confabulation

confabulation \kon-FAB-yuh-lay-shuhn\, noun:

1. Familiar talk; easy, unrestrained, unceremonious conversation.
2. (Psychology) A plausible but imagined memory that fills in gaps in what is remembered.

Their sentiments were reflected neither in the elegant exchanges between the Viceroy and Secretary of State, nor in the unlovely confabulations between the Congress and the League managers.
-- Mushirul Hasan, "Partition: The Human Cost", History Today, September 1997

Sigmund Freud, a stubborn, bullying interrogator of hysterical women, harangued his patients into building fantasies and traumas that fit into his grand narrative scheme, eliciting confabulations rather than actual memories.
-- Jennifer Howard, "Neurosis 1990s-Style", Civilization, April/May 1997

Once we had brokwn the back of the ascent, the road spanned pleasant but lonely pinewoods which scented the still air and led uf in mysterious hesitant fashion to the gates of the little town, the Porte Trapani, where Roberto got down for a long confabulation with a clerk from the Mairie while the rest of us set about digging into our luggage for pullovers.
-- Lawrence Durrell, Sicilian Carousel

Confabulation comes from Late Latin confabulatio, from the past participle of Latin confabulari, "to talk together," from con-, "together, with" + fabulari, "to talk." It is related to fable, "a fiction, a tale," and to fabulous, "so incredible or astonishing as to resemble or suggest a fable."

galumph

galumph \guh-LUHM(P)F\, intransitive verb:

To move in a clumsy manner or with a heavy tread.

Then he climbed up the little iron ladder that led to the wharf's cap, placed me once more upon his shoulders and galumphed off again.
-- Alistair MacLeod, Island: The Complete Stories

Lizards patrol the . . . landscape, and giant tortoises galumph on the beaches.
-- Peter M. Nichols, "Galápagos", New York Times, March 30, 2001

As their owners ride tandem bikes, fly kites or run on the beach the dogs galumph alongside their masters grinning, I love you even if you are incontinent.
-- Ken Foster, Dog Culture: Writers on the Character of Canines

Galumph is probably an alteration of gallop. It was coined by Lewis Carroll in the nonsense poem "Jabberwocky."

aesthete

aesthete \ES-theet\, noun:

One having or affecting great sensitivity to beauty, as in art or nature.

Beijing, with its stolid, square buildings and wide, straight roads, feels like the plan of a first-year engineering student, while Shanghai's decorative architecture and snaking, narrow roads feel like the plan of an aesthete.
-- "Sky's the Limit in Shanghai", Los Angeles Times, April 25, 1999

But he was also an aesthete with a connoisseur's eye for the wild modernist innovations with letterforms and layout of the 1920s.
-- Rick Poynor, "Herbert Spencer", The Guardian, March 15, 2002

Where the standard Oxford aesthete of the 1920s had been showily dissipated, full of wild talk about decadence and beauty, Auden was preaching a new gospel of icy austerity and self-control.
-- Ian Hamilton, Against Oblivion

Aesthete is from Greek aisthetes, "one who perceives," from aisthanesthai, "to perceive."

scuttlebutt

scuttlebutt \SKUHT-l-buht\, noun:

1. A drinking fountain on a ship.
2. A cask on a ship that contains the day's supply of drinking water.
3. Informal. Gossip; rumor.

What were they talking about? Sports? Neighborhood scuttlebutt? Off-color jokes? I didn't know; I knew only how exciting it was to see Dad in action.
-- Eric Liu, The Accidental Asian

It was written in the optimistic belief that open debate beats backroom scuttlebutt.
-- Jon Entine, Taboo

In snooping around, my mother overheard the pageant scuttlebutt, which was that Snow White was the big winner.
-- Delta Burke with Alexis Lipsitz, Delta Style

Scuttlebutt comes from scuttle, "a small opening" + butt, "a large cask" -- that is, a small hole cut into a cask or barrel to allow individual cups of water to be drawn out. The modern equivalent is the office water cooler, also a source of refreshment and gossip.

milieu

milieu \meel-YUH; meel-YOO\, noun;
plural milieus or milieux \-(z)\:

Environment; setting.

These were agricultural areas, populated with prosperous farming families and rural artisans -- a completely different milieu from the Monferrands', which was more closed, more cultured, but less affluent.
-- Antoine de Baecque and Serge Toubiana, Truffaut

Half a century later, Zacarías still remembers . . . how they all played together without distinctions or hierarchy, and how easily Ernesto related to people from different social and cultural milieux.
-- Jorge G. Castaneda, Compañero

They write about their milieux, about where they live and work, and it can be fabulous.
-- Leslie Schenk, "Celebrating Mavis Gallant", World Literature Today, Winter 1998

Milieu is from French, from Old French, from mi, "middle" (from Latin medius) + lieu, "place" (from Latin locus).

fugacious

fugacious \fyoo-GAY-shuhs\, adjective:

Lasting but a short time; fleeting.

