badinage

badinage \bad-n-AHZH\, noun:

Light, playful talk; banter.

Ken was determined to put the cares of the world behind him and do what he loved best -- having a few celebrity friends round and enjoying an evening of anecdote and badinage over a bottle or two of vintage bubbly and some tasty cheese straws.
-- Bel Littlejohn, "My moustache man", The Guardian, March 24, 2000

The badinage was inconsequential, reduced to who knew whom and wasn't the weather glorious in St. Tropez, or the Bahamas, Hawaii, or Hong Kong?
-- Robert Ludlum, The Matarese Countdown

Hope was the great comic actor of the 1940's, an original whose persona often transcended lame scripts. He can still get you with his gangly physicality, his many shades of discomfort, fear or lechery, the trademark gurgle, the off-handed badinage with Crosby and the luckless romancing with any number of sham femme fatales.
-- Gary Giddins, The Hope We Should Remember, New York Times, 3-Aug-03

Badinage comes from French, from badiner, "to trifle, to joke," badin, "playful, jocular."

clandestine

clandestine \klan-DES-tin\, adjective:

Characterized by, done in, or executed with secrecy or concealment, esp. for purposes of subversion or deception.

One of the many shiny art panels at the back of the room is actually a clandestine two-way mirror (look carefully, the color is slightly different). Back in the day (perhaps now) it allowed managers to survey service and presentation, which are still impeccable.
-- Ike DeLorenzo, Five classics revisited, Boston Globe, 27-May-09

I was commanded by Paramount's publicists -- the Legion of Women With Clipboards -- to come alone to an advance, clandestine screening of "Star Trek" a couple of weeks ago.
-- Hank Stuever, The Trouble With Quibbles, Washington Post, 11-May-09

They can also stealthily enlist a computer into so-called botnets - computers that have been clandestinely networked to perform tasks without the knowledge of their owners and operators.
-- Scott Duke Harris, Internet security problems have an upside for Silicon Valley, Mercury News

Clandestine is from Latin clandestīnus, probably a blend of clam-de, secretly and intestīnus, internal.

orotund

orotund \OR-uh-tuhnd\, adjective:

1. Characterized by fullness, clarity, strength, and smoothness of sound.
2. Pompous; bombastic.

I have been cursed to stalk the night through all eternity, he went on, his voice orotund, carrying all across the playground.
-- Michael Chabon, Werewolves in Their Youth

Just once he should resist citing Melville's orotund pronouncement that "genius, all over the world, stands hand in hand, and one shock of recognition runs the whole circle round."
-- James Atlas, "The Great Reminiscer", New York Times, September 3, 1995

. . .a down-at-heel philosopher who no longer thinks but gabs, the bore at the dinner table, growing more self-absorbed and orotund and cynical with each glass of wine.
-- "Melting in Sri Lanka", New York Times, March 29, 1987

Orotund derives from Latin ore rotundo, "with a round mouth," hence "clear, loud," from os, oris, "the mouth" + rotundus, "round." It is related to oral.

quidnunc

quidnunc \KWID-nuhngk\, noun:

One who is curious to know everything that passes; one who knows or pretends to know all that is going on; a gossip; a busybody.

What a treasure-trove to these venerable quidnuncs, could they have guessed the secret which Hepzibah and Clifford were carrying along with them!
-- Nathaniel Hawthorne, The House of the Seven Gables

Some wretched intrigue which had puzzled two generations of quidnuncs.
-- L. Stephen, Hours in Library

Quidnunc comes from Latin quid nunc?, "what now?"

encomium

encomium \en-KOH-mee-uhm\, noun;
plural encomiums or encomia \-mee-uh\:

An often formal expression of warm or high praise.

