ameliorate

ameliorate \uh-MEEL-yuh-rayt\, transitive verb:

1. To make better; to improve.

intransitive verb:
1. To grow better.

Among the pressures provoking these distresses were a father's financial inadequacy and a growing awareness that, by finding employment himself, he could ameliorate the family's exiguous circumstances.
-- Terence Brown, The Life of W. B. Yeats: A Critical Biography

In the socially fluid and (until the crash of 1837) economically expansive 1830s, the legislature frequently appropriated public money to investigate social problems, forestall dependency, and ameliorate human suffering.
-- Elisabeth Gitter, The Imprisoned Guest

Ameliorate is derived from Latin ad + meliorare, "to make better," from melior, "better."

sinuous

sinuous \SIN-yoo-uhs\, adjective:

1. Characterized by many curves or turns; winding.
2. Characterized by graceful curving movements.
3. Not direct; devious.

Long gone are the days when a "robotic movement" meant something jerky, awkward, and stiff: The new robo-fish that have just been unveiled by engineers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology swim through the water with sinuous grace.
-- Eliza Strickland, Robo-Fish Are Ready to Take to the Seas, Discover Magazine, August 25, 2009

A single tree
With sinuous trunk, boughs exquisitely wreathed,
Grew there; an ash which Winter for himself
Decked out with pride, and with outlandish grace
-- William Wordsworth, The Prelude, Book VI, "Cambridge and the Alps"

The final 15 miles featured narrow and sinuous roads made even tighter by huge crowds lining the sides. Crashes seemed inevitable.
-- Samuel Abt, CYCLING; Crashes Jolt the Standings, And Oust a Tour Favorite, New York Times, July 5, 2006

Sinuous is from Latin sinuōsus, from sinus, curve.

predilection

predilection \preh-d'l-EK-shun; pree-\, noun:

A predisposition to choose or like; an established preference.

Wilson doesn't see any inconsistency between his socialism and his predilection for the high life.
-- Marina Cantacuzino, "On deadly ground", The Guardian, March 13, 2001

By his own account, Mr. Kuhn was a rebellious young man. Among Harvard music majors, he said, his predilection for jazz marked him as a black sheep.
-- Phillip Lutz, "A Onetime Sideman, Now Front and Center", New York Times, August 21, 2009

But for him the first rule of judging was to set aside personal predilection and vote the law and the facts.
-- Edwin M. Yoder Jr., "Lewis Powell a Fine Sense of Balance", Washington Post, June 29, 1987

Predilection is at root "a liking before," from Latin prae-, "before" + diligere, "to choose; hence to prefer, to like very well."

traduce

traduce \truh-DOOS; -DYOOS\, transitive verb:

To expose to contempt or shame by means of false statements or misrepresentation; to represent as blamable; to vilify.

Sir Edward rang twice to stress that he had no business relationship with the family other than his consultancy, but also to vouch for the fact that they were "splendid people" who should not be traduced.
-- Ian Jack, "Generous spirits, secretive souls", Independent, October 17, 1998

I sometimes wonder whether those who traduce today's television have any conception just how much is on offer to the growing number of us with multi-channel television.
-- Peter Bazalgette, "Golden Age? This is it", The Guardian, November 19, 2001

The only problem is that his corrective arguments tend to traduce rationalism as the exclusive preserve of wild-eyed eggheads who only ever spin webs of marvelously useless deduction.
-- Steven Poole, "Et cetera", The Guardian, June 30, 2001

Traduce derives from Latin traducere, "to lead across, to lead along, to display, to expose to ridicule," from trans-, "across, over" + ducere, "to lead."

cavort

cavort \kuh-VORT\, intransitive verb:

1. To bound or prance about.
2. To have lively or boisterous fun; to behave in a high-spirited, festive manner.

. . .Enkidu, who was seduced by gradual steps to embrace the refinements of civilization, only to regret on his deathbed what he had left behind: a free life cavorting with gazelles.
-- Yi-Fu Tuan, Escapism

But why struggle with a term paper on the elements of foreshadowing in Bleak House when I could be cavorting on the beach.
-- Dani Shapiro, Slow Motion

By 1900, Leo-Chico would have been thirteen years old, and just past his bar mitzvah, or old enough to know better than to cavort with street idlers and gamblers.
-- Simon Louvish, Monkey Business

The men spent the next few weeks there drinking beer, eating hibachi-grilled fish, and cavorting with the young ladies.
-- Robert Whiting, Tokyo Underworld

Cavort is perhaps an alteration of curvet, "a light leap by a horse" (with the back arched or curved), from Italian corvetta, "a little curve," from Middle French courbette, from courber, "to curve," from Latin curvare, "to bend, to curve," from curvus, "curved, bent."

assiduous

assiduous \uh-SIJ-oo-uhs\, adjective:

1. Constant in application or attention; devoted; attentive.
2. Performed with constant diligence or attention; unremitting; persistent; as, "assiduous labor."