As the rain conspires with the wind to strip the fugacious glory of the cherry blossoms, it brings a spring delicacy to our dining table.
-- Sarah Mori, "A spring delicacy", Malaysian Star

The thick, palmately lobed lead is lapped around the bud, which swiftly outgrows its protector, loses its two fugacious sepals, and opens into a star-shaped flower, one to each stem, with several fleshy white petals and a mass of golden stamens in the center.
-- Alma R. Hutchens, A Handbook of Native American Herbs

When he proposed the tax in May, Altman thought it would follow the fugacious nature of some flowers: bloom quickly and die just as fast.
-- Will Rodgers, "Parks proposal falls on 3-2 vote", Tampa Tribune, June 27, 2001

Fugacious is derived from Latin fugax, fugac-, "ready to flee, flying; hence, fleeting, transitory," from fugere, "to flee, to take flight." Other words derived from the same root include fugitive, one who flees, especially from the law; refuge, a place to which to flee back (re-, "back"), and hence to safety; and fugue, literally a musical "flight."

turbid

turbid \TUR-bid\, adjective:

1. Muddy; thick with or as if with roiled sediment; not clear; -- used of liquids of any kind.
2. Thick; dense; dark; -- used of clouds, air, fog, smoke, etc.
3. Disturbed; confused; disordered.

Although both are found in the same waters, black crappies usually prefer clearer, quieter water, while white crappies flourish in warmer, siltier and more turbid water.
-- Tim Eisele, "Crappie Facts", Capital Times (Madison, Wisconsin), May 8, 1998

Rough or smooth, the Irish Sea at Blackpool is always turbid. Beneath the murk float unspeakable things.
-- David Walker, "Is Labour right to end its affair with Blackpool? YES says David", Independent, March 26, 1998

Wesley's mind seems at this time to have been in a turbid and restless state.
-- W. B. Stonehouse, The History and Topography of the Isle of Axholme

Turbid comes from Latin turbidus, "confused, disordered," from turba, "disturbance, commotion."

innocuous

innocuous \ih-NOK-yoo-uhs\, adjective:

1. Harmless; producing no ill effect.
2. Not likely to offend or provoke; as, "an innocuous remark."

Furthermore, the public, not knowing how to interpret certain facts and figures, may end up unfairly vilifying a company that uses only innocuous traces of a certain toxic chemical.
-- "Can Selfishness Save the Environment?", The Atlantic, September 13, 2000

Maybe Grandpop misunderstood that perfectly innocuous remark and thought the man said "smell." Anyway his temper crackled and exploded.
-- John McCabe, Cagney

Anything that reeks beyond a city block is an invisible snarling dog with unknown intentions, even if, in the right context, the smell itself would be innocuous. Therefore, people complain.
-- Luca Turin, What You Can't Smell Will Kill You, New York Times, January 21, 2007

Innocuous is from Latin innocuus, from in-, "not" + nocuus, "harmful," from nocere, "to harm." It is related to innocent, formed from in- + nocens, nocent-, "harming, injurious, hence criminal, guilty," from the present participle of nocere. Less common is the opposite of innocuous, nocuous.

redolent

redolent \RED-uh-luhnt\, adjective:

1. Having or exuding fragrance; scented; aromatic.
2. Full of fragrance; odorous; smelling (usually used with 'of' or 'with').
3. Serving to bring to mind; evocative; suggestive; reminiscent (usually used with 'of' or 'with').

The 142-foot-long sidewheeled steamer . . . ferried people from place to place, . . . its two decks redolent with the aroma of fresh grapes, peaches, and other fruit headed for the rail spur at the Canandaigua pier, then on to markets in New York, Philadelphia, and Washington, D.C.
-- A. M. Sperber and Eric Lax, Bogart

The simple, semisweet and moist cake was redolent of cinnamon and nutmeg and studded with Mr. McCartney's favorite nuts, pecans.
-- Bryan Miller, "Lots of Smidgens, But Hold the Meat", New York Times, September 7, 1994

Backed by soaring sax and energetic percussion, Martin makes the sort of celebratory, Spanish party music redolent of warm weather and cocktails.
-- Lisa Verrico, Times (London), November 10, 2000

Redolent derives from Latin redolens, -entis, present participle of redolere, "to emit a scent, to diffuse an odor," from red-, re- + olere, "to exhale an odor."

fetor

fetor \FEE-tuhr; FEE-tor\, noun:

A strong, offensive smell; stench.

