So I had to learn 100 new English words for the lexical acquisition class I took. Here they are, warts and all.
English
- polysemous – adj – about word that has several meanings (e.g. bank1, bank2)
- tumbleblog – n – a multimedia blog that isn't as text heavy as a more prototypical blog, a blog in the style of tumblr.
- fameball – n – "a derogatory term for someone who has an unquenchable desire for fame" from nytimes.com
- magnetar – n – neutron star with an extremely powerful magnetic field, the decay of which powers the emission of high-energy electromagnetic radiation, particularly X-rays and gamma rays
- social steganography – n – the practice of users of social media, often teens, to cloak messages with double meaning. (A status update of "Always look on the bright side of life" seems innocuous, unless you know the context of the song and that the author of the comment is making allusion to it. It allows for outsiders to see one reading and insiders to see another. Example from this paper.)
- bibelot – n – tschochke, geegaw, but with the overtones that explicitly French borrowings bring to English
- postern – n – a door or gate that isn't the primary door or gate
- proddie – n – a protestant, use is derogatory and Irish
- saccade – n – the jerking motion of the eye across the field of vision
- swag – n (possibly adj too) – style, Urban Dictionary has a lot of interesting info on this word, which in some communities may have positive connotations and negative connotations in others. An are-you-joking origin: an acronym for "Secretly We Are Gay", but UD suggests a much more plausible origin in Scots English. More likely origin: an abbreviation of swagger.
- incel – adj (also n) – involuntarily celibate
- teknonym – n – a name taken from a child (e.g. Mahmoud Abbas, chairman of the PLO, is also known as Abu Mazen, which refers to his first son Mazen)
- Einzelgänger – n – the opposite of a doppelgänger, unique
- ambilingual – adj – a fully fluent and balanced bilingual, the Platonic ideal of bilingualism
- arseward(s) – adj – perverse (obsolete), screwed up; I had assumed that back asswards was some sort of play on ass backwards, but no.
- intersubjective – adj – occurring between two minds (e.g. When two people use a word, it is intersubjective because they both know the word and agree on its meaning.)
- moil – v – to work hard; often collocated with toil – toil and m.
- progymnasmata – n – a curriculum of rhetorical development in antiquity
- phatic – adj – words that pertain to social relationships rather than their strict meaning
- decolletage – n – a low cut neckline in women's fashion
- poorism – n – tourism in poverty stricken areas (rhymes with tourism); probably a journalism word as I heard it on the radio (NPR, Worldview, 4 June 2013)
- binge watch – v – watching a whole season or series of movies in a very short time, possibly even one sitting: synonym for marathon, though I'm not sure what the exact difference might be
- crepitus – n – medical term for cracking knuckles (or any other joint really)
- survivorship – n – the state of being a survivor (thanks Wiktionary, I'd have never guessed that)
- stanchion – n – an upright bar or post that provides support to something else; the vertical bar in a a leadlight
- leadlight – n – a decorative window made with small panes of glass separated by metal bars (though I'm not sure how this is different from stained glass except maybe there's no color in the glass of a leadlight?)
- raceway – n – an electrical conduit that is a decorative element rather than hidden behind a structure
- spiv – n – a criminal (specifically a con man or black marketeer) who dresses in a flashy manner; probably obsolete
- paresthesia – n – pins and needles feeling in a numbed or "asleep" body part
- doodlesack – n – bagpipes; possibly obsolete
- ergodic – adj – applies to dynamic systems whose average behavior is the same over time when compared to average phase states; applies to Markov chains and thermodynamics
- comedo – n – a blackhead
- be spoiled – v – to have spoilers told to you
- bogie – n – the wheel unit of a train, typically with two axles
- journal – n – the part of the axle that lies on bearings
- dinkum – n – hard work (regional to Derbyshire)
- dinkum – adj – good, excellent, honest (regionalish to Australia)
- ology – n – a science; a backformation, its use probably indicates low social status on the speaker's part
- pinion – n – gear type either within another gear with cogs on the inside or the gear that meshes with the rack
- rack – n – a bar with cogs, as if it were a gear built flat instead of round
- threequel – n – a second sequel, probably in distinction to part three of a trilogy
- bargainous – adj – an outstanding deal, opposite of spendy
- dee – n – police Detectives
- slashdot – v – to overwhelm with messages
- half handle – n – one of the two pieces of a knife handle that are not the metal part of the knife
- tang – n – the metal part of the knife between the two half handles
- bolster – n – the thickened metal part of a knife just past the handle
- heel – n – the portion of a knife's blade that extends below the handle
- guard – n – the taper on the metal between the blade and bolster
- back – n – the edge opposite the cutting edge of the knife
- skimmer – n – a kitchen utensil with a handle and a round, perforated dish on the end that is used to take food out of liquid or skim things off the top of soups
- slot – n – the space between the tines of a fork
- demitasse – n – a small cup for coffee, usually used for espresso
- ramekin – n – an oven to table dish that is used for individual portions
- cork ball – n – the inner cork portion of a baseball
- yarn ball – n – the outer wound portion of a baseball
- cover – n – the leather outside of a baseball
- shrift – n – the act of confession, related to shrive
- emulous – adj – ambitious, though possibly without the negative connotations (hard to say what connotations ambitious had when RL Stevenson was writing)
- coquetry – n – effort to attract attention, often directed from a woman to a man
- risk – v – to take a risk (heard in a live interview on the radio, is this a nonce form caused by the ease of zero derivation in English?)