I can scarcely find time to write you even a Love Letter, Samuel Adams, an assiduous committeeman, wrote his wife in early 1776.
-- Pauline Maier, American Scripture: Making the Declaration of Independence

But he was assiduous in visiting the sick and the poor, however remote their farms and cottages.
-- Jan Morris, "With God where the cuckoos sing", Independent, November 23, 1996

But he was a man who by assiduous reading, through his devotion to literature, had become the quintessential successful gentleman, a man who could hold his own with the most cultivated companions.
-- Milton Gould, quoted in "For Cooke, a Lasting Memorial," by Peter Finn and Richard Justice, Washington Post, April 11, 1997

Assiduous is from Latin assiduus, "constantly sitting near; hence diligent, persistent," from assidere, "to attend to," from ad-, "towards, to" + sedere, "to sit."

eldritch

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Dictionary.com <doctor@dictionary.com>
Date: 2009/9/23
Subject: eldritch: Dictionary.com Word of the Day

eldritch \EL-drich\, adjective:

Strange; unearthly; weird; eerie.

In the eldritch light of evening in Nevada's Black Rock Desert, the eye plays tricks on the brain.
-- Thom Stark, "Something's Burning", Boardwatch, November 2000

The immitigable mountains and their stark, eldritch trees; coasts where earth abruptly snapped off, never to be continued, or beaches which gnawed it to bright dust and sucked it gently away. . . .
-- Carolyn Kizer, "A Childhood South of Nowhere", New York Times, April 9, 1989

Eldritch perhaps derives from a Middle English word meaning "fairyland," from Middle English elf, "elf" (from Old English aelf) + riche, "kingdom" (from Old English rice).

To: Word Man <linksubs@gmail.com>

orijinz the new word and phrase card game is getting rave reviews Jim Horne,NY Times: "I've been playing Orijinz...it's a lot of fun" Great, great, GREAT word game!" "infectious" "So much Fun" "Best game for thinking adults in a long time." "We had a blast" Great for families with teens! About.com 2008 Top 10 Kids game. A great Back to School or off to college gift too - Only $14.95
Word of the Day for Wednesday, September 23, 2009 eldritch \EL-drich\, adjective: Strange; unearthly; weird; eerie. In the eldritch light of evening in Nevada's Black Rock Desert, the eye plays tricks on the brain. -- Thom Stark, "Something's Burning", Boardwatch, November 2000 The immitigable mountains and their stark, eldritch trees; coasts where earth abruptly snapped off, never to be continued, or beaches which gnawed it to bright dust and sucked it gently away. . . . -- Carolyn Kizer, "A Childhood South of Nowhere", New York Times, April 9, 1989 Eldritch perhaps derives from a Middle English word meaning "fairyland," from Middle English elf, "elf" (from Old English aelf) + riche, "kingdom" (from Old English rice). Dictionary.com Entry and Pronunciation for eldritch Yesterday's Word - Previous Words - Help
Follow Dictionary.com on Twitter. Word of the day, word trivia, unusual words, and more!
Dictionary.com Word of the Day http://www.dictionary.com/wordoftheday/ You are currently subscribed to Dictionary.com Word of the Day as: linksubs@gmail.com To unsubscribe: http://lists.lexico.com/u?id=6312136H&n=T&l=wordoftheday&o=14470017 To subscribe to Word of the Day by email, please send a blank message to: join-wordoftheday@lists.lexico.com ©2009 by Dictionary.com, LLC. 555 12th Street Suite 500 Oakland CA 94607 Subscriptions to The Word of the Day can be turned on and off via the Web at http://www.dictionary.com/help/faq/wordoftheday/   Tell a friend about The Word of the Day!

cognoscente

cognoscente \kon-yuh-SHEN-tee; kog-nuh-; -SEN-\, noun:

A person with special knowledge of a subject; a connoisseur.