He ended with an encomium about her "high integrity and simple humanity" which ensured that "she loved her country, and her country loved her."
-- David Cameron, "Mourning service", The Guardian, April 3, 2002

The giant throws the butler into the lake, whereupon Charles delivers the perfunctory encomium, "Wickham was a good servant."
-- Jeremy Treglown, Romancing: The Life and Work of Henry Green

He brought in the bread, cheese and beer, with many high encomiums upon their excellence.
-- Charles Dickens, The Old Curiosity Shop

Encomium derives, via Latin, from Greek enkomion, from en-, "in" + komos, "revel."

sough

sough \SAU; SUHF\, intransitive verb:

1. To make a soft, low sighing or rustling sound, as the wind.
2. A soft, low rustling or sighing sound.

At a recent visit to Marsha's grave in Rathdrum, as the wind soughed through the towering pines nearby, Marsha's brother Pat left a silk bluebird by her headstone to honor her love of the outdoors.
-- David Whitman, "Fields of Fire", U.S. News & World Report, September 3, 2001

In the dark of winter, tin roofs sough with rain.
-- Les A. Murray, "Driving Through Sawmill Towns"

This voice she hears in the fields, in the sough of the wind among the trees, when measured and distant sounds fall upon her ears.
-- Ernest Renan, The Poetry of the Celtic Races

Gunfire, cannonade, and the weeping of bereft wives and mothers might fill the air of the disunited states, but the dominant sound in greater Manhattan would be the cheerful sough of money changing hands.
-- Bill Kauffman, "The Blue, The Gray, and Gotham", American Enterprise, July 2000

Sough comes from Middle English swoughen, from Old English swogan.

daedal

daedal \DEE-duhl\, adjective:

1. Complex or ingenious in form or function; intricate.
2. Skillful; artistic; ingenious.
3. Rich; adorned with many things.

Most Web-site designers realize that large image maps and daedal layouts are to be avoided, and the leading World Wide Web designers have reacted to users' objections to highly graphical, slow sites by using uncluttered, easy-to-use layouts.
-- "Fixing Web-site usability", InfoWorld, December 15, 1997

He gathered toward the end of his life a very extensive collection of illustrated books and illuminated manuscripts, and took heightened pleasure in their daedal patterns as his own strength declined.
-- Florence S. Boos, preface to The Collected Letters of William Morris

I sang of the dancing stars,
I sang of the daedal earth,
And of heaven, and the giant wars,
And love, and death, and birth.
-- Percy Bysshe Shelley, "Hymn Of Pan"

Daedal comes from Latin daedalus, "cunningly wrought," from Greek daidalos, "skillful, cunningly created."

pule

pule \PYOOL\, intransitive verb:

To whimper; to whine.

The first lady initially flourished as a wronged wife precisely because she endured her humiliation so stoically; she did not whine or pule or treat her pain as license to behave badly.
-- Michelle Cottle, "God Almighty", New Republic, September 6, 1999

But my self-absorbed fretting and puling always come to an abrupt end with some surprise gift.
-- Thomas J. McCarthy, "Stay-at-Home Dad", America, February 26, 2000

Pule is perhaps from French piauler, "to whine, to pule," ultimately of imitative origin.

copse

copse \KOPS\, noun:

A thicket or grove of small trees.

A lit window shone from between the trees below them, then vanished again as the car dipped over a ditch and passed through a copse.
-- Kate Bingham, Mummy's Legs

Among the mountains, hills, streams, waterfalls, and little copses, the child rejoiced in "savouring the delights of freedom" that stimulated his boyish dreams and reveries.
-- Suheil Bushrui and Joe Jenkins, Kahlil Gibran: Man and Poet

They sang freely in the copses and thickets round Bohain, and in the ruins of the mediaeval castle where he played as a boy.
-- Hilary Spurling, The Unknown Matisse

Copse derives from Old French copeiz, "a thicket for cutting," from coper, couper, "to cut." It is related to coupon, at root "the part that is cut off."

tutelary

tutelary \TOO-tuh-lair-ee; TYOO-\, adjective:

Having the guardianship or charge of protecting a person or a thing; guardian; protecting; as, "tutelary goddesses."

