These are some words worth knowing, inspired by:
i) me not knowing stuff,
ii) my sister, Nadia Khan-Roopnarine, Ed.D.
(Updates? Frenetic. Whenever a word strikes me as particularly useful!)
May this enhance your discourse, written, verbal, read…etc.
Adjectives
- concomitant—naturally accompanying or associated (concomitant implications)
- incisive—intelligently analytical and clear-thinking
- vacuous—vacuous truth is a statement that asserts that all members of the empty set have a certain property. For example, the statement “all cell phones in the room are turned off” will be true whenever there are no cell phones in the room
- polysemous—having multiple meanings
- univocal—a term, phrase, or word that has only one possible meaning
- involuted—
- florid—
- countervailing—offsetting an effect by countering it with something of equal force
- inchoate—just begun and so not fully formed or developed; rudimentary.
- stochastic—can be modeled according to random probability distribution
Verbs
- interrogate—pose a series of questions to (interrogates the issue)
- criticize—form and express a sophisticated judgment of (Marx criticizes the Young Hegelians)
- scrutinize—examine or inspect closely and thoroughly (Marx scrutinizes Hegel)
- proliferate—increase/advance, spread rapidly and often excessively
- supervene—(of a fact or property) be entailed by or consequent on the existence or establishment of another. (“the view that mental events supervene upon physical ones”)
- stipulate—to set a condition or name a pre-requisite for something to be fulfilled
- imbricate—overlap ideas, often when one is the consequence of another
- abjure—disavow or relinquish
- confabulate—(psychiatric) fabricate imaginary experiences as compensation for loss of memory
Nouns
- indigence—a state of extreme poverty
- architecture—conceptual framework/boundaries & limitations (within the architecture of x idea)
- counterfactuals—similar to hypotheticals, but related to past events
- mechanisms—
- lacuna—
- guise—
- epoché—
- ataraxia—
- miasma—an oppressive or unpleasant atmosphere which surrounds or emanates from something.
Adverbs
- namely—that is to say
Words are resources. They’re tools we depend upon in order to do what we do. Throughout my still very early academic career, some have tended to appear more frequently than others. Here’s one of my efforts to make the unfamiliar a little less daunting. Hopefully it may be of some use to whoever stumbles upon this, however they got here.
For each one, I’m mostly just using the results of a quick Google search. (That’s usually all it takes to get a sufficient working definition, for my purposes anyway!)
But a disclaimer with this in mind, O Imaginary Audience, I would be surprised if there were zero controversy in accepting these understandings as universally applicable in all contexts.
So, just for my own fun: here’s a duplicate of this list adding some of my own thoughts, wherever applicable.
Red—(I suspect) this may be a word that’s more commonly used within philosophy/with a specific (set of) meaning(s), which means each use entails its own baggage and controversy.
The most futile drinking game, inspired by the red ones: Take a shot every time you hear someone use these red ones unpretentiously.
Adjectives
1) concomitant—one of my favorite words in spanish is “conllevar” which, I think, does the same thing
2) incisive—a virtue. A trait I aspire to wield (and, much like being concise, will probably never achieve)
3) vacuous
4) polysemous—damn near everything is polysemous in a post-modern world
5) univocal
Verbs
1) interrogate—usually you only hear this one in an interpersonal “suspect/legal authority” sense, but I think it’s particularly effective when applied to ideas.
2 & 3) criticize/scrutinize—can’t quite put my finger on why, but instead of “critiques”, I seem to prefer “criticizes”
4) proliferate—anyone else out there who can’t help but think Cold War Era “nuclear arms race” whenever you hear this one?
5) supervene—I still don’t have a solid handle on this one(and jury’s out on whether I ever will)
6) stipulate—
Nouns
1) indigence
2) architecture—I think it’s an especially good look to use this one in the “conceptual framework” sense
3)counterfactuals—
4) mechanisms—
5) lacuna—
6) guise— monosyllabic elegance, very functional synonym for “facade”
Adverbs
1) namely—once I became aware of this one, I started seeing it e v e r y w h e r e. I suspect it has equivalents or superior counterparts in other languages
Notes
