Wednesday, September 14, 2011

For the love of the dictionary.



Here are five sentences I constructed using rare words. The idea is to promote the learning of new words by reading the dictionary, which is a source of immense joy for a logophile like me.

So here is how it works. Take a dictionary. And as you read each sentence, look up the weird words. What will amaze you is that, at the beginning of each sentence, you might wonder how the sentence will ever make sense. But then towards the end, as you decipher each word, it will. Like a jigsaw puzzle fitting together with its' final few pieces. And the realization that dawns upon you is worth the effort.

Happy wording! Enjoy! :)


1. A cornucopia of plangent cries in his sustained, perfunctory falsetto occluded this curmudgeon's ubiquitous temerity, when confronted with the news of the death of his wife.

2. The coxswain watched, transfixed, as the sylph waded through the still waters towards him; and though she was robed in a shiny taffeta, she appeared wan, as she warbled in her slow, deliberate notes, filling up the silent night air.

3. Servile by nature and a wanderluster by choice, the regular ministrations he offered on his peregrinations allowed his mind to always debouch itself from worldly bother.

4. The proponent's propinquity to the proscenium was propitious to propound his project and proscribe the prosaic programme proffered by the prolix prologue of the professor.

5. As Edmund plodded up the vertiginous path, he held his windsock which confirmed the presence of a zephyr, but he knew he would encounter an occluded front and this reconfirmed the fact in his mind, that this was no workaday expedition.


2 comments:

  1. cool exercise.. even a mundane sentence becomes aesthetic when the words used are unique but do not appear forced.. proscenium is one of my favorite words.. I had used it once in a poem.. "I was caught in, the manacles of language / there was no theater but our ingrown proscenium"
    happy wording :)

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  2. I picked up these sentences from my entries on the 'Weird Word' page on facebook. Love that page. And yes, your writing is far more accomplished than I ever imagined. Keep writing!

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