My Published Articles for ViewsHound: Ten Unusual Words to Spice Up Your Writings

Sunday, April 28, 2024

Ten Unusual Words to Spice Up Your Writings

Time to play with English words. My blogs on this topic had received some positive responses from my readers here at THD. Today are 10 unusual words that can spice up your writings.

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I subscribe to the daily series WordsGenius.com Today's word is Quisquous. If you play Scrabble this is a word you should Know. The letter "Q" is a high point letter.

Definition: Quisquous

Hard to deal with; dubious; of people: having a character difficult to assess.

[KWIS-kwəs]

Part of speech: adjective

Origin: Scottish, late 17th century

Hard to deal with; dubious; of people: having a character difficult to assess.

Examples of quisquous in a sentence

"I wanted to trust him, but I also knew that he had a quisquous reputation."

"She tried to be patient, but she knew that her friend was quisquous."

About Quisquous

While we know that "quisquous" is a Scottish word that first came into use around the late 17th century, its exact origins are uncertain. It could possibly originate from the Latin word "quisquis," which means "whoever."

Did you Know?

Quisquous characters have long been referred to as tricksters in mythology; the coyote (in Indigenous cultures), the fox (in East Asian cultures), Anansi (the spider god of West Africa), and Loki (a Norse god) are all viewed as tricksters.

💙Meanwhile here are ten usual words that could add spice to your writings and blogs from the language gallery.com. I have used in my blogs only three out of the ten listed here. Enjoy!

1.Anachronism

An anachronism is something (or someone) that is out of place in terms of time or chronology. This is most common with old-fashioned items in a modern setting, but can also occur with futuristic items in period pieces. Most anachronisms are there by mistake, especially within movies and television shows.

E.g. Showing the Pharaoh wearing a wristwatch was an obvious anachronism.

2. Accismus

A form of irony in which someone feigns indifference to something he or she desires. Aesop’s fable The Fox and the Grapes illustrates accismus when the fox dismisses some grapes he is unable to reach, stating that he is sure they are sour anyway.

E.g. “Oh I couldn’t possibly accept…” Exclaimed Veronica upon being presented with a pair of diamond earrings, her natural affinity for accismus shining through.

3. Cacophony

A cacophony is a harsh mixture of sounds. It descends from the Greek word phōnē which means sound or voice, and is joined with the Greek prefix kak-, meaning bad; creating the meaning bad sound. In a similar way, the word symphony (which means a harmonious arrangement of instruments) traces to phōnē and the Greek prefix syn-, which means together.

E.g. I couldn’t hear over the cacophony of alarm bells.

4. Draconian

An adjective to describe something that is excessively harsh and severe. Derives from Draco, a 7th-century Athenian law scribe under whom small offenses had heavy punishments; prescribing death for almost every offence.

E.g. The new parking fines are positively draconian.

5. Limerence

The word limerence was coined only recently, in the 1970’s by psychologist Dorothy Tenov. It can be defined as an involuntary state of mind resulting from a romantic attraction to another person combined with an overwhelming, obsessive need to have one’s feelings reciprocated.

E.g. Eva wasn’t sure how to shake her recent feelings of limerence.

6. Pareidolia

A psychological phenomenon in which the mind perceives a specific image or pattern where it does not actually exist, such as seeing a face in the clouds. Pareidolia can be used to explain a host of otherwise unexplained sightings.

E.g. Alex was sure he saw a human face on the moon’s surface, but it was more likely to be pareidolia.

7. Riposte

A quick or witty retaliatory reply. In the context of the sport of fencing, a riposte means a counterattack that is made after successfully fending off one’s opponent.

E.g. Cora was known for having an excellent riposte to any insult.

8. Sanctimony or Sanctimonious

Pretend or hypocritical religious devotion or righteousness. Someone who is sanctimonious will preach about the evils of drug use whilst drinking a beer, for example. Associated with a holier-than-thou attitude.

