Life After Chase/Object of the Week

Unfamiliar Words

On March 10, 2024, we ran this photo in the CAA newsletter and asked what unfamiliar words might be prompted by this lip balm from First Republic Bank.

Ralph White, author of Getting Out of Saigon: How a 27-Year-Old Banker Saved 113 Vietnamese Civilians, and founder of the Columbia Fiction Foundry, a writing workshop for alumni of Columbia University, sent us the following:

"When I run into a word I am not absolutely certain I know how to use, I write it down. Here's a few years' worth. Quiz yourself."

• inveigh
• reify
• krummholz
• sitter
• pizzle
• priapic
• apposite
• ambit
• meroir (hint: terroir)
• doxing
• tessellated
• plutocratic
• judder
• chiliad
• dovecotes
• odalisque
• riparian
• propinquity
• syncope
• anodyne
• outre
• saturnine
• dirigiste
• sui generis
• cicatrice
• in the straw
• cognate (with)
• objurgate
• navvy
• prebunking
• dernier cri (not what you think)
• contretemps
• consign
• snellen chart/test
• gavage
• faineant
• elide
• truculent
• fretsawyer
• latrogenic
• redolent
• echolalia
• sedulous
• sybarite
• madding
• meretricious
• zeno behavior
• chalazion
• turduncken
• fulgor
• aperçu
• allision
• colophon
• epistemology
• superannuated
• lacrymose
• punctilious
• gimcrack
• biomytositis
• suppurating
• gallimaufry
• phlegmatic
• roundelay
• blandishment
• limned
• contumacious
• dysphoria
• seriatim
• barrow
• ululate
• lede
• alterity
• oubliette
• cabotage
• obloquy
• liminal
• debouch
• logorrhea
• truckling
• ineluctagle
• orotund
• homelitical
• suppurating
• bated
• forb
• histrionic
• ramify
• eructation
• dyspeptic
• pettifoggery
• allodynia
• vaginismous
• obtuse v. abstruse
• camarilla
• dispositive
• ateliotic dwarf
• chronotype
• orography
• superannuate
• orthoprasy
• subvent
• micturating
• granuloma
• piffle
• proscenium