For the first time in history, a republic welcomed, perhaps even required, the release of the individual from tutelary powers, and in particular from religious authority.
-- Diana Schaub, "On the Character of Generation X", Public Interest, Fall 1999

God is perceived less as a savior that cleanses one's sins than as a tutelary god who provides guidance and help.
-- Kwai Hang Ng, "Seeking the Christian tutelage", Sociology of Religion, Summer 2002

The archetypal demon of Japanese folklore had always had two faces, being not only a destructive presence but also a potentially protective and tutelary being.
-- John W. Dower, War Without Mercy

In its twentieth-century incarnation, then, Western imperialism assumed a tutelary capacity: its benevolent mission was to teach formerly subject peoples the Western art of self-government.
-- Charlotte Weber, "Unveiling Scheherazade", Feminist Studies, Spring 2001

Tutelary derives from Latin tutelaris, from tutela, protection, guardianship, from tutus, past participle of tueri, to look at, to regard, especially to look at with care or for the purpose of protection. It is related to tutor, to have the guardianship or care of; to teach; to instruct.

ebullient

ebullient \ih-BUL-yuhnt\, adjective:

1. Overflowing with enthusiasm or excitement; high-spirited.
2. Boiling up or over.

The glasses he wore for astigmatism gave him a deceptively clerkish appearance, for he had an ebullient, gregarious personality, a hot temper, and an outsized imagination.
-- Jon Lee Anderson, Che Guevara: A Revolutionary Life

He was no longer an ebullient, energetic adolescent.
-- Linda Simon, Genuine Reality: A Life of William James

Sometimes he would come back from the Drenchery Club holding on to the walls till he got to my office, where he'd be jolly and ebullient. At other times, he'd return morose.
-- Harriet Wasserman, Handsome Is: Adventures with Saul Bellow

Ebullient comes from Latin ebullire, "to bubble up," from e-, "out of, from" + bullire, "to bubble, to boil."

nimiety

nimiety \nih-MY-uh-tee\, noun:

The state of being too much; excess.

What a nimiety of . . . riches have we here! I am quite undone.
-- James J. Kilpatrick, "Buckley: The Right Word", National Review, December 23, 1996

Just as daily life contains all the comforts of what one owns, there is also a natural shedding or forgetting and a natural dulling, otherwise one becomes burdened with a sense of nimiety, a sense (as Kenneth Clark put it in his autobiography) of the "too-muchness" of life.
-- Nicholas Poburko, "Poetry Past And Present: F. T. Prince's Walks in Rome", Renascence: Essays on Values in Literature, January 1, 1999

Nimiety is from Late Latin nimietas, from Latin nimius, "very much, too much," from nimis, "excessively."

prescience

prescience \PREE-shuns; PREE-shee-uns; PRESH-uns; PRESH-ee-uns; PREE-see-uns; PRES-ee-uns\, noun:

Knowledge of events before they take place; foresight.
--prescientadjective

But you could not fault his prescience in 1980 when he [Arthur Seldon] wrote: "China will go capitalist. Soviet Russia will not survive the century. Labour as we know it will never rule again. Socialism is an irrelevance."
-- "Prophet of privatisation puts money on Major - well, £2.50 of it", Electronic Telegraph, March 28, 1997

Critics and historians have written admiringly of Dostoyevsky's acuity at forecasting the nature of the political turmoil that would envelop Russia over the next 100 years; Ms. Egloff, too, pays homage to the novelist's prescience.
-- "Plotters and Snoops in Old Russia", New York Times, May 23, 1998

As a professor, he earned a reputation for prescience when he returned an examination to a student named John Grisham with the comment, "Although you missed most of the legal issues, you have a real talent for fiction."
-- "The Final Refrains of 'Dixie'", New York Times, November 11, 1998

Prescience is from Latin praescientia, from praescio, praescire, to know beforehand, from prae, before + scio, scire, to know.

gravid

gravid \GRAV-id\, adjective:

Being with child; heavy with young or eggs; pregnant.