E.g. There was an air of sanctimony in the way he detailed his charity work.

9. Serendipity

The act of finding something valuable or interesting when you are not looking for it. Coined by English author Horace Walpole in the mid-1700s, crediting it to a fairy tale he read called The Three Princes of Serendip. In the tale, three Persian princes sail to an island called Serendip (today known as Sri Lanka) to find their fortunes, making wondrous discoveries along the way.

E.g. It had to be serendipity that I found my dream house during a random drive in the country.

10. Verisimilitude

Something that merely seems to be true or real. Many writers or filmmakers try for some kind of verisimilitude in their stories, to make them believable. Including a great many details in a novel, for example, adds to its verisimilitude.

E.g. She was experiencing a nightmare of the most extraordinary verisimilitude.

For Details visit:

https://www.thelanguagegallery.com/blog/10-unusual-words-to-add-to-your-english-vocabulary

Meanwhile here's Ditas latest Painting that was sold before the Gallery Opened.

https://thezebra.org/2024/04/25/dont-miss-alexandrias-second-annual-free-party-for-the-arts-saturday-april-27-11-am-to-7-pm/?fbclid=IwZXh0bgNhZW0CMTEAAR2leYD6Cim4EMGZhfTyY9r5SAnwEeGOXktvZMULmwxpf_SB3Gfbj3pROac_aem_ARefRrFLOGBB554W0oY80mmoohv7sQ5mMZjNYHWfKC3aggXK5CGNmgN1bB3oTujKDA_weJXdnbkkN3Y4l5MI606F

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Guest Article from Susan Creamer Joy

In The Silence, by Susan Creamer Joy.

Today's guest article is from Susan Creamer Joy. Susan is one of my favorite authors in the ViewsHound community. Susan writes, draws, paints and cobbles together art from found objects making a variety of creations from jewelry to religious shrines. She frequently sports burns on her fingers from her soldering iron, paint on her palms and ink under her fingernails, but her hair is usually combed. When she is not losing time in the creative vortex of her studio, she is likely to be putting her knowledge of metaphysics and esoteric principles including Tarot, numerology, astrology and graphology to good use in consultations. Her children are grown, her husband still works and her four dogs believe she needs serious help. The title of her article is "A Matter Of Love And Death". Thank you Susan.

By the time they reached my bedroom door, I was already sitting up – my stomach ratcheted in the tense grip of an unnamed anxiety; my pillow, unburdened of my drowsy head.

To this day I cannot explain how I heard them coming up those stairs in their bare feet or how I knew that my father struggled to hold his composure as my mother unnaturally clutched at the folds of her dressing gown and followed him through the dark just a little too closely.

As the wooden groan of those old stairs tore into my bones that morning like a hacksaw, all I could see between the predawn shadows was the letter I’d written just hours earlier to my boyfriend, Chris, propped against the lamp on my desk across the room awaiting an envelope.

I had not slept well. It was late November and there had been so many changes since the middle of August when he left for the Air Force in Texas to begin basic training and I began my third new school in as many years.

The conspiracy between fate and the last surge of the Vietnam draft had broken apart the every-waking-minutes of our two-year union with unceremonious indifference. All that night my sleep had been infested by difficult dreams and by the illogical fear that truth and reality were merging into a darkness only a martyr could grasp; and at sixteen, martyrdom seemed reasonable only for the nuns among the poor in Bangladesh

I tried to remind myself that he would be home on leave for Thanksgiving in another few days. It was the only tether to calm I could find, but reviewing the facts offered little relief from my baseless fears.

Chris had been girding his pacifist sensibilities preparing to fight in an unpopular war that had not yet slaughtered its last innocent. I was hovering just over the line of inclusion at an exclusive girl’s school – missing him – and finding myself at odds with these young women and their attachment to propriety and with the prep-school veneer that blinded them to the fact that they were no better than anyone else.