Inside it's pitch black & the air is hot & wet with the sweet fetor of rotting grass.
-- Peter Blegvad, "The Free Lunch", Chicago Review, June 22, 1999

When I close my eyes and summon the fond smells of childhood . . . the aroma that fills, as it were, the nostrils of my memory is the sulfurous, protein-dissolving fetor of Nair.
-- Jeffrey Eugenides, Middlesex

I heard the secrets passed by flapping ravens and smelled, when the wind blew right, the fetor of damp bear fur floating down the trails.
-- Doug Peacock, Grizzly Years: In Search of the American Wilderness

Fetor comes from Latin foetor, from foetere, "to stink."

pukka

pukka \PUHK-uh\, adjective:

1. Authentic; genuine.
2. Superior; first-class.

He talks like the quintessential pukka Englishman and quotes Chesterton and Kipling by the yard and yet he has chosen to live most of his adult life abroad.
-- Lynn Barber, "Bell book . . . and then what?", The Observer, August 27, 2000

If he does not have a house, the government gives him a pukka residence, not a . . . shack on the pavement but a solid construction.
-- Salman Rushdie, The Ground Beneath Her Feet

Pukka comes from Hindi pakka, "cooked, ripe," from Sanskrit pakva-, from pacati, "he cooks."

triskaidekaphobia

triskaidekaphobia \tris-ky-dek-uh-FOH-bee-uh\, noun:

Fear or a phobia concerning the number 13.

Thirteen people, pledged to eliminate triskaidekaphobia, fear of the number 13, today tried to reassure American sufferers by renting a 13 ft plot of land in Brooklyn for 13 cents . . . a month.
-- Daily Telegraph, January 14, 1967

Past disasters linked to the number 13 hardly help triskaidekaphobics overcome their affliction. The most famous is the Apollo 13 mission, launched on April 11, 1970 (the sum of 4, 11 and 70 equals 85 - which when added together comes to 13), from Pad 39 (three times 13) at 13:13 local time, and struck by an explosion on April 13.
-- "It's just bad luck that the 13th is so often a Friday", Electronic Telegraph, September 8, 1996

Despite NASA's seemingly ingrained case of triskaidekaphobia, which forced managers to impose the bizarre, '13-free' numbering system on its flights, the crew of perhaps the most important Shuttle mission to date clearly were unsure if STS-41C was supposed to be unlucky or not.
-- Ben Evans, Space Shuttle Challenger: Ten Journeys into the Unknown

Triskaidekaphobia is from Greek treiskaideka, triskaideka, thirteen (treis, three + kai, and + deka, ten) + phobos, fear.

Some famous triskaidekaphobes¹:

• Napoleon
• Herbert Hoover
• Mark Twain
• Richard Wagner
• Franklin Roosevelt

1. Source: "It's just bad luck that the 13th is so often a Friday," Electronic Telegraph, September 8, 1996

titivate

titivate \TIT-uh-vayt\, transitive and intransitive verb:

1. To make decorative additions to; spruce.

intransitive verb:
1. To make oneself smart or spruce.

It's easy to laugh at a book in which the heroine's husband says to her, "You look beautiful," and then adds, "So stop titivating yourself."
-- Joyce Cohen, review of To Be the Best, by Barbara Taylor Bradford, New York Times, July 31, 1988

In The Idle Class, when Chaplin is titivating in a hotel room, the cloth on his dressing table rides up and down, caught in the same furious gusts.
-- Peter Conrad, Modern Times, Modern Places

She works in Make-Up at Heartland, and sits in the wings during recordings of The People Next Door, ready to dart forward and titivate Debbie's hair when required, or powder the actors' noses if they get shiny under the lights.
-- David Lodge, Therapy

Titivate is perhaps from tidy + the quasi-Latin ending -vate. When the word originally came into the language, it was written tidivate or tiddivate. The noun form is titivation.

bifurcate

bifurcate \BY-fur-kayt; by-FUR-kayt\, transitive verb:

1. To divide into two branches or parts.

intransitive verb:
1. To branch or separate into two parts.

adjective:
1. Divided into two branches or parts; forked.

There it was, a sliver of a million-dollar view: the red towers of the Golden Gate Bridge that bifurcated the waters, marking bay from ocean.
-- Amy Tan, The Bonesetter's Daughter

They were strolling up the paved walk which bifurcated the rolling front lawn of her house.
-- Erik Tarloff, The Man Who Wrote the Book

Riven continually confronts us with . . . visual echoes of its name, such as the giant dagger thrust into the landscape at one point, or the plate-tectonic fracturing of islands out of an implied unity, or even the bifurcate wing cases of the aptly named Riven beetles.
-- Stuart Moulthrop, "Misadventure: Future Fiction and the New Networks", Style, Summer 1999

Bifurcate comes from the past participle of Medieval Latin bifurcare, "to divide," from Latin bifurcus, "two-pronged," from bi- + furca, "fork."

raffish

raffish \RAF-ish\, adjective:

1. Characterized by or suggestive of flashy vulgarity, crudeness, or rowdiness; tawdry.
2. Marked by a carefree unconventionality or disreputableness; rakish.