However, I thought it well to acquaint myself with the latest scientific thinking, so as not to write a tale that would embarrass me among the cognoscenti.
-- Ronald Wright, A Scientific Romance

In the early 1600s, however, beliefs that decried curiosity and restricted information about the "secrets" of nature to a handful of cognoscenti were under attack.
-- Tom Shachtman, Absolute Zero and the Conquest of Cold

Greenspan, to his credit, tells the truth about what he does, but until now, he has done it in a way that only the cognoscenti can understand.
-- Paul Krugman, "Labor Pains", New York Times Magazine, May 23, 1999

Cognoscente derives from the Obsolete Italian, from Latin cognoscens, cognoscent-, present participle of cognoscere, "to know."

equivocate

equivocate \ih-KWIV-uh-kayt\, intransitive verb:

To be deliberately ambiguous or unclear in order to mislead or to avoid committing oneself to anything definite.

The witness shuffled, equivocated, pretended to misunderstand the questions.
-- Thomas Babington Macaulay, History of England

By equivocating, hesitating, and giving ambiguous answers, she effected her purpose.
-- Harriet Martineau, Letters from Ireland

Dr. Lindzen does not equivocate. "We don't have any evidence that this is a serious problem," he says flatly.
-- William K. Stevens, "Skeptic Asks, Is It Really Warmer?", New York Times, June 17, 1996

To equivocate is literally to call equally one thing or the other: It comes from Medieval Latin aequivocare, from the Latin aequus, equal + vocare, to call (from Latin vox, voice).

tchotchke

tchotchke \CHOCH-kuh\, noun:

A trinket; a knickknack.

The rare tchotchke aside, our antiquing journeys mainly amounted to wishful foraging, in the spirit of a more roomy and prosperous someday we somehow never really articulated.
-- Jacquelyn Mitchard, The Most Wanted

Of course, you also have arcades, like Funland, and your typical tchotchke vendors, like Ryan's Gems and Junk.
-- Jamie Peck, "Rehoboth Beach", Newsday, May 18, 2001

I'm going nuts with my mother's accumulation of tchotchkes -- it's bad enough she never parted with one she got as a gift -- but why did she have to buy more?
-- "Artifacts of Life", Newsday, December 9, 1996

Tchotchke is from Yiddish tshatshke, "trinket," ultimately of Slavic origin. It is also spelled tsatske.

farrago

farrago \fuh-RAH-go; fuh-RAY-go\, noun:

A confused mixture; an assortment; a medley.

Ivan Illich writes "a farrago of sub-Marxist cliches, false analogies, non sequiturs, false or bent facts and weird prophesies."
-- "The Paul Johnson Enemies List", New York Times, September 18, 1977

Roy Hattersley will upset much of Scotland by calling Walter Scott's lvanhoe "a farrago of historical nonsense combined with maudlin romance."
-- "Literary classics panned by critics", Independent, January 18, 1999

From the moment the story of the Countess of Wessex and the Sheikh of Wapping broke, there has been a farrago of rumour, speculation and fantasy of which virtually every newspaper should be ashamed.
-- Roy Greenslade, "A sting in the tale", The Guardian, April 9, 2001

Farrago comes from the Latin farrago, "a mixed fodder for cattle," hence "a medley, a hodgepodge," from far, a sort of grain.

alacrity

alacrity \uh-LACK-ruh-tee\, noun:

A cheerful or eager readiness or willingness, often manifested by brisk, lively action or promptness in response.

As for his homemade meatloaf sandwich with green tomato ketchup, a condiment he developed while working in New York, I devoured it with an alacrity unbecoming in someone who gets paid to taste carefully.
-- R.W. Apple Jr., "Southern Tastes, Worldly Memories", New York Times, April 26, 2000

Arranged in long ranks, ten-, twelve-, or thirteen-year-old girls, pale and hollow-eyed, their pinned-back hair sprouting tendrils limp with perspiration, operated the machinery with such alacrity that arms and hands were a flying blur.
-- Patricia Albers, Shadows, Fire, Snow: The Life of Tina Modotti

So, I am sure that I was thrilled when I got the letter offering me the fellowship and equally sure that I wrote back to accept with alacrity.
-- Joan L. Richards, Angles of Reflection

Alacrity comes from Latin alacritas, from alacer, "lively."

efficacious

efficacious \ef-ih-KAY-shuhs\, adjective:

Capable of having the desired result or effect; effective as a means, measure, remedy, etc.