Neither one of us was coping well with the worlds into which we were respectively summoned, and although we both knew that the best hope for any future together depended upon our individual successes apart, it was far from comforting most days.

But in spite of our discomfort, we each did our best; and, of course, there were the letters: Thin, plain-paper sheets with row after row after row of inky blue words penned with the intensity and awkward locutions of a love learned too soon. It had come down to just that little, but without them, I would have had nothing.

Chris was learning to fly. I was learning to drive, and both of us were aching to transport our souls to an earlier time through the hallowed intercourse of memories and dreams. Of course, as with all progress, there was the positive element: We were both clean and drug-free for the first time in years.

Now, without pretense, both healthy cognition and sincere motivation surfaced regularly in my psychology and prompted me to care about myself and to arbitrate against all temptation for a better standing in the world, in school and in my own eyes. I even did my homework.

No longer was I escaping today but, instead, living for my day of escape. Lying still in the dark of my room, I listened to the slow, padded footfall of my parents approaching and looked to the floor and to my history book half hidden beneath the nightstand where I’d tossed it the night before. Even in this early morning dark I could make out the swirls and stars in colored marker and the bubble-formed letters that spelled C H R I S in soft, juvenile curves on the torn book cover I’d fashioned out of a brown paper grocery bag.

I vaguely remembered throwing it there somewhat hastily. I had been doing my homework when a sense of urgency struck and I realized I had not written him as I promised I would and glancing at the clock, I noted it was nine-twenty-three. Why that mattered I had no way of knowing in that strange moment, but within hours, it would be one I would never forget; and although I was becoming drowsy and still needed to finish my work, I felt beyond reason that my letter to him could not wait.

So, I wrote. I would always write. I would always be there. He would always be there.“Suzi."It was my name spoken in the smooth and familiar voice of my mother, although weighted and slow, her head bowed to her chest almost as though she were speaking only to herself.

"Suzi.” She said it again, this time with sharp gravity, like a chisel against stone.

As if on cue, I leaned forward, flanked now by my parents who were sitting on either side of my bed.

I had been waiting for them. I don’t know how. I didn’t know why. The lights in my room remained off, but it seemed that the darkness clung more to them than to me, as though they were holding it there – away from me to give me enough light to see through the next moment. They were crying. My father was crying. My father. “Suzi. We have something very, very bad to tell you." Chris has been in a car accident." And he was killed."

If the world moved forward from that moment, I could not know it. f there were air around me worth breathing, I could not take it in. And if there were another sound beyond the leaden bellow of my own raw grief, I could not hear it.

"Who am I going to talk to? Who am I going to love?” I wailed. Who will love me? In that sodden moment violated by the intrusion of a predawn light that had no business rising, everything I ever believed about happiness, hoped for in life, trusted in or held as my own was annihilated.

After that – there was no after that. After that came months of hollow redundancies that would inform my way of being in the world for years to come. A serial commitment to waking up each morning, remembering he was gone and dedicating the remaining hours to forgetting. To that end I would try anything, drink anything, ingest anything, inject anything. It was a slow and arbitrary suicide by indifference.

Many years later, at 25 years-old and in the midst of a pharmaceutical free-fall leaning dangerously close to terminal, I discovered that I was expecting a child, and after a decade of forgetting, I remembered. I named him Griffin after the legendary winged lion, a symbol of the divine because what he inspired and the miracle that he was, were nothing less. I remembered and I loved again, and I went on to marry and to the gift of two beautiful daughters.

Today my son is struggling not to drown in the same well of drug abuse and apathy that almost swallowed me – his great, divine wings clipped by his own hand; and while it is up to him to restore his place in the sky, I will do my best to help provide an open runway.

In the meantime, I will continue soaring for both of us; bequeathed as I have been, with a determination to fly from a boy whose ragged fate precluded that dream.

Death took one young man from me once upon a dark time. If it has any intention of coming for this one, it will have to go through me. And trust me, it will be in for one hell of a fight.

Note: If you enjoy this article, please let me know.