353/365

words I love, part one:

electric
luminous
cerebral
cerulean
phosphorescent
incandescent
vernacular
preposterous
peripatetic
kinesthetic
tangerine
moonlight
languid

339/365

words I had to look up in the dictionary in october:

agglutination
alimentation
salubrious
euphonic
pellucid

307/365

words I had to look up in the dictionary in september:

plebeian
cogitate
auspicate
prevaricate
hagiography
interstice

281/365

words I had to look up in the dictionary in august:

ancillary
exculpatory
fulminate
hubris
avuncular
threnody
malapropism
multitudinous
ablution

272/365

victorian slang I would please like to bring back:

"sauce box" (mouth)
"fly rink" (polished bald head)
"gas-pipes" (especially tight pants)
"chuckaboo" (close friend)
"bricky" (brave, fearless)
"got the morbs" (temporary melancholy)
"giggle mug" (habitually smiling face)
"make a stuffed bird laugh" (absolutely preposterous)
"don't sell me a dog" (don't lie to me)
"powdering hair" (getting drunk)
"half-rats" (partially drunk)
"mad as hops" (excitable)
"batty fang" (to thrash thoroughly)
"take the egg" (to win)
"bags 'o' mystery" (sausage)
"bow wow mutton" (really bad meat)
"skilamalink" (secret, shady)
"bubble around" (verbal attack)
"whooperups" (inferior, noisy singers)
"church bell" (talkative woman)
"afternoonified" (smart)
"nanty narking" (great fun)
"daddles" (hands)

(more here)

246/365

words I had to look up in the dictionary in july:

gelid
porcine
usufruct
quorum
exegesis
funambulist
ululate

a small needful fact

a small needful fact

is that eric garner worked
for some time for the parks and rec.
horticultural department, which means,
perhaps, that with his very large hands,
perhaps, in all likelihood,
he put gently into the earth
some plants which, most likely,
some of them, in all likelihood,
continue to grow, continue
to do what such plants do, like house
and feed small and necessary creatures,
like being pleasant to touch and smell,
like converting sunlight
into food, like making it easier
for us to breathe.

ross gay

it's been a hard week. for me personally, yes, I have nearly been broken by a few personal things. but for this country, it's been a hard week. it's been a hard month, a hard year, a hard couple of years, a hard decade, a hard century. we seem brutally, inexorably bent on moving backwards. federal criminal charges were not pressed

I first shared this poem back in 2016

219/365

words I had to look up in the dictionary in june:

vulpine
bailiwick
repatriate
evanescent
travertine
vituperative
crepuscular
aquiline
torpor

187/365

words I had to look up in the dictionary in may:

palimpsest
vicissitude
prefatory
atavistic
extemporize
ablative
phalanx
inure

181/365

words I enjoy saying in french:

parfois
pomme
dimanche
les enfants
nuit

159/365

words I had to stop and look up in the dictionary in april:

impecunious
conflagration
nascent
declension
stentorian
vertiginous
obstreperous

129/365

words I had to stop and look up in the dictionary in march:

truculent
querulous
propinquity
untinctured
impecunious
connubial
panegyric

87/365

words I had to stop and look up in the dictionary in february:

desiccated
tatterdemalion
quotidian
maladroit
ebullition
exigent
crenulated
sluice
flocculent
gravid

16/365

recent favorite words:

inchoate
stippled
somnolent
elegaic
vertiginous
insouciant
avuncular
resplendent
garrulous
desultory
ebullience
lugubrious