For the moment the Cap'n Toby lies at rest outside the harbor, and the twelve-inch mackerels that Brian and I are cutting up for lobster bait are ripe, their bellies gravid with either blood-red roe or milt the color of sailors' bones.
-- Richard Adams Carey, Against the Tide

In North America, in contrast, the British conquered an empire; New France disappeared from history. But -- Anderson's profound theme -- Britain's triumph was gravid with defeat.
-- Jack Beatty, "Defeat in Victory", The Atlantic, December 2000

she is a bored society matron who seduces him before a carload gravid with already weary, now grossed-out morning commuters.
-- Rita Kempley, review of The Adjuster (MGM/UA Studios movie), Washington Post, June 29, 1992

Gravid derives from Latin gravidus, from gravis, "heavy."

salutary

salutary \SAL-yuh-ter-ee\, adjective:

1. Producing or contributing to a beneficial effect; beneficial; advantageous.
2. Wholesome; healthful; promoting health.

Example Quotes:

Surviving a near-death experience has the salutary effect of concentrating the mind.
-- Kenneth T. Walsh and Roger Simon, "Bush turns the tide", U.S. News, February 28, 2000

And they washed it all down with sharp red wines, moderate amounts of which are known to be salutary.
-- Rod Usher, "The Fat of the Land", Time Europe, January 8, 2000

Alexis de Tocqueville famously observed during his sojourn in this country that America was teeming with such associations -- charities, choral groups, church study groups, book clubs -- and that they had a remarkably salutary effect on society, turning selfish individuals into public-spirited citizens.
-- Fareed Zakaria, "Bigger Than the Family, Smaller Than the State", New York Times, August 13, 1995

Example Sentences:

She started driving a Prius for its salutary effect on the environment.
-- Brought to you by the 3rd Generation Prius

Salutary derives from Latin salutaris, from salus, salut-, "health."

effulgence

effulgence \i-FUL-juhn(t)s\, noun:

The state of being bright and radiant; splendor; brilliance.

The purity of his private character gave effulgence to his public virtues.
-- "Congressman Henry Lee's Eulogy for George Washington", December 4, 1908

The setting sun as usual shed a melancholy effulgence on the ruddy towers of the Alhambra.
-- Washington Irving, The Alhambra

Nice gave him a different light from Paris -- a high, constant effulgence with little gray in it, flooding broadly across sea, city and hills, producing luminous shadows and clear tonal structures.
-- Robert Hughes, "Inventing A Sensory Utopia: The paintings Matisse did in Nice include some of his best", Time, November 17, 1986

From Latin ex, "out of, from" + fulgere, "to shine." The adjective form of the word is effulgent.

aver

aver \uh-VUR\, transitive verb:

1. To affirm with confidence; to declare in a positive manner, as in confidence of asserting the truth.
2. (Law) To assert, claim, or declare as a fact.

Between us and the bottom of the sea was less than an inch of wood. And yet, I aver it, and I aver it again, I was unafraid.
-- Jack London, The Sea-Wolf

Although it was not quite true, as he liked to aver, that almost forty years passed between his departure for Germany and his eventual return to Austria, he did not hurry back to Vienna after emigrating to the United States.
-- Patrick McGilligan, Fritz Lang: The Nature of the Beast

Many companies aver that the most expedient path to bigger market share or an expanded product portfolio is through a merger or acquisition.
-- Megan Santosus, "Arranged Marriage", CIO Enterprise, July 15, 1999

Aver is from Old French-Medieval French averer, from Medieval Latin adverare, to confirm as authentic, from Latin ad-, ad- + Medieval Latin verare, from Latin verus, true. Other words deriving from verus are very, which sometimes has the sense of "true"; verify, to prove the truth of; and verdict, a decision or judgment, literally a "true-saying" (verus + dictum, saying).

prestidigitation

prestidigitation \pres-tuh-dij-uh-TAY-shuhn\, noun:

Skill in or performance of tricks; sleight of hand.