The speaker was in his forties, an attractive-looking man with a black eye patch that gave him the raffish look of an amiable pirate.
-- Sidney Sheldon, The Best Laid Plans

Sometimes we would go to the Gargoyle Club, . . . but it was too full of raffish upper-class drunks for my taste.
-- John Richardson, The Sorcerer's Apprentice

We are told about Bacon's taste for raffish, lower-class lovers, his penchant for gambling and his almost complete disregard for money.
-- Michiko Kakutani, "Portrait of a Portraitist of a Century's Horrors", New York Times, December 14, 1993

Raffish derives from the noun raff (chiefly used in the compound or duplicate, riffraff), meaning "people of a low reputation."

incarnadine

incarnadine \in-KAR-nuh-dyn\, adjective:

1. Having a fleshy pink color.
2. Red; blood-red.

transitive verb:
1. To make red or crimson.

Will all great Neptune's ocean wash this blood
Clean from my hand? No, this my hand will rather
The multitudinous seas incarnadine,
Making the green one red.
-- Shakespeare, Macbeth

In a night of rain, the ruddy reflections of their lights incarnadine the clouds till the entire city appears to be the prey of a monster conflagration.
-- Alvan F. Sanborn, "New York After Paris", The Atlantic, October 1906

The more he scrubbed it, the more it bled.
It made the seas incarnadine, he said.
-- Judy Driscoll, "Biddy takes pink gin to the country dance", Hecate, May 1, 1993

From Italian incarnatino, which came from the Latin incarnato, something incarnate, made flesh, from in + caro, carn-, "flesh." It is related to carnation, etymologically the flesh-colored flower; incarnate, "in the flesh; made flesh"; and carnal, "pertaining to the body or its appetites."

adjuvant

adjuvant \AJ-uh-vuhnt\, adjective:

1. Serving to help or assist; auxiliary.
2. Assisting in the prevention, amelioration, or cure of disease.

noun:
1. A person or thing that aids or helps.
2. Anything that aids in removing or preventing a disease, esp. a substance added to a prescription to aid the effect of the main ingredient.
3. Immunology. a substance admixed with an immunogen in order to elicit a more marked immune response.

Some people think the benefit of screening is huge, and others say that the reduction in death rates is due primarily to adjuvant therapy, Berry says. No one has known for sure, and although we still don't know for sure, this is the best set of analyses that is possible given the available information.
-- "Decline in Breast Cancer Deaths Explained by Use of Screening and Adjuvant Therapies", M. D. Anderson News Release, October 26, 2005

It's unlikely it will be needed this fall, especially if further tests show that one standard shot is good enough to protect people from the virus. But using adjuvant could prove helpful in future years, or if the flu took a turn for the worst, said Dr. Wilbur Chen, a vaccinologist at the University of Maryland's Center for Vaccine Development, who is leading the NIH-sponsored tests.
-- Kelly Brewington, "Stretching the supply of the swine flu vaccine", The Baltimore Sun, September 14, 2009

The new vaccine is made from a single CMV protein that was combined with an experimental adjuvant, a substance that's added to vaccines to boost their efficacy.
-- Serena Gordon, "Trial Vaccine May Protect Against Serious Viral Infection", U.S. News, March 18, 2009

Adjuvant comes from Latin adiuvāns, adiuvant-, present participle of adiuvāre, to help.

gaucherie

gaucherie \goh-shuh-REE\, noun:

1. A socially awkward or tactless act.
2. Lack of tact; boorishness; awkwardness.

If you find yourself sitting next to an obviously prosperous guest at a dinner party and your host introduces him (it will be a him) as a "successful barrister", you will be guilty of a gaucherie of the crassest kind if you exclaim: "How fascinating! If I promise not to call you Rumpole, will you tell me about your goriest murder trials?"
-- Nick Cohen, "Don't leave justice to the judges", New Statesman, December 13, 1999

Here we see the insecure, unattractive woman who at long last has found someone even more insecure and unattractive than herself, calling attention to her companion's gaucherie in order to feel, for once in her life, like the belle of the ball.
-- Florence King, "Out and About", National Review, November 9, 1998

Gaucherie comes from the French, from gauche, "lefthanded; awkward," from Old French, from gauchir, "to turn aside, to swerve, to walk clumsily."