| acarpous | effete; no longer fertile; worn out |
| apocryphal | of dubious authenticity or origin; spurious |
| apostate | one who abandons long-held religious or political convictions |
| apotheosis | deification; glorification to godliness |
| apposite | appropriate; pertinent; relevant; apropos |
| arrant | impudent |
| artless | natural; without artificiality |
| asperity | severity; rigor |
| aspersion | an act of defamation or maligning |
| assay | an analysis; examination |
| asseverate | to aver; to assert |
| assiduous | diligent; hard-working; sedulous |
| attenuate | to rarefy; to weaken or make thinner |
| baleful | sinister; pernicious |
| bedizen | to adorn, especially in a cheap, showy manner; to festoon |
| bilge | bulge; the protuberance of a cask |
| blandish | to toady or fawn |
| cachinnate | to laugh loudly |
| cadge | to sponge or mooch |
| calumniate | to slander; to make false accusation |
| calumny | slander; aspersion |
| caparison | to adorn or bedizen |
| captious | calculated to confuse or entrap in argument; hypercritical; caviling |
| cavil | to find fault without good reason |
| coeval | of the same period; coexisting |
| contemn | to scorn or despise |
| contumacious | insubordinate; rebellious |
| countenance | to approve of or tolerate; face; composure |
| cozen | to deceive, beguile, or hoodwink |
| decorous | correct, formal, marked by decorum |
| defalcate | to embezzle or misappropriate |
| denouement | an outcome or solution; the enraveling of a plot |
| deposition | accretion; depositing; building up layer by layer; official testimony |
| depredate | to plunder, pillage, ravage, or destroy |
| descant | to comment at length |
| descry | to discriminate or discern |
| desuetude | disuse |
| dilatory | causing delay |
| disaffect | to estrange or alienate the affection of |
| discomfit | to defeaet; to put down |
| discursive | digressive; passing from one topic to another |
| dissolution | disintegration; looseness in morals |
| distrait | distracted; absent-minded, especially due to anxiety |
| doggerel | trivial, poorly constructed verse |
| dross | slag, waste, or foreign matter; impurity |
| dulcet | melodious; harmonious; mellifluous |
| edacious | voracious; devouring |
| effluvia | outflow in a stream of particles; a noxious oder or vapor |
| egress | exit |
| encomium | glowing and enthusiastic praise; panegyric |
| enormity | excessive wickedness; evilness |
| episodic | loosely connected; not flowing logically |
| equanimity | composure; self-possession |
| equipoise | equal distribution of weight |
| errant | traveling; itinerant; peripatetic |
| evince | to show clearly; to indicate |
| excoriate | to censure scathingly; to upbraid |
| exegesis | critical examination; explication |
| expatiate | to descant; to discourse; to discuss or write about at length |
| expiate | to atone or make amends for |
| expostulate | to argue earnestly in order to dissuade, correct, or protest |
| expurgate | to remove obscenity; to purify; to censor |
| exscind | to cut out or extirpate |
| extant | existing; not destroyed or lost |
| extirpate | to destroy; to exterminate |
| fallow | untilled; inactive; dormant |
| feckless | ineffectual; irresponsible |
| felicitous | apt; suitably expressed; well-chosen |
| filigree | an ornamental work, especially of delicate lacelike patterns |
| florid | flowery |
| forebearance | patience; willingness to wait |
| fractious | quarrelsome |
| froward | intractable; not willing to yield or comply |
| gainsay | to deny, dispute, contradict, to oppose |
| gauche | crude; awkward; tasteless |
| gossamer | delicate; insubstantial or tenuous |
| guile | artfulness; trickery; chicanery |
| homiletics | the art of preaching |
| homily | a sermon or morally instructive lecture |
| ignominious | shameful; dishonorable; ignoble |
| imperious | commanding; masterful; arrogant |
| importune | to ask incessantly; to beg; to nag |
| impugn | to attack or assail verbally |
| impute | to attribute to a cause or source |
| indolent | lazy |
| ineluctable | certain; inevitable |
| ingenuous | guileless; trusting; naive |
| inimical | hostile |