He was the man who had sat alone in a room for hundreds and hundreds of hours, his fingers manipulating cards and coins until he had learned and could perfectly reproduce every form of prestidigitation found in books of magic lore.
-- Brian Moore, The Magician's Wife

Some modern readers may be less surprised to find that efforts to use accounting prestidigitation to deflect borrowing away from current expenditure speedily came unstuck and that a return to more conventional ideas of financial integrity was rewarded by what seems to be a generation of calm, not entirely due to gaps in the record.
-- Peter Rycraft, "Fiscalitat i deute public en dues viles del camp de Tarragona: Reus i Valls, segles", English Historical Review, November 2002

One of his magician friends told me that practitioners of prestidigitation have great respect for their fellow magicians who also hold forth behind the bar.
-- Gary Regan, "Tricks and treats: cast a mystical spell on guests with a magician bartender", Nation's Restaurant News, March 3, 2003

Prestidigitation was adopted from French, from preste, "nimble, quick" (from Italian presto, from Late Latin praestus, "ready at hand") + Latin digitus, "finger." One skilled in sleight of hand is a prestidigitator.

megrim

megrim \MEE-grim\, noun:

1. A migraine.
2. A fancy; a whim.
3. In the plural: lowness of spirits -- often with 'the'.

That might justify her, fairly enough, in being kept away from meeting now and again by headaches, or undefined megrims.
-- Harold Frederic, The Damnation of Theron Ware

Tonight, by some megrim of the scheduler, I have the honor of working with the departmental chairman, Dr. B.
-- Pamela Grim, Just Here Trying to Save a Few Lives

They do say it's always darkest before the dawn, she thought. I reckon this is proof of it. I've got the megrims, that's all.
-- Stephens Mitchell, Scarlett

Kate had learned a long time ago that the best way to deal with Effie's megrims was to maintain an attitude of determined cheerfulness.
-- Susan Carroll, Midnight Bride

Megrim is from Middle English migrem, from Middle French migraine, modification of Late Latin hemicrania, "pain in one side of the head," from Greek hemikrania, from hemi-, "half" + kranion, "skull."

redivivus

redivivus \red-uh-VY-vuhs; -VEE-\, adjective:

Living again; brought back to life; revived; restored.

Augustine redivivus, R. contends, would find in the history of the present century confirmation of his pessimistic views of human nature.
-- Roland J. Teske, "Augustine: Ancient Thought Baptized", Theological Studies, June 1, 1995

She is the young Magda redivivus to the last degree, including the way she arches her eyebrow when she speaks.
-- Judith Dunford, "Exit Laughing", Newsday, May 8, 1994

As for Neeson -- of the nose-heavy, asymmetrical countenance and shrewdly darting, soul-searching eyes, he is a lopsided Gary Cooper redivivus -- hardly something to sneeze at.
-- John Simon, "Michael Collins", National Review, November 25, 1996

Redivivus comes from Latin, from the prefix red-, re-, "again" + vivus, "alive."

disport

disport \dis-PORT\, intransitive verb:

1. To amuse oneself in light or lively manner; to frolic.
2. To divert or amuse.
3. To display.

If you confine the kids' drinking to the college area, they will disport there and lessen the problem of the drunken car ride coming back from the out-of-town bar.
-- William F. Buckley Jr., "Let's Drink to It", National Review, February 27, 2001

I had to laugh, picturing Stuart and me in a red enamel tub, disporting ourselves among the suds.
-- Jacquelyn Mitchard, The Most Wanted

Few of the "carriage ladies and gentlemen" who disport themselves in Newport during the summer months, yachting and dancing through the short season, then flitting away to fresh fields and pastures new, realize that their daintily shod feet have been treading historic ground, or care to cast a thought back to the past.
-- Eliot Gregory, Worldly Ways and Byways

. . .those dolphins and narwhals who disport themselves upon the edges of old maps.
-- Virginia Woolf, Night and Day

Disport derives from Old French desporter, "to divert," from des-, "apart" (from Latin dis-) + porter, "to carry" (from Latin portare) -- hence to disport is at root "to carry apart, or away" (from business or seriousness).

paragon

paragon \PAIR-uh-gon; -guhn\, noun:

A model of excellence or perfection; as, "a paragon of beauty; a paragon of eloquence."

