Wordplay

Unusual but cool sounding, interesting words to occasionally sprinkle into your writing.

Suggestion: Go very gently and wisely, lest you risk over-spicing your prose to point of the reader’s irritation.

Bumptious—Overbearing or self-assertive to the point of being obnoxious; conceited bordering on arrogant. Salespeople in trendy, expensive shops can be bumptious.

Lubricious—Slippery, smooth, oily, lewd.

Imperious—Commanding, bossy.

Spluttered—To make a rapid series of spitting sounds, to speak rapidly or indistinctly, as in a rage.

Lambent—Soft radiance, lightly brilliant.

Aquiline—Hooked like an eagle’s beak.

Permeable—Able to be passed or flowed or spread through.

Abstruse—Complicated; difficult to comprehend. Like the theory of relativity, atonal music or the philosophers you pretend to understand in college. The next best thing to understanding Hegel would be to describe him as abstruse and move on.

Jangled—A harsh metallic sound, to cause irritation to the nerves, etc. by discord. Think of the sound of keys bouncing around in someone’s pocket.

Prig—One who is arrogantly pedantic or moral, and whose attitude bores others.

Final Caution: Before you unveil these words in public, look them up in your dictionary, learn all the different shades of meaning and uses, and roll them around on your tongue—and inside your head—until they feel comfortable to you.