannot or should not be expressed in spoken words (or language in general), often being in the form of a taboo or incomprehensible term
- Insidious
- Insouciant
- Instantiation
- Invidious
- Iouea
- A genus of Cretaceous fossil sponges
- Also the shortest word in English containing all five vowels, as well as the shortest four-syllable word in English
- Iris
- Karst
- Landscape underlain by limestone which has been eroded by dissolution, producing ridges, towers, fissures, sinkholes and other characteristic landforms
- Kestrel
- Künstlerroman
- Narrative about an artist's growth to maturity
- Lacustrine
- Relating to or associated with lakes
- Lambent
- Effortlessly light or brilliant
- Flickering lightly over or on a surface
- Having a gentle glow; luminous
- Lamellaphone
- A category of instruments with tongues that are either plucked or pressed and released for sound
- Lapidary
- Characterized by an exactitude and extreme refinement that suggests gem cutting
- Of or pertaining to the cutting or engraving of precious stones
- Of, pertaining to, or suggestive of inscriptions on stone monuments
- Lassitude
- Leatherdoom
- Lissome
- Litotes
- Deliberate understatement for rhetorical effect
- Lurid
- Causing shock or horror; gruesome
- Glowing or shining with the glare of fire through a haze
- Marked by sensationalism
- Sallow or pallid in color
- Lye
- Manichean
- An adherent of the dualistic religious system of Manes, a combination of gnostic Christianity, Buddhism, Zoroastrianism, and various other elements, with a basic doctrine of a conflict between light and dark
- Pertaining to a strongly dualistic worldview
- Martinet
- One who is very strict and demands obedience from others
- Masochism
- The condition in which sexual gratification depends on suffering physical pain or humiliation
- Gratification gained from pain, deprivation, degradation, etc., inflicted or imposed on oneself, either as a result of one's own actions or the actions of others, especially the tendency to seek this form of gratification
- The act of turning one's destructive tendencies inward or upon oneself
- The tendency to find pleasure in self-denial, submissiveness, etc.
- Melismatic
- Melusine
- Mephitic
- Mezzanine
- Misadventure
- Mistral
- Moirologist
- Mordant
- Burning, corrosive
- Having the property of fixing colors, as in dyeing, or any such substance
- Sharply caustic or sarcastic
- Mystique
- An aura of heightened value, interest, or meaning surrounding something, arising from attitudes and beliefs that impute special power or mystery to it
- Nepenthe
- Nitrogen
- Noctilucent
- Numinous
- Octothorpe
- Another name for the # symbol
- Oneiric
- Oneirophrenia
- A dream-like mental state that is characterized by hallucinations and other disturbances and is associated with prolonged deprivation of sleep, sensory isolation, or psychoactive drugs
- Oriflamme
- Palinode
- A poem in which the author retracts something said in a previous poem
- A formal statement of retraction
- Pavonian
- Of or pertaining to a peacock; resembling the peacock, as in its gaudiness and vanity
- Penchant
- A definite liking; a strong inclination
- Pernicious
- Persiflage
- Light and slightly contemptuous mockery or banter
- Pervasive
- Pheasant
- Piquant
- Plangent
- (Of a sound) loud, reverberating, and often melancholy
- Poecilonym
- Predilection
- Preen
- Prelapsarian
- Characteristic of the time before the Fall of Man; innocent and unspoiled
- Pronoia
- The sneaking feeling one has that others are conspiring behind your back to help you
- Psithurism
- Whisper of wind in the trees, noise of leaves that move in the wind
- Whispering sound
- Ptyxis
- The way in which an individual leaf is folded in the bud
- Quietus
- Death or something that causes death, regarded as a release from life
- Something that has a calming or soothing effect
- Rarefied
- Risible
- Riverine
- Rue
- Sanctimonious
- Saturnine
- Born under or influenced astrologically by the planet Saturn
- Cold and steady in mood, slow to act or change
- Of a gloomy or surly disposition
- Having a sardonic aspect
- Saxifrage
- A low-growing plant of poor soils, bearing small white, yellow, or red flowers and forming rosettes of succulent leaves or hummocks of mossy leaves
- Scapegrace
- A mischievous or wayward person, especially a young person or child; a rascal
- Sciolism
- The practice, or an instance, of expressing opinions on something which one knows only superficially or has little real understanding of
- Sessile
- Shirr
- Shorn
- Shuck
- Silhouette
- Slatchy (Nantucketan)
- The sky during a fleeting moment of sunshine or blue sky in the middle of a storm; the noun version, slatch, refers to that moment itself
- Solivagant
- A person who wanders about alone
- Spindrift
- Sea spray, esp. spray blown from waves during a gale
- Fine wind-borne snow or sand
- Spinney
- A small area of trees and bushes
- Sporange
- A spore case; also a word that rhymes with "orange"
- Spruce
- Starve
- Sternutation
- Subfuscous
- Slightly dark, dusky, or somber
- Suffuse
- Sump
- A pit or hollow in which liquid collects
- Sylph
- Tacenda
- Things not to be mentioned
- Tantivy
- A rapid gallop or ride
- Moving or riding swiftly
- Used as a hunting cry
- Tatterdemalion
- Teratoid
- Thaumaturge
- A worker of wonders or miracles; magician
- Thrall
- Threnody
- A song, hymn or poem of mourning composed or performed as a memorial to a dead person
- Torschlusspanik
- The anxiety-inducing awareness that as time goes on, life’s opportunities just keep getting fewer and fewer and there’s no way to know which ones you should be taking before they close forever
- Trifecta
- Tuft
- Tussock
- Twi-thought
- A vague or indistinct thought
- Upbraid
- Urbane
- Polite and confident
- Fashionable and somewhat formal
- Utricle
- Vehicular
- Velleity
- A mere wish or desire for something without accompanying action or effort
- Verjuice
- A very acidic juice made by pressing unripe grapes
- Vespiary
- Vetiver
- Vibrissa
- Videnda
- Things worth seeing; things that ought to be seen
- Visceral
- Wastrel
- Vagabond, waif
- One who expends resources foolishly and self-indulgently
- Weltschmerz
- Sadness brought on by a realization that the world cannot be the way you wish it would be
- Wight
- Adj. 1) Strong, nimble. 2) Strong and brave, especially in war
- Noun. 1) A human being. 2) A supernatural being, as a witch or sprite. 3) Any living being, a creature.
- Woolgathering
- Indulgence in aimless thought or dreamy imagining; absentmindedness
- Wych
- Used in names of trees with pliant branches
- Yepsen
- Amount that can be held in two hands cupped together
- The two cupped hands themselves
- Ylem
- (In the Big Bang theory) the primordial matter of the universe, originally conceived as composed of neutrons at high temperature and density
- Zemblanity
- The opposite of serendipity, the faculty of making unhappy, unlucky and expected discoveries by design
- Allegedly based off the land of Zembla in Nabokov's Pale Fire, a reference to the Novaya Zemlya Artic islands
- Zythepsary
nov 20 2009 ∞
aug 30 2024 +