Example Quotes:

Even his friends and business associates, men and women alike, were paragons of health: avoiders of fatty foods, moderate drinkers, health-club habitues, lovers of cross-country skiing, weekend canoe trips, and daylong hikes in the North Woods.
-- Alvin Greenberg, How the Dead Live

Voters, if they chose, could easily convince themselves that the people running their government were faithful spouses and temperate drinkers, paragons whose public images were in perfect accord with their private behavior.
-- Gail Collins, Scorpion Tongues

Example Sentences:

The hybrid technology in Prius is a paragon of innovative engineering.
-- Brought to you by the 3rd Generation Prius

Paragon comes from Middle French, from Old Italian paragone, literally, "touchstone," from paragonare, "to test on a touchstone," from Greek parakonan, "to rub against, to sharpen," from para-, "beside" + akone, "a whetstone."

tergiversation

tergiversation \tuhr-jiv-uhr-SAY-shuhn\, noun:

1. The act of practicing evasion or of being deliberately ambiguous.
2. The act of abandoning a party or cause.

No doubt if I worked on it, I could evolve some kind of double-talk that would get around the offensive phrase, and make the, to me, face-saving implication; but to hell with that, I have too much respect for the English language, and for your understanding of it, to go in for tergiversation and weasely circumlocution.
-- Richard Gillman, "Standing Up to Ezra Pound", New York Times, August 25, 1991

Like most writers, I have always championed thrift . . . . Not long ago, however, I experienced an extraordinary tergiversation. Now I'm an ally of excess, a proponent of redundancy.
-- Michael Norman, "When an Author's Words Are Sold by the Pound", New York Times, September 15, 1991

Tergiversation comes from Latin tergiversatus, past participle of tergiversari, "to turn one's back, to shift," from tergum, "back" + versare, frequentative of vertere, "to turn." The verb form is tergiversate.

oneiric

oneiric \oh-NY-rik\, adjective:

Of, pertaining to, or suggestive of dreams; dreamy.

On this score, the novel might easily drift off into an oneiric never-never land, but Mr. Welch doesn't let this happen.
-- Peter Wild, "Visions of Blackfoot", New York Times, November 2, 1986

Her large images, which are cloaked in an elegant oneiric mist, transport the viewer to an ideal world where bodies seem to have become weightless ghosts of themselves.
-- Simona Vendrame, "Nature and the solitary self, translated by Jacqueline Smith", Temaceleste

Some -- not all -- of Caravaggio's painting uniquely compels you to grope for words in order to describe the optical novelty and disturbing immediacy of the images. They're at once coldly precise, voluptuously real and strangely oneiric.
-- Peter Robb, "Candid camera", The Guardian, October 20, 2001

Oneiric comes from Greek oneiros, "dream."

mores

mores \MOR-ayz; -eez\, plural noun:

1. The fixed customs of a particular group that are morally binding upon all members of the group.
2. Moral attitudes.
3. Customs; habits; ways.

Usually the laws mirror the mores of the populace in this regard, though at times they run ahead, and at times they lag behind.
-- Daniel C. Maguire, "Death Legal and Illegal", The Atlantic, February 1974

In much the same bold spirit, I rapidly absorbed the other gestures, turns of phrase and exclamations popular among my peers, as well as grasping the deeper mores and etiquettes prevailing in my new surroundings.
-- Kazuo Ishiguro, When We Were Orphans

Artists rebelled against the stodgy mores of the bourgeoisie.
-- David Brooks, "The Organization Kid", The Atlantic, April 2001

Mores comes from Latin, plural of mos, "custom." It is related to moral.

abstemious

abstemious \ab-STEE-mee-uhs\, adjective:

1. Sparing in eating and drinking; temperate; abstinent.
2. Sparingly used or consumed; used with temperance or moderation.
3. Marked by or spent in abstinence.

