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Definition 1: (1) A mounted procession of horseback riders, horse-drawn carriages or both; (2) a procession of dignitaries; (3) a planned sequence of remarkable events or people, as a show featuring a cavalcade of stars. [@more@]Usage 1: "Cavalcade" is one of those words used rather frequently by people who do not have a completely clear idea of its meaning. In 'Australia Visited' (1941), Noel Coward confessed, "I was fortunate to be able to administer a little artificial respirat

Definition 1: A deep, prolonged regret for wrong-doing whose damage cannot be repaired.[@more@]Usage 1: Today's word has several near synonyms. "Regret" is a plain sense of sorrow for offensive or immoral behavior. "Penitence" is a sincere admission of transgression with an implication that the penitent intends to undertake moral improvement. "Contrition" is an absolute relinquishment of self to complete and perfect penitence for misdeeds. "Compunction" is

Definition 1: To flirt or make love with no intention of marriage; to pursue many superficial amorous relationships with women. [@more@]Usage 1: In Greek this word referred to the person who pursued amorous relationships with men but in English its reference changed to women. It often emerges as a proper name in literature. In Ariosto's 'Orlando Furioso,' Filandro is the youth bedazzled by Gabrina, and Philander Smith College is Arkansas's oldest private black college. (Search Google for "P

Definition 1: To advance a date or appointment. [@more@]Usage 1: Usage of this term seems to be rising in the medical profession, especially in Canada, and it has been in wide usage in India for 50 years. Suggested usage: The new usage goes something like this: "We don't have any appointments for a later date; could we prepone your present appointment a week?" meaning move it forward a week. We need to find uses for this word to launch it properly. "Could we prepone lunch? I don't

Definition 1: To sketch a faint shadow of something; to suggest, intimate, or insinuate.[@more@]Usage 1: The adjective is "adumbrative" [æ-'dêm-brê-tiv] and the noun, "adumbration." Definition 2: To overshadow.Usage 2: This meaning is rarely used today: "His good qualities are adumbrated by his bad traits." Suggested usage: Use this word when you need a verb even paler than "suggest," "April never so much as adumbrated her affection for Sincla

Definition 1: Making a show of piety, sanctity; pretending to be pious or religious. [@more@]Usage 1: "Sanctity" or "sanctitude" refer to a saint-like holiness or moral perfection in a person. "Sanctimony," the noun underlying today's adjective, was once a synonym but today refers to a feigned sanctity, a saint-like pretension of superiority. Today's adjective, "sanctimonious," is the perfect substitute for the messy slang phrase "holier-than-thou.&qu

Definition 1: (Western US Slang) Plain food, 'eats,' victuals; also, a thick white larva of some insects that spends its life digging through the soil[@more@]Usage 1: We don't actually advocate using today's word in its first meaning: it is substandard slang originating in the speech of the American cowboy. On a cattle drive, grub was simple but hot, served up around the chuck wagon, which carried the provisions for the drive. The chuck wagon's name probably didn't come from the fact that you we

Definition 1: A frightening dream or intensely distressing experience of any kind; a female demon that attacks people in their sleep.[@more@]Usage 1: Modern English speakers have, by and large, given up the meaning of a female goblin called a nightmare in favor of a bad dream of any sort. But Shakespeare clearly used the word in the original meaning in King Lear, III, iv, 126: "He met the night-mare and her nine-fold; Bid her alight, And her troth plight, And, aroint thee, witch, aroint the

Definition 1: Used only in the phrase "letter of marque and reprisal," a license granted by a sovereign to a subject, authorizing him to make reprisals on any national of a hostile state for damages alleged against the enemy's army. Later it became a license to employ an armed vessel to capture shipping belonging to subjects of an enemy state. Holders of such a letter were called "privateers" or "corsairs." On land, a letter of marque was permission for reprisals af

Definition 1: "Old long since" or "times long past" in Scots English, the name of an auld Scottish folk song recorded and edited by Scottish poet Robert Burns and published posthumously in 1796.[@more@]Usage 1: This phrase is the title of the traditional English New Year's song, sung at the stroke of midnight of the New Year. The earliest recorded version appeared in the 1700 edition of Playford's 'Original Scotch Tunes.' Burns's variation is similar to other versions. "

