This Week in Word of the Day: 12-16
My daily writing indulgence originally posted on my Facebook page:
moor \moor\, verb:
1. To fix firmly; secure.
2. To secure (a ship, boat, dirigible, etc.) in a particular place, as by cables and anchors or by lines.
3. To moor a ship, small boat, etc.
4. To be made secure by cables or the like.
Blessed with an outsized stash of optimism, David stocked up on Zima, glow sticks and his lucky Hulk swimming trunks for a trip to Lake Havasu for spring break. He wore an eager smile and liberal smears of thick, chalky SPF 100 sunblock as he paddled his inflatable raft through the maze of boats blasting house music and overflowing with hot girls. He moored wherever he could and always approached with a hearty “What’s up D Bags!”, assuming they would respect him for his candor.
cruciverbalist \kroo-suh-VUR-buh-list\, noun:
A designer or aficionado of crossword puzzles.
Once Matthew finally succumbed to his long, brave bout with cancer, Wendy began her project. The aged cruciverbalist laid the foundation years earlier, a massive crossword 23,000 words long, scrawled across every wall of her house. Buried deep within, she encoded a love poem that Matthew used to recite to her in a hush so as not to wake the kids sleeping next door. Those same children, now fully grown, scanned the walls littered with little, empty boxes and worried. She let them because it really was none of their business anyway.
adiaphorous \ad-ee-AF-er-uhs\, adjective:
Doing neither good nor harm, as a medicine.
“No, I do see it, I promise you that I do,” the man grumbled, his fingers lightly touching hers for a brief, electric moment before she withdrew her hand. “My life,” he continued, “has been, for all its fire and all its hope, merely an adiaphorous middle road. My few moments of bold and selfless sacrifice balanced out by the thousand acts of sloth, avarice, and resignation. But, if you stay, if you provide me a rock to anchor to, I promise my drifting purpose will snap into place. I will begin the life I was destined. I will begin today, this very second and I will never stray because I will face it without fear – with you.”
“I don’t believe you are looking for purpose,” she whispered, gently wiping at a tear clinging to her eyelash. “You are just afraid of drowning and trying to escape the waves by crawling on top of mine.”
apopemptic \ap-uh-PEMP-tik\, adjective:
1. Pertaining to leave-taking or departing; valedictory.
noun:
1. Obsolete. A farewell address; valedictory.
After 35 years, Felix was finally stepping down as Dungeon Master for Thursday night’s D & D session. In his 2.3 hour, tear-filled and vaguely threatening apopemptic address, Felix cited “stress” and “spending more time with his kids” as reasons for early retirement. Everyone knew what that really meant, especially since he didn’t have any kids, unless you count his pack of yapping, show-quality Pomeranians. As expected, he showed up the very next week and, once it was explained that he’d been replaced by Michelle, the police were called to remove the irate Felix from the property after he’d attempted to set Michelle’s car on fire – again.
buttress \BUH-tris\, verb:
1. To give encouragement or support to (a person, plan, etc.).
2. To support by a buttress; prop up.
noun:
1. Any external prop or support built to steady a structure by opposing its outward thrusts, especially a projecting support built into or against the outside of a masonry wall.
2. Any prop or support.
3. A thing shaped like a buttress, as a tree trunk with a widening base.
4. A bony or horny protuberance, especially on a horse’s hoof.
Kim knew, on the surface anyway, that The Eyeball was just a forgotten shack in a small, overgrown field in a sleepy, rural town. But it also represented a moment, a relic from a time, before the highway moved, when her town had something important. The Eyeball was a weigh station for musicians passing through the vast expanse of the Panhandle. Country kids from three counties packed into the Eyeball every Friday and Saturday night, roaring along with whatever punk, New Wave, garage rock, or ska band that somehow heard about the rickety venue buttressed by salvaged two by fours on one side and an abandoned truck axle on the other. It held impossibly, a portal to the outside world just awaiting the love and devotion of the next generation desperate to escape the isolation of the countryside, if only for one loud, visceral night at a time.
axial \AK-see-uhl\, adjective:
1. Situated in or on the line about which a rotating body turns.
2. Of, pertaining to, characterized by, or forming an axis: an axial relationship.
Maybe it was the way the sun burned over the forested horizon, casting a velvet red glow across her face. Maybe it was getting battered while taking an axial ride stuffed into a barrel kicked off the side of the hill by his brother. It could even just be the peyote, but whatever the reason, Jonsey suddenly believed his second cousin, Louanne, was just the pretties thing he’d ever seen and he was determined to make her his bride.