Lawyers make claims not because they believe them to be true, but because they believe them to be legally efficacious.
-- Paul F. Campos, Jurismania

Henri IV wrote to his son's nurse, Madame de Montglat, in 1607 insisting 'it is my wish and my command that he be whipped every time he is stubborn or misbehaves, knowing full well from personal experience that nothing in the world is as efficacious'.
-- Katharine MacDonogh, Reigning Cats and Dogs: A History of Pets at Court Since the Renaissance

Plagued by rats, the citizens of Hamelin desperately seek some efficacious method of pest control.
-- Francine Prose, review of The Pied Piper of Hamelin, as retold by Robert Holden, New York Times, August 16, 1998

Efficacious is from Latin efficax, -acis, from efficere, "to effect, to bring about," from ex-, "out" + facere, "to do or make."

logorrhea

logorrhea \law-guh-REE-uh\, noun:

1. Pathologically incoherent, repetitious speech.
2. Incessant or compulsive talkativeness; wearisome volubility.

By his own measure, he is a man of many contradictions, beginning with the fact that he is famous as a listener but suffers from "a touch of logorrhea." He is so voluble that one wonders how his subjects get a word in edgewise.
-- Mel Gussow, "Listener, Talker, Now Literary Lion: It's Official.", New York Times, June 17, 1997

It's also not good if your date has logorrhea.
-- Monte Williams, "8 Minutes in the Life of a Jewish Single: Not Attracted? Next!", New York Times, March 5, 2000

Mr. King, who possesses an enviable superabundance of imagination, suffers from a less enviable logorrhea.
-- Michele Slung, "Scare Tactics.", New York Times, May 10, 1981

Logorrhea is derived from Greek logos, "word" + rhein, "to flow."

lucubration

lucubration \loo-kyoo-BRAY-shun; loo-kuh-\, noun:

1. The act of studying by candlelight; nocturnal study; meditation.
2. That which is composed by night; that which is produced by meditation in retirement; hence (loosely) any literary composition.

A point of information for those with time on their hands: if you were to read 135 books a day, every day, for a year, you wouldn't finish all the books published annually in the United States. Now add to this figure, which is upward of 50,000, the 100 or so literary magazines; the scholarly, political and scientific journals (there are 142 devoted to sociology alone), as well as the glossy magazines, of which bigger and shinier versions are now spawning, and you'll appreciate the amount of lucubration that finds its way into print.
-- Arthur Krystal, "On Writing: Let There Be Less", New York Times, March 26, 1989

One of his characters is given to lucubration. "Things die on us," he reflects as he lies in bed, "we die on each other, we die of ourselves."
-- "Books of The Times", New York Times, February 7, 1981

Naturally, these fictions ran the risk of tumbling down the formalist hill and ending up at the bottom without readers -- except the heroic students of Roland Barthes or Umberto Eco, professors whose lucubrations were much more interesting than the books about which they theorized.
-- Mario Vargas Llosa, "Thugs Who Know Their Greek", New York Times, September 7, 1986

Lucubration comes from Latin lucubratus, past participle of lucubrare, "to work by night, composed at night (as by candlelight)," ultimately connected with lux, "light." Hence it is related to lucent, "shining, bright," and lucid, "clear." The verb form is lucubrate.

crapulous

crapulous \KRAP-yuh-lus\, adjective:

1. Given to or characterized by gross excess in drinking or eating.
2. Suffering from or due to such excess.

These were the dregs of their celebratory party: the half-filled glasses, the cold beans and herring, the shouts and smells of the crapulous strangers hemming them in on every side, the dead rinsed-out April night and the rain drooling down the windows.
-- T. Coraghessan Boyle, Riven Rock

The new money was spent in so much riotous living, and from end to end there settled on the country a mood of fretful, crapulous irritation.
-- Stephen McKenna, Sonia

Crapulous is from Late Latin crapulosus, from Latin crapula, from Greek kraipale, drunkenness and its consequences, nausea, sickness, and headache.

bucolic

bucolic \byoo-KOL-ik\, adjective:

1. Relating to or typical of the countryside or its people; rustic.
2. Of or pertaining to the life and occupation of a shepherd; pastoral.

noun:
1. A pastoral poem, depicting rural affairs, and the life, manners, and occupation of shepherds.
2. A country person.