Definition 1: Having or emitting an odor or (bad) smell. This word bears a pejorative (negative) connotation; the neutral term is "odorous."[@more@]Usage 1: The 'semi-compounding' element -(i)ferous is combined with many words in English: vociferous, splendiferous, aquiferous "water-bearing," coniferous "cone-bearing," plus many metals: metalliferous "metal-bearing", carboniferous "carbon-bearing," auriferous "gold-bearing," diamondifer

Definition 1: Related to early childhood; juvenile, childish, immature.[@more@]Usage 1: This term is not so much scholarly as simply widely overlooked. It refers to a younger stage than immature or even juvenile. It specifically refers to very young children. Suggested usage: This word is an emphatic substitute for "childish" or immature': "don't be so puerile, Buffy! It can also be used simply to refer to childhood: "In his puerile world, Ralphy was king." Etymology: La

Definition 1: Verbal fanfare: boasting or blustering boisterously.[@more@]Usage 1: A person given to fanfaronades is a "fanfaron." Suggested usage: "Emile is quite an amiable fellow but a fanfaron par excellence." The great advantage of fanfaron over "blusterer, boaster," or "braggart" is its connotative association with "fanfare." "He introduced his daughter with a fanfaronade that embarrassed her so much she interrupted him." Etymolog

Definition 1: A type of sofa or couch with a back at one end only.[@more@]Usage 1: Although a chaise longue is a good place to lounge around, the word has nothing to do with "lounging" and so the spelling "chaise lounge" and pronunciation as though it were "chase lounge" are incorrect. "Chaise lounge" is a folk etymology, the reanalysis of foreign words and phrases so that they incorporate more familiar native words (for ease of remembering and pronunciati

Definition 1: Reduce the severity of something, mollify, alleviate.[@more@]Usage 1: A common false cognate is "militate". Look out for the confusion. Suggested usage: The common idiom is "mitigating circumstances", circumstances that makes a crime more palatable, acceptable. But there is a plethora of circumstances where it applies. "I need something to mitigate the bad news I'm bringing home." Etymology: From Latin mitigatus, past participle of mitigare "to so

Definition 1: Stubbornly resistant; recalcitrant, utterly uncompromising. [@more@]Usage 1: Today’s word is another orphan negative: you can be intransigent but not just "transigent"; the latter word does not exist. The negative, however, has two accompanying nouns, "intransigence" and "intransigency" with identical meanings. The adjective itself may be used as a noun referring to someone who is intransigent. The adverb, of course, is "intransigently." Sug

Definition 1: (1) A fire-breathing Greek mythological monster with a lion's head, a goat's body, and a serpent's tail killed by Bellerophon. (2) An organism or organ made up of genetically different tissue types, usually produced by transplant, grafting, or genetic engineering. (3) A wildly fantastic, almost unimaginable illusion. [@more@]Usage 1: The adjective of today's word is either "chimeric" or "chimerical," the suffix –al usually meaningless when added to –ic. Thus,

Definition 1: The male parent and, by extension, an ancestor (forefather), mentor (spiritual father), or the origin, as F. L. Wright might be said to be the father of modern American architecture. [@more@]Usage 1: "Dad" is probably not taken from Irish dad "father" but rather a variation of "da-da," one of the initial nonsense syllables uttered by all infants and presumed to be addressed to a parent. That is the same source of the Irish word. "Father" has,

Definition 1: A new convert, someone recently converted to a belief of some kind. [@more@]Usage 1: Today's word originally referred to a new convert to Judaism but now refers to any new convert. It is the parent of a large lexical family, including a verb "proselytize," which refers to the business of missionaries, to make converts. This verb has its own family, an abstract noun "proselytism" and two agent noun proselytizer and proselytist "missionary, someone who prosel

Definition 1: Intensely eager; keenly excited about something. [@more@]Usage 1: Probably because of the initial a-, today's word is treated as a special adjectival type that behaves more like an adverb in that it can only modify verbs and appear only in predicate position. You may say, "The girls were all agog at the Mummers' parade" but you may not mention "the agog girls." No noun derives from this word, no "agogness" to speak of (so don't speak of it). Since it s