- chuff – v – to make a noisy puffing sound like a steam engine (heard every day thanks to Thomas and Friends, defined thanks to class) Source: oh, the horror, http://ttte.wikia.com/wiki/Roll_Along
- chuff – v – to deliberately and obviously fail a standardized test
- chuffed – adj – pleased
- shunt – v – to move a train from one track to another or move cars from one train to another (again courtesy of Thomas and Friends)
- head – n – the flared load-bearing part of a railway rail
- web – n – the thin(ner) part of a rail between the base and head
- fishplate – n – the piece that joins two railway rails together
- safety line – n – the textured and colored strip at the edge of a train station platform
- trough – n – long, narrow area of low pressure, named because of its shape
- cornice – n – portion of roof that overhangs the main structure for rain protection
- pilaster – n – rectangular column that sticks out of a wall but is structurally insignificant
- fore edge – n – the edge of a book opposite the binding
- square – n – part of book board that overhangs the block; a book cornice
- action – n – the part of a piano that transfers motion between the key and hammer; possibly generalized to (musical) keyboard function
- nacelle – n – /ˈnæsl̩/ at M-W, /nəˈsɛl/ at Wiktionary – the boxy part of a windmill between the hub and the mast (and just what is the difference between a mast and stanchion?)
- swart – adj – dark; related to swarthy
- percy – adj – personal (of a drug stash), which has led to a meaning of unreal or legit
- bpw;dr – initialism – behind pay wall; didn't read
- avidity – n – greed, intensity of desire
- catholicity – n – universality; appears to relate to catholic and Catholic
- cheval-glass – n – a full length mirror on a stand that allows the mirror to pivot
- arras – n – tapestry, since Arras (a city in France) was a major source of them
- tippet – n – a shoulder covering garment, an animal skin draped on the shoulders is a typical example, a scarf worn loose around the neck is another example
- bartizan – n – (also bartisan) a wall with projecting battlements like the Spanish fortifications in Cádiz or San Juan (though the word is Scottish in origin)
- retronym – n – a term modified to make the original sense explicit as in acoustic guitar, natural turf or white milk; apparently coined by Frank Mankiewicz
- annuitant – n – someone who gets an annuity
- absquatulate – v – to run off; a joke coinage from the 19th century
- hangry – adj – anger caused by hunger; a joke portmanteau of the 21st century (not the only portmanteau of hungry I've seen, just that this one was new)
- nyctophilia – n – a love of the night
- cat vacuum – v – to be doing something other than the writing you ought to be doing (like collecting words rather than preparing a book I ought to be)
- adiabatic – adj – involving no heat transfer into or out of the working fluid of thermodynamic processes; highly associated with process
- hegemony – adj – a notion of a power structure involving domination of one group over another; more narrowly a power structure that is not questioned—how Things Are The Way They Are and why they stay that way
- memristor – n – passive electrical element (resistor, capacitor and inductor are the other three) caused by imperfect metal-metal contact; portmanteau of memory resistor
- coherer – n – radio detector that predates crystal detector; some are memristors
- articulated bus – n – one of the really long busses with two halves
- slug – v – to carpool informally but not as informal as hitchhiking;, usually to take advantage of HOV lanes (similar to the expresses on the Kennedy, but for cars with multiple passengers) or lower tolls
- slug – n – the person who gets a slugged ride; not the driver
- tender – n – another name for coal car
- tank engine – n – a steam engine that does not have a tender, but carries all fuel and water on-board