What Ms. Morris appreciates most now is the mix of bucolic and urban: She can descend into the subway and roam the city, then spend hours in the botanic garden and "walk quietly home to check my tomato plants."
-- Janny Scott, "The Brownstone Storytellers", New York Times, May 15, 1995

In 1901 the Pittsburgh Leader focused on the more bucolic qualities of Springdale, noting "considerable acreage of woods and farm land, picturesque streets . . . and pretty little frame dwellings set amidst overhanging apple trees and maples."
-- Linda Lear, Rachel Carson: Witness for Nature

St. Paul's was a private Episcopal boys' school outside of Concord, New Hampshire, sixty miles from Windsor, in the middle of a wooded, secluded, bucolic nowhere.
-- Ken Gormley, Archibald Cox: Conscience of a Nation

Bucolic derives from Greek boukolikos, "rustic; pastoral," from boukolos, "a cowherd; a herdsman" from bous, "a cow; an ox."

inure

inure \in-YOOR\, transitive verb:

1. To make accustomed or used to something painful, difficult, or inconvenient; to harden; to habituate; as, "inured to drudgery and distress.

intransitive verb:
1. To pass into use; to take or have effect; to be applied; to serve to the use or benefit of; as, a gift of lands inures to the heirs.

They were a hard-driven, hardworking crowd inured to the hardest living, and they found their recreation in hard drinking and hard fighting.
-- Allen Barra, Inventing Wyatt Earp

How does one become inured to unpredictable moments of helplessness?
-- Stephen Kuusisto, Planet Of The Blind

At school, he repeatedly jabbed the nib of his pen into his hand, wanting to inure himself to agony.
-- Peter Conrad, "Enter the philosopher, with an axe", The Observer, September 8, 2002

Inure derives from prefix in-, "in" + obsolete ure, "use, work," from Old French uevre, "work," from Latin opera, "trouble, pains, exertion," from opus, "work."

puissant

puissant \PWISS-uhnt; PYOO-uh-suhnt; pyoo-ISS-uhnt\, adjective:

Powerful; strong; mighty; as, a puissant prince or empire.

As an upcoming young corporate lawyer in San Francisco in the 1930's, Crum tended the interests of some of California's most puissant businesses, starting with William Randolph Hearst's newspaper empire.
-- Richard Lingeman, "The Last Party", New York Times, April 27, 1997

If we are to believe that country's literary pundits, "irreparable damage to a great British institution" may soon be done by an invading army more puissant than Hannibal's or Alexander's, an army Marching out of the creative writing schools of American universities, leaving Will Shakespeare's sceptred isle "smothered amid a landslide of books from the US".
-- Jonathan Yardley, "Bring on the Yanks", The Guardian, June 5, 2002

Puissant is from Old French puissant, "powerful," ultimately from (assumed) Vulgar Latin potere, alteration of Latin posse, "to be able." The noun form is puissance.

noisome

noisome \NOY-sum\, adjective:

1. Noxious; harmful; unwholesome.
2. Offensive to the smell or other senses; disgusting.

The body politic produces noisome and unseemly substances, among which are politicians.
-- P. J. O'Rourke, "No Apparent Motive", The Atlantic, November 2002

The first flower to bloom in this latitude, when the winter frost loosens its grip upon the sod, is not the fragrant arbutus, nor the delicate hepatica, nor the waxen bloodroot, as the poets would have us think, but the gross, uncouth, and noisome skunk cabbage.
-- Alvan F. Sanborn, "New York After Paris", The Atlantic, October 1906

The most dangerous season was after the rice and indigo harvests in August and September when the waters were 'low, stagnant and corrupt' and the air made noisome with indigo plants hauled out of the water and left to rot in the fields.
-- Ronald Rees, "Under the weather: climate and disease, 1700-1900", History Today, January 1996

Noisome is from Middle English noysome, from noy, "harm," short for anoy, from Old French, from anoier, "to annoy."

malapropism

malapropism \mal-uh-PROP-iz-uhm\, noun:

1. An act or habit of misusing words ridiculously, esp. by the confusion of words that are similar in sound.
2. An example of such misuse.

