101 Best Words by Robert Hartwell Fiske

This is a Vocabula Book. 101 Best Words — A Vocabula 101 Series Handbook

Vocabula 101 Series Handbooks are slim volumes replete with sound advice on how to use the English language well.

This handy reference is a collection of words that Vocabula Review readers have identified as those they most enjoy — words like alacrity and bumbledom, kakistocracy and louche, noctilucous and silentiary.

Think critically: read a Vocabula Book.

Here are a few entries from the book:

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antithalian

(an-tee-THA-lee-an)

adjective

being against enjoyment and laughter; opposed to fun or festivity.

Mr Glowry, during his residence in London, had come to an agreement with his friend Mr Toobad, that a match between Scythrop and Mr Toobad's daughter would be a very desirable occurrence. She was finishing her education in a German convent, but Mr Toobad described her as being fully impressed with the truth of his Ahrimanic philosophy, and being altogether as gloomy and antithalian a young lady as Mr Glowry himself could desire for the future mistress of Nightmare Abbey. — Thomas Love Peacock, Nightmare Abbey, 1818

 •  "I just like the way it rolls off your tongue and isn't spelled 'bobble.' It's just ... cute."

bauble

(BAU-ble)

noun

1. a showy, usually cheap, ornament; trinket; gewgaw. 2. a jester's scepter.

SIR ANTHONY. ... Hey! What the deuce have you got here?
ABSOLUTE. Nothing, sir — nothing.
SIR ANTHONY. What's this? — here's something damned hard.
ABSOLUTE. Oh, trinkets, sir! Trinkets! — a bauble for Lydia!
SIR ANTHONY. Nay let me see your taste. — [Pulls his coat open, the sword falls.] Trinkets! — a bauble for Lydia! — Zounds! sirrah, you are not going to cut her throat, are you?
— Richard Brinsley Sheridan, The Rivals

 •  "I have not yet found a doctor who can define the word."

valetudinarian

(val-i-tood-en-AR-ee-an)

noun

a person who is excessively and morbidly concerned with his or her health.

And, Sir, he is a valetudinarian, one of those who are always mending themselves. I do not know a more disagreeable character than a valetudinarian, who thinks he may do any thing that is for his ease, and indulges himself in the grossest freedoms. — James Boswell, The Life of Samuel Johnson, 1791

valetudinarian

(val-i-tood-en-AR-ee-an)

adjective

1. chronically ill; sickly. 2. excessively and morbidly concerned with one’s health.

valetudinarianism

(val-i-too-di-NAR-ee-an-iz-em)

noun

About the Author: Robert Hartwell Fiske Product Details A Vocabula 101 Series HandbookTM Perfect bound 5" by 7" trim 160 pages ISBN-13: 978-0-9774368-8-8

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