| Obfuscate | to confuse; to make obscurel; to darken |
| Obliterate | to remove utterly from recognition, memory or existence |
| Obsequious | subservient; fawningly attentive; sucking up to |
| Odoriferous | having an odor; smelly; morallly offensive |
| Officious | meddlesome; annoyingly eager to butt in or advise |
| Omnificent | unlimited in creative powers |
| Omnipresent | universally present; present everywhere at once |
| Omnivorous | taking in everything; devouring or consuming anything and everything |
| Onomatopoeia | the use of words, the sounds of which convey their sense or meaning |
| Onus | blame, burden |
| Oracular | like an oracle; uttered or delivered as though divinely inspired and infallible; can be dictatorial |
| Orthodox | very strict, conventional; by established rules or doctrines, particularly religious ones; by the book |
| Ostensible | professed; apparent, but not necessarily so |
| Ostracism | banishment or exclusion by consensus |
| Oxymoron | a combination of contradictory or incongruous words |
| Pagan | one with no religious restraints; delights in sensual pleasures and material things; hedonistic person |
| Palliate | to relieve or moderate the intensity of; to assuage |
| Palpable | capable of being felt or touched; real |
| Panacea | a cure-all; a remedy for all problems and difficulties |
| Paradigm | a model or example; an archetype |
| Paternal | like a father; fatherly |
| Patrician | person of noble birth; an aristocrat |
| Paucity | lack of; scarcity |
| Pedantic | over attention to small detail; small-minded, stodgy, unimaginative |
| Peevish | perversely stubborn, characterized by ill temper or moodiness |
| Penchant | strong taste, liking, or inclination; predilection |
| Penultimate | next to the last |
| Peremptory | categorical; dictatorial; allowing no contradiction |
| Perfidy | act of disloyalty; treachery |
| Perfunctory | mechanically, unenthusiastically; apathetic |
| Perjury | to lie under oath |
| Perquisite | privilege or benefit that comes along with a job; beyond salary |
| Peruse | to examine with great detail, read through something very carefully |
| Pettifogger | petty, unscrupulous; a shyster; also, one who quibbles over trifles |
| Philippic | harsh, bitter verbal attack |
| Phylogeny | the evolutionary history of a kind of organism; history or development of a word or custom |
| Pique | to arouse anger or resentment, irritate, provoke |
| Platitude | a meaningless truism; cliche, dull remark |
| Plenitude | great sufficiency; abundance |
| Polarize | to divide into oposing extremes or factions |
| Ponderous | heavy; massive; dull; so large as to be clumsy |
| Precedent | an earlier example or