At 15, Rachel, the whiny would-be beauty queen who "cares for naught but appearances," can think only of what she misses: the five-day deodorant pads she forgot to bring, flush toilets, machine-washed clothes and other things, as she says with her willful gift for malapropism, that she has taken "for granite."
-- Michiko Kakutani, "The Poisonwood Bible': A Family a Heart of Darkness", New York Times, October 16, 1998

He also had, as a former colleague puts it, "a photogenic memory"--a malapropism that captures his gift for the social side of life, his Clintonian ability to remember names of countless people he has met only briefly.
-- Eric Pooley and S.C. Gwynne, "How George Got His Groove", Time, June 21, 1999

Its success may be unusual, but brunt force is hardly the only malapropism pushing its way into our lexicon.
-- Jan Freeman, "CYCLING; Crashes Jolt the Standings, And Oust a Tour Favorite", Boston Globe, April 13, 2008

A malapropism is so called after Mrs. Malaprop, a character noted for her amusing misuse of words in Richard Brinsley Sheridan's comedy The Rivals.

refulgent

refulgent \rih-FUL-juhnt\, adjective:

Shining brightly; radiant; brilliant; resplendent.

If Moore was not quite a burned-out case, his once refulgent light flickered only dimly in his sad last years.
-- Martin Filler, "The Spirit of '76", New Republic, July 9, 2001

With its improbable towers tilting against themselves and its titanium sheathing in full refulgent glow, it brings on a question that the world has not enjoyed asking itself since the first moon landings: If this is possible, what isn't?
-- Richard Lacayo, "The Frank Gehry Experience", Time, June 26, 2000

To the Renaissance, they [the Middle Ages] were nothing but a dank patch of history, a barren stretch of time between luminous antiquity and an equally refulgent present.
-- Justin Davidson, "On the Record", Newsday, January 19, 1997

Refulgent comes from the present participle of Latin refulgere, "to flash back, to shine brightly," from re-, "back" + fulgere, "to shine."

sacrosanct

sacrosanct \SAK-roh-sankt\, adjective:

1. Extremely sacred or inviolable.
2. Not to be entered or trespassed upon.
3. Above or beyond criticism, change, or interference.

The family was viewed as sacrosanct: divorce was highly unusual and children were expected to be grateful for the sacrifices that parents, who postponed their own gratifications in forming a family, made on their behalf.
-- Alan Wolfe, One Nation, After All

Espionage is about redefining Good and Evil, the violable and the sacrosanct.
-- Edward Shirley, Know Thine Enemy

In the good old days, things seemed simpler -- film was smart, television was dumb. Television would rot your brains, make your children fat, ruin your family by filling the sacrosanct dinner hour with "Happy Days" reruns.
-- Mary McNamara, "TV: It's good for you", The Prelude, Book VI, "Cambridge and the Alps", August 16, 2009

Sacrosanct comes from Latin sacrosanctus, "consecrated with religious ceremonies, hence holy, sacred," from sacrum, "religious rite" (from sacer, "holy") + sanctus, "consecrated," from sancire, "to make sacred by a religious act."

acquiesce

acquiesce \ak-wee-ES\, intransitive verb:

To accept or consent passively or without objection -- usually used with 'in' or 'to'.

At the same time, sellers might acquiesce to mafia involvement in their business as a way of ensuring payment for goods: if the buyer defaults, the mafioso will collect.
-- Louis S. Warren, The Hunter's Game

The British were not prepared to acquiesce to the return of the Chinese to Tibet, and determined to counter the reassertion of Chinese influence.
-- Tsering Shakya, The Dragon in the Land of Snows

France would probably express regret that a military strike had become necessary, but would acquiesce in it.
-- Craig R. Whitney, "France Pushes for Last-Ditch Diplomatic Solution.", New York Times, February 20, 1998

Acquiesce comes from Latin acquiescere, "to give oneself to rest, hence to find one's rest or peace (in something)," from ad, "to" + quiescere, "to rest, to be or keep quiet."

voluptuary

voluptuary \vuh-LUHP-choo-er-ee\, noun:

1. A person devoted to luxury and the gratification of sensual appetites; a sensualist.

adjective:
1. Of, pertaining to, or characterized by preoccupation with luxury and sensual pleasure.