They were healthy and abstemious; their chief pleasure was reading and Oliver was a life member of the London Library.
-- Sylvia Townsend Warner, The Music at Long Verney

For a man who trafficked in excess, he was surprisingly abstemious.
-- Ralph Blumenthal, Stork Club

When the 1796 outbreak of yellow fever turned into an epidemic, the frightened citizens followed each preventive vogue: herb tea, cold baths, cream of tartar, vinegar, camphor and abstemious diets.
-- Christina Vella, Intimate Enemies

Abstemious comes from Latin abstemius, from ab-, abs-, "away from" + the root of temetum, "intoxicating drink."

pother

pother \POTH-er\, noun:

1. A commotion; a disturbance.
2. A state of nervous activity; a fuss.
3. A cloud of smoke or dust that chokes or smothers.
4. To make confused; trouble; worry.
5. To be overly concerned with trifles; fuss.

A few gestures allude fleetingly to the iconic Ivanov choreography—crossed wrists, flapping arms, a warding-off pose—but this ballerina is beset with dissatisfaction and discomfort, even though, when Warby's filmed face appears on the screen—huge, filling it—her gaze is calm and penetrating. That black-and-white image is succeeded by a pother of gulls alighting on water amid swimming ducks.
-- Deborah Jowitt, Ros Warby Spreads Her Wings and Takes Off Marching, Village Voice

The victor makes a big production of his triumph, flying to a high wall, flapping his wings and crowing. All this pother attracts an eagle, who grabs the braggart with his talons, and that's the end of that.
-- Katherine Powers, Boston Globe

Pother probably originated around 1585–95 meaning "disturbance, commotion," but is of unknown origin.

espy

espy \ih-SPY\, transitive verb:

To catch sight of; to perceive with the eyes; to discover, as a distant object partly concealed, or not obvious to notice; to see at a glance; to discern unexpectedly; to spy; as, to espy land; to espy a man in a crowd.

The seamen espied a rock within half a cable's length of the ship.
-- Jonathan Swift, Gulliver's Travels

They espy no trouble in that.
-- John Lukacs, A Thread of Years

I have come to look at the world's map anew, espying not so much the art galleries or mountain ranges or rivers as places where cherished friends have taken up residence and would, perhaps, enjoy showing an old buddy the ins and outs, the meandering back road rather than the superhighway.
-- Alan Cowell, When a Host Becomes a Guest, New York Times, 29-Dec-02

Espy is from Old French espier, to watch, ultimately of Germanic origin; akin to Old High German spehon. The act of espying is espial.

hortatory

hortatory \HOR-tuh-tor-ee\, adjective:

Marked by strong urging; serving to encourage or incite; as, "a hortatory speech."

Example Quotes:

He later gave up the ministry in the conviction that he could reach thousands with his beguiling pen and only hundreds with his hortatory voice.
-- Carl Van Doren, The American Novel, 1789-1939

Instead of "Home Run, Jack," the hortatory message that greets the batter at the plate is the subliminal one that surfaces: "Run Home, Jack."
-- Marjorie Garber, Symptoms of Culture

The former West German Chancellor's book . . . is a call to action, and, even in this good translation, the book relies heavily on the hortatory language of political appeals.
-- Tamar Jacoby, "Carrots and Sticks", New York Times, August 24, 1986

Example Sentences:

The mayor's hortatory speech spurred me to organize a carpool with my Prius.
-- Brought to you by the 3rd Generation Prius

Hortatory is from Latin hortatorius, from hortari, "to exhort, to incite, to encourage."

cosset

cosset \KOSS-it\, transitive verb:

1. To treat as a pet; to treat with excessive indulgence; to pamper.
2. A pet, especially a pet lamb.

Sumner's parents, for instance, were routinely attended by butlers, maids, coachmen and grooms while little Sumner and his sister, Emily, were pampered and cosseted from infancy by nurserymaids and governesses.
-- Benjamin Welles, Sumner Welles: FDR's Global Strategist

Assunta played a larger role in the lives of her children, whom she cosseted and cared for as best she could.
-- Patricia Albers, Shadows, Fire, Snow: The Life of Tina Modotti

In these two years, Adolf lived a life of parasitic idleness -- funded, provided for, looked after, and cosseted by a doting mother, with his own room in the comfortable flat in the Humboldtstrasse in Linz, which the family had moved into in June 1905.
-- Ian Kershaw, Hitler: 1889-1936 Hubris

Cosset comes from the noun cosset, "a pet lamb."