# Words Ten a week. Some new, some old ones I keep bending out of shape. Newest batch on top. **How this works:** the cards up top are face down. Turn one for the word, turn it again for the meaning, a third time puts it back. Each week ten words come out of the Sheet and onto the table as entries: a one-line definition, the origin, the trap (where I tend to spin the meaning), and one sentence I would say out loud. Words I already own but misuse go in under the same header, marked reinforce. The Sheet at the bottom holds every word, with the week it went on the table, blank if it is still in the drawer. ## Week 39 · 2026 > [!word]- **exegesis** · noun > close, critical interpretation of a text, scripture first of all. > **Origin:** Gk. *exegeisthai*, to lead out, to explain. The same *ex* as exit. > **Trap:** it draws meaning out of the text. Reading your own meaning into it is eisegesis, the mirror word, and most product reviews are the second one. > **Use:** Every quarter someone performs an exegesis on the OKR doc. The doc has three sentences. > [!word]- **carceral** · adj > relating to prisons and imprisonment, or to systems that work like them. > **Origin:** L. *carcer*, prison. Incarcerate is the verb it hides inside. > **Trap:** it has drifted from "of a prison" to "prison-like", which is where it gets interesting and where it gets overused. An office with badge gates is secure. A calendar with no gaps is carceral. > **Use:** Turns out the return-to-office plan reads carceral once you count the badge swipes. > [!word]- **précis** · noun > a concise summary that keeps the argument and drops everything else. > **Origin:** Fr. *précis*, precise, cut short, from L. *praecidere*, to cut off in front. Say pray-see. > **Trap:** a summary can be loose. A précis is tight and in order, the original at a tenth of the length with nothing added. > **Use:** The exec review wants a précis. Three sentences, and the third one is the ask. > [!word]- **pliant** · adj > bending easily, and easily bent by others. > **Origin:** L. *plicare*, to fold. Cousin of ply, pliers, complicated. > **Trap:** pliable is a material. Pliant leans toward a person, and it is a soft insult. Flexible is the compliment. > **Use:** The roadmap turned pliant after the first customer call. By the third it had folded twice. > [!word]- **sycophant** · noun > a flatterer who feeds on the powerful. > **Origin:** Gk. *sykophantes*, fig-shower. Nobody knows why. The best guess is an informer who denounced fig smugglers in Athens. > **Trap:** a sycophant flatters upward, on purpose, for gain. A fan is loud, a yes-man is lazy. The sycophant has a plan. > **Use:** The chatbot is a sycophant by design. Ask it whether the plan is good and watch it clap. > [!word]- **dative** · noun > the grammatical case of the receiver, the one something is given to. > **Origin:** L. *dare*, to give. *Casus dativus*, the giving case. > **Trap:** it marks the indirect object. In "I gave the dog a bone," the dog is dative and the bone is accusative. Bulgarian lost the case and kept *на* to do its work. > **Use:** Every status update has a dative. Someone the update is given to, who did not ask for it. > [!word]- **epimeletic** · adj > relating to care-giving behavior, especially toward the young or the sick. > **Origin:** Gk. *epimeleia*, care, attention. The ethologists' word for the tending side of animal behavior. > **Trap:** it is the giving of care, never the wanting. The mirror word for care-seeking is et-epimeletic, which is also the sound a puppy makes. > **Use:** The on-call rotation is epimeletic. Someone stays up so the herd can sleep. > [!word]- **limn** · verb > depict in words or paint, draw the outline of. > **Origin:** L. *luminare*, to illuminate, from the monks who lit up manuscripts. *Lumen*, light. > **Trap:** it is a painter's word wearing a writer's coat. Use it for a portrait in prose, never for a spreadsheet. > **Use:** A good postmortem limns the incident. A bad one lists it. > [!word]- **plangent** · adj > loud and resonant, with a mournful ring to it. > **Origin:** L. *plangere*, to beat the breast, to lament. The sound and the grief arrived together. > **Trap:** it is a sound with sorrow in it. A bell is plangent, a car alarm is loud. > **Use:** The deploy bell has gone plangent. Same chime, different Friday. > [!word]- **skeuomorph** · noun > a design detail that imitates an older material or mechanism it no longer needs. > **Origin:** Gk. *skeuos*, vessel or tool, plus *morphe*, form. > **Trap:** it is the imitation that outlived its reason. Leather stitching on a screen, yes. Leather on a saddle, no. > **Use:** The floppy disk save icon is a skeuomorph. Half the people clicking it have never held one. ## Week 38 · 2026 > [!word]- **argot** · noun > the private slang of a group, built to keep outsiders out. > **Origin:** Fr. *argot*, originally the name of the Paris beggars' guild. Root unknown, which suits it. > **Trap:** jargon is technical and public. Argot is social and closed. Engineers have jargon; a team that has been through a bad quarter together has argot. > **Use:** Every standup has an argot. Six months in and I still cannot tell which acronyms are real. > [!word]- **ersatz** · adj > a substitute standing in for the real thing, usually a worse one. > **Origin:** Ger. *Ersatz*, replacement. Entered English through two wars of coffee made from acorns. > **Trap:** it means inferior substitute, never fake. Ersatz coffee is still coffee-shaped and drinkable, just sad. > **Use:** The demo ran on ersatz data. Real enough to click, fake enough that nobody asked a second question. > [!word]- **apotropaic** · adj > meant to ward off evil. > **Origin:** Gk. *apotrepein*, to turn away. The same "turn" as in tropic and heliotrope. > **Trap:** it describes the object's job, never its power. A horseshoe is apotropaic whether or not it works. > **Use:** The runbook is apotropaic. Nobody has read it, and the outage has not come back. > [!word]- **antiphonal** · adj > sung or spoken in alternation, one side answering the other. > **Origin:** Gk. *anti*, in return, plus *phone*, voice. The antiphon is the church version, two choirs trading lines. > **Trap:** it needs two parties answering each other. An echo is a repeat. A call and response is antiphonal. > **Use:** The design review turned antiphonal. Engineering sang a line, product sang it back a half step lower. > [!word]- **propinquity** · noun > nearness, in place or in kin, and the pull that comes with it. > **Origin:** L. *propinquus*, near, from *prope*. Cousin of approach and approximate. > **Trap:** it is nearness plus consequence. Proximity is a measurement. Propinquity is why the two desks by the coffee machine ended up dating. > **Use:** Propinquity built the Bay Area. Everyone was within a bike ride of everyone else's bad idea. > [!word]- **shibboleth** · noun > a word or habit that marks who belongs, and gives away who does not. > **Origin:** Heb. *shibboleth*, ear of grain. In Judges 12 the Gileadites used it as a password because the Ephraimites could not say the sh. > **Trap:** the modern drift is "outdated slogan". The sharper sense is the test itself, the word you cannot fake. > **Use:** Pronouncing the product name right is our shibboleth. Two syllables and you are in, three and you are a vendor. > [!word]- **telos** · noun > the end something is for, its built-in purpose. > **Origin:** Gk. *telos*, end, goal. Teleology is the study of it. > **Trap:** it is the purpose, never the deadline. A project has a due date and a telos, and the two rarely agree. > **Use:** The telos of a dashboard is a decision. Most of ours have a telos of being looked at. > [!word]- **uxorious** · adj > excessively fond of, or submissive to, one's wife. > **Origin:** L. *uxor*, wife. The word has no husband-shaped twin, which tells you who was writing the dictionaries. > **Trap:** it is always a bit of a jab. Devoted is the compliment, uxorious is the raised eyebrow. > **Use:** He turned uxorious the week they got the dog. Every calendar hold now says "checking with home." > [!word]- **mollify** · verb > soften someone's anger, calm them down. > **Origin:** L. *mollis*, soft. Same root as mollusk, a soft thing in a shell. > **Trap:** you mollify a person, you assuage a feeling. And mollifying is a patch. The complaint is still true afterward. > **Use:** The release note mollified the customer. The bug mollified nobody. > [!word]- **verlan** · noun > French back-slang that flips the syllables of a word: femme becomes meuf. > **Origin:** Fr. *l'envers*, the reverse, itself flipped. The name is the first example. > **Trap:** it is a system, never a single word. One flipped word is a joke. A vocabulary of them is verlan. > **Use:** The team has a verlan for every feature name. Half the roadmap is only legible backwards. ## Week 37 · 2026 · reinforce > [!word]- **tenuous** · adj > thin, slight, barely holding on. > **Origin:** Latin *tenuis*, thin. Cousin of tender, attenuate, extenuate. > **Trap:** it describes the grip, never the truth. A tenuous link is thin, still possibly real. > **Use:** The link between the roadmap and the demo was tenuous. One good question and it would have snapped. > [!word]- **verdure** · noun > lush green growth, and the greenness itself. > **Origin:** Old French *verd*, green, from Latin *viridis*. Verdant is the adjective. > **Trap:** it is the green, never a single plant. A hillside has verdure. A fern has leaves. > **Use:** The hills went brown by June. Verdure in California is a rumor that lasts about ten weeks. > [!word]- **supercilious** · adj > haughty, looking down on people with a raised eyebrow. > **Origin:** Latin *supercilium*, eyebrow. A facial expression frozen into an adjective. > **Trap:** superior is the rank. Supercilious is the attitude about the rank. > **Use:** The onboarding bot answered with a supercilious calm, as if it had been expecting someone smarter. > [!word]- **conniving** · adj > scheming, quietly cooperating in something shady. > **Origin:** Latin *connivere*, to close the eyes, to wink. To connive was to look away on purpose. > **Trap:** the old sense is complicity by pretending to see nothing. The modern sense is active plotting. Both survive, and the old one is sharper. > **Use:** Two teams, one budget, and a conniving spreadsheet that somehow favored whoever opened it last. > [!word]- **susurrus** · noun > a whispering, rustling sound. > **Origin:** Latin *susurrus*, a murmur. Imitative. Say it and you hear it. > **Trap:** it is a sound, never a mood. A room can have a susurrus. A person cannot feel one. > **Use:** The server room had a susurrus of fans, the closest thing the building had to wind. > [!word]- **abortive** · adj > cut short before it produced anything. > **Origin:** Latin *aboriri*, to disappear, to miscarry. Same root as orient, rising. > **Trap:** it carries no moral weight. An abortive attempt simply failed to arrive. > **Use:** Three abortive attempts at a morning run, each ending at the coffee shop on the corner. > [!word]- **capitulate** · verb > surrender on agreed terms. > **Origin:** Latin *capitulum*, little head, a heading in a document. To capitulate was to draw up terms under headings. > **Trap:** it implies terms and a signature. Losing an argument is a loss. Conceding with conditions is capitulating. > **Use:** I capitulated on the naming convention. Terms: they own the label, I own the definition. > [!word]- **assuage** · verb > make an unpleasant feeling less intense. > **Origin:** Latin *ad* + *suavis*, sweet. To sweeten something bitter. > **Trap:** you assuage a feeling, never a person. Assuage the fear, comfort the friend. > **Use:** A green dashboard assuages nothing. It moves the worry to whoever wrote the query. > [!word]- **cartouche** · noun > an oval frame around a royal name in hieroglyphs, or any ornamental frame or scroll. > **Origin:** French for cartridge, from Italian *cartoccio*, a paper cone. Napoleon's soldiers thought the ovals looked like ammunition. > **Trap:** it is the frame, never the name inside it. > **Use:** Every logo is a cartouche. An oval around a name that wants to outlive the people who chose it. > [!word]- **mea culpa** · noun > an admission of one's own fault. > **Origin:** Latin, "through my fault", lifted from the Confiteor prayer. > **Trap:** it already means "my fault", which makes "my mea culpa" a double. Issue one, offer one, open with one. > **Use:** The postmortem opened with a mea culpa and closed with a Jira ticket. Progress. > [!word]- **kruvojaden (кръвожаден)** · adj > bloodthirsty. > **Origin:** Bulgarian *кръв*, blood, plus *жаден*, thirsty. Literal, the way the best compounds are. > **Trap:** *жаден* on its own also means greedy, which gives the word appetite as well as violence. > **Use:** The Q4 targets read kruvojaden. Someone in finance has an appetite. ## Sheet Every word, one line each. Week is the batch it went on the table; blank means it is still in the drawer. | Word | Pos | Meaning | Root | Week | | :--- | :--- | :--- | :--- | :---: | | abortive | adj | cut short before it produced anything | L. *aboriri*, to miscarry | 37 | | agora | noun | the open market and meeting square of a Greek city | Gk. *agora*, gathering place | | | alacrity | noun | brisk, cheerful readiness | L. *alacer*, lively | | | amble | verb | walk at an easy, unhurried pace | L. *ambulare*, to walk | | | ameliorate | verb | make better or more bearable | L. *melior*, better, via Fr. | | | amity | noun | friendship between people or nations | L. *amicus*, friend | | | ancillary | adj | supporting, subordinate to the main thing | L. *ancilla*, maidservant | | | antiphonal | adj | sung or spoken in alternation, one side answering the other | Gk. *anti* + *phone*, answering voice | 38 | | apotropaic | adj | meant to ward off evil | Gk. *apotrepein*, to turn away | 38 | | argot | noun | the private slang of a group, built to keep outsiders out | Fr. *argot*, the beggars' guild | 38 | | assuage | verb | make an unpleasant feeling less intense | L. *ad* + *suavis*, sweet | 37 | | austere | adj | severe and plain, stripped of comfort | Gk. *austeros*, harsh, dry | | | carceral | adj | relating to prisons, or to systems that work like them | L. *carcer*, prison | 39 | | capitulate | verb | surrender on agreed terms | L. *capitulum*, heading | 37 | | carte blanche | noun | full freedom to act as one sees fit | Fr., blank card | | | cartouche | noun | an oval frame around a name, or any ornamental frame | It. *cartoccio*, paper cone, via Fr. | 37 | | congeries | noun | a heap or jumble of things collected together | L. *congerere*, to carry together | | | conniving | adj | scheming, quietly cooperating in something shady | L. *connivere*, to wink | 37 | | contrite | adj | sorry and remorseful for a wrong | L. *contritus*, ground down | | | conveyance | noun | the carrying of something, or the vehicle or legal transfer that does it | OFr. *conveier*, to accompany on the way | | | dative | noun | the grammatical case of the indirect object, the one given to | L. *dare*, to give | 39 | | despotic | adj | ruling with absolute, arbitrary power | Gk. *despotes*, master of the house | | | didactic | adj | meant to teach, often too obviously | Gk. *didaskein*, to teach | | | discursive | adj | rambling from topic to topic | L. *discurrere*, to run about | | | enmity | noun | deep, settled hostility | L. *inimicus*, enemy, via OFr. | | | epimeletic | adj | relating to care-giving behavior, especially toward the young or sick | Gk. *epimeleia*, care | 39 | | epochal | adj | marking a new era | Gk. *epoche*, a fixed point in time | | | ersatz | adj | a substitute standing in for the real thing, usually a worse one | Ger. *Ersatz*, replacement | 38 | | exegesis | noun | close, critical interpretation of a text | Gk. *exegeisthai*, to lead out | 39 | | evince | verb | show clearly, make evident | L. *evincere*, to prove | | | extol | verb | praise highly | L. *extollere*, to lift up | | | fatuous | adj | smugly, blandly foolish | L. *fatuus*, foolish | | | fungible | adj | interchangeable, one unit as good as another | L. *fungi vice*, to take the place of | | | gestalt | noun | a whole that reads as more than its parts | Ger. *Gestalt*, shape, form | | | gish gallop | noun | a debate tactic of firing off more claims than can be answered | Eng., coined 1994 after Duane Gish | | | hale | adj | healthy and strong, especially in old age | OE. *hal*, whole | | | harangue | noun | a long, loud, scolding speech | It. *aringa*, public address, via Fr. | | | hedonistic | adj | devoted to pleasure | Gk. *hedone*, pleasure | | | helter-skelter | adv | in disorderly haste | Eng., rhyming reduplication, 16th c. | | | incipient | adj | just beginning to exist | L. *incipere*, to begin | | | indelible | adj | impossible to remove or forget | L. *delere*, to destroy, negated | | | indolent | adj | lazy, avoiding effort | L. *in* + *dolere*, to feel pain (first sense: painless) | | | innocuous | adj | harmless, inoffensive | L. *nocere*, to harm, negated | | | insipid | adj | flavorless, dull | L. *sapere*, to taste, negated | | | internecine | adj | destructive to both sides, especially within one group | L. *internecinus*, murderous | | | kruvojaden (кръвожаден) | adj | bloodthirsty | Bulg. *кръв* + *жаден*, blood-thirsty | 37 | | lachrymose | adj | tearful, given to weeping | L. *lacrima*, tear | | | lagrangian point | noun | one of five spots where two bodies' gravity and orbit balance, letting a third sit still | Eng., after Lagrange, 1772 | | | languid | adj | slow, weak, lacking energy | L. *languere*, to be faint | | | limn | verb | depict in words or paint, outline | L. *luminare*, to illuminate a manuscript | 39 | | limpid | adj | perfectly clear, as water or prose | L. *limpidus*, clear | | | loquacious | adj | very talkative | L. *loqui*, to speak | | | mea culpa | noun | an admission of one's own fault | L., through my fault | 37 | | messianic | adj | relating to a savior figure, or fervently sure one is coming | Heb. *mashiah*, anointed | | | mollify | verb | soften someone's anger, calm them down | L. *mollis*, soft | 38 | | morose | adj | sullen and gloomy | L. *morosus*, peevish | | | myopic | adj | nearsighted, lacking foresight | Gk. *myein* + *ops*, shut eye | | | nadir | noun | the lowest point | Ar. *nazir*, opposite (of the zenith) | | | neologism | noun | a newly coined word or usage | Gk. *neos* + *logos*, new word | | | nonpareil | adj | without equal | Fr. *non pareil*, not equal | | | oblique | adj | slanting, or indirect | L. *obliquus*, slanting | | | obsequious | adj | fawning, eager to serve and to please | L. *obsequi*, to comply, to follow after | | | parsimonious | adj | stingy, sparing to a fault | L. *parcere*, to spare | | | perigee | noun | the point in an orbit nearest Earth | Gk. *peri* + *ge*, near earth | | | picaresque | adj | episodic and roguish, a story that follows a likeable scoundrel from scrape to scrape | Sp. *pícaro*, rogue | | | placid | adj | calm, undisturbed | L. *placere*, to please | | | plangent | adj | loud, resonant, and mournful | L. *plangere*, to beat the breast | 39 | | pliant | adj | bending easily, easily influenced | L. *plicare*, to fold | 39 | | polysemic | adj | having several meanings | Gk. *poly* + *sema*, many signs | | | portent | noun | a sign of something momentous to come | L. *portendere*, to foretell | | | précis | noun | a concise summary that keeps the argument and drops the rest | Fr. *précis*, cut short | 39 | | propinquity | noun | nearness, in place or in kin, and the pull that comes with it | L. *propinquus*, near | 38 | | pugnacious | adj | eager to fight | L. *pugnare*, to fight | | | replete | adj | well stocked, full to the brim | L. *replere*, to fill again | | | repudiation | noun | a flat rejection or disowning | L. *repudium*, divorce | | | schmaltzy | adj | excessively sentimental | Yid. *shmalts*, rendered fat | | | sedition | noun | speech or action inciting rebellion | L. *seditio*, a going apart | | | shibboleth | noun | a word or habit that marks who belongs, and gives away who does not | Heb. *shibboleth*, ear of grain | 38 | | sine qua non | noun | the thing without which something cannot be | L., without which not | | | skeuomorph | noun | a design element imitating an older material or mechanism it no longer needs | Gk. *skeuos* + *morphe*, vessel form | 39 | | slake | verb | satisfy a thirst or desire | OE. *slacian*, to slacken | | | solicitous | adj | anxiously attentive to someone's needs | L. *sollicitus*, agitated | | | spite house | noun | a building put up to annoy a neighbor | Eng., 19th c. American | | | supercilious | adj | haughty, looking down on people with a raised eyebrow | L. *supercilium*, eyebrow | 37 | | susurrus | noun | a whispering, rustling sound | L. *susurrus*, a murmur | 37 | | sycophant | noun | a flatterer who serves the powerful | Gk. *sykophantes*, fig-shower, origin disputed | 39 | | syncretic | adj | fusing beliefs or practices from different traditions into one | Gk. *synkretismos*, the Cretans closing ranks | | | telos | noun | the end something is for, its built-in purpose | Gk. *telos*, end, goal | 38 | | tenuous | adj | thin, slight, barely holding on | L. *tenuis*, thin | 37 | | turbid | adj | cloudy with stirred-up sediment | L. *turba*, turmoil | | | uxorious | adj | excessively fond of, or submissive to, one's wife | L. *uxor*, wife | 38 | | vacuous | adj | empty of thought or meaning | L. *vacuus*, empty | | | vapid | adj | flat, lifeless, without zest | L. *vapidus*, flat (of wine) | | | verdure | noun | lush green growth, and the greenness itself | OFr. *verd*, green | 37 | | verlan | noun | French back-slang that flips the syllables of a word | Fr. *l'envers*, the reverse, flipped | 38 | | vernal | adj | of spring | L. *ver*, spring | | | vociferous | adj | loudly and insistently vocal | L. *vox* + *ferre*, to carry the voice | | | wanton | adj | reckless and cruel, or unrestrained | ME. *wantowen*, undisciplined | | | yen | noun | a strong craving | Cantonese *yan*, craving; no relation to the currency | |