Colette used to begin her day's writing by first picking fleas from her cat, and it's not hard to imagine how the methodical stroking and probing into fur might have focused such a voluptuary's mind.
-- Diane Ackerman, "O Muse! You Do Make Things Difficult!", New York Times, November 12, 1989

Though depicted as a decadent voluptuary, she remained celibate for more than half of her adult life.
-- Michiko Kakutani, "Cleopatra Behind Her Magic Mirror", New York Times, June 5, 1990

The Orchestre de la Suisse Romande, on the other hand, is more of a voluptuary, taking conscious pleasure in its own reflected richness.
-- Bernard Holland, "Robo-Fish Are Ready to Take to the Seas", New York Times, October 30, 1989

Voluptuary derives from Latin voluptarius, "devoted to pleasure," from voluptas, "pleasure."

gadabout

gadabout \GAD-uh-bout\, noun:

Someone who roams about in search of amusement or social activity.

In his unorthodox and callow way, he frequently upset and annoyed his countrymen, but they continued to vote for him, perhaps taking a vicarious pleasure in being led by such a world-famous gadabout.
-- "Milestones of 2000", Times (London), December 29, 2000

She hugged him fiercely. "Oh, I love you, Jake Grafton, you worthless gadabout fly-boy, you fool that sails away and leaves me."
-- Jack Anderson, Control

Mr. Hart-Davis, as befits a professional literary man, is something of a gadabout.
-- Daphne Merkin, "From Two Most English Men", New York Times, June 23, 1985

Gadabout is formed from the verb gad, "to rove or go about without purpose or restlessly" (from Middle English gadden, "to hurry") + about.

carom

carom \KAIR-uhm\, noun:

1. A rebound following a collision; a glancing off.
2. A shot in billiards in which the cue ball successively strikes two other balls on the table.
3. To strike and rebound; to glance.
4. To make a carom.
5. To make (an object) bounce off something; to cause to carom.

The cart smashed into the steep hillside in explosive caroms and bounces, sending billows of dust and rock into the air.
-- Ev Ehrlich, Grant Speaks

Three blocks away, in the Rue des Jardiniers, four Moroccan children were kicking a filthy soccer ball up and down the street. It caromed off the parked cars, rolled into the gutter, was kicked again, leaving dirty blotches where it had smacked against the vehicles' fenders.
-- Philip Shelby, Gatekeeper

The anger caroms around in our psyches like jagged stones.
-- Randall Robinson, Defending the Spirit

Carom derives from obsolete carambole, from Spanish carambola, "a stroke at billiards."

abecedarian

abecedarian \ay-bee-see-DAIR-ee-uhn\, noun:

1. One who is learning the alphabet; hence, a beginner.
2. One engaged in teaching the alphabet.
3. Pertaining to the letters of the alphabet.
4. Arranged alphabetically.
5. Rudimentary; elementary.

Columba's poem is fittingly 'abecedarian', each stanza starts with a subsequent letter of the alphabet -- a harbinger of the Scottish appetite for cataloguing, and delight in craft.
-- WN Herbert, "A rhyme and a prayer", Scotland on Sunday, December 10, 2000

While much of the work resembled abecedarian attempts of a novice choreographer, "Duet," sensitively danced by Jennifer A. Cooper and William Petroni, is surprisingly sophisticated in its careful deployment of formal thematic manipulations in the service of emotional expression.
-- Lisa Jo Sagolla, "Open 24 Hours Dance Company", Back Stage, September 1, 1998

The approach may seem abecedarian today, but his was among the first endeavors of the sort.
-- Jennifer Liese, "May 1973", ArtForum, May 2003

Abecedarian derives from Latin abecedarius, from the first four letters of the alphabet.

fecund

fecund \FEE-kuhnd; FEK-uhnd\, adjective:

1. Capable of producing offspring or vegetation; fruitful; prolific.
2. Intellectually productive or inventive.

Wainscott's book is . . . focused squarely and surely on probably the most astonishingly fecund period in American theater history, 1914-1929.
-- James Coakley, Comparative Drama

In her first novel she portrays a lush, fecund landscape palpable in its sultriness and excess.
-- Barbara Crossette, "Seeking Nirvana", New York Times, April 29, 2001

Miss Ozick can convert any skeptic to the cult of her shrewd and fecund imagination.
-- Edmund White, "Images of a Mind Thinking", New York Times, September 11, 1983

Fecund comes from Latin fecundus, "fruitful, prolific." The noun form is fecundity.