Showing posts with label words A-D. Show all posts
Showing posts with label words A-D. Show all posts

Sunday, May 24, 2009

M is for Multitudinous


Some people take photographs of sunsets.

Some people take photographs of flowers.

Some people take photographs of animals.

Others take photographs of churches, or tombstones, or battleships, or antique automobiles.

Me, I play with words.

Therefore, as a public service to those of you who would rather write than switch, including Dr. John Neenah of Linna, Wisconsin (or maybe it’s Dr. John Linna of Neenah, Wisconsin), who sits around making up his own words, I am providing a list of perfectly good words, free of cost, for your reading and writing pleasure. The Merriam-Webster people have done the same thing, but you have to turn a lot more pages.

A: anthracite, appendectomy, arthritis, axiomatic, abalone, aeronautical, aphrodisiac, Afghanistan, acetylsalicylic, alliterative, amniotic, Appaloosa, aquamarine, asthmatic, Amenhotep, authoritarianism, ambidextrous, avoirdupois, autumnal, arduous, awkward, azure, acrimoniously, Arapaho.

B: bituminous, blithely, barbiturate, Bostonian, blacklisted, benchmark, barbaric, Bhutan, bodily, Bosphorus, brittle, backfire, burro, bystander, Byzantine.

C: corpulent, crestfallen, crowded, Capricorn, charlatan, crapola, Charlemagne, cinnamon, clarification, Corpus Christi, chaotic, cushion, cyanide, California, cyclical, cuddly.

D: dehydrated, dastardly, deciduous, dingo, Dramamine, daffodil, debutante, drunkard, Dubai, dazzling, dimwitted, dabbled, dyslexic, disarmingly, dynamite.

Other words come to mind, too, like felonious, heliocentric, pterodactyl, quotidian, Rashtafarian, sanctimoniously, tintinnabulation, and Zinfandel, but they occur much farther along in the alphabet (farther along, we’ll know all about it; farther along, we’ll understand why). Since it is a bright, sunny, Sunday afternoon (cheer up, my brother, live in the sunshine; we’ll understand it all by and by), I think I will stop posting and go lie down for a nice, long nap instead.

<b>English Is Strange (example #17,643) and a new era begins</b>

Through, cough, though, rough, bough, and hiccough do not rhyme, but pony and bologna do. Do not tell me about hiccup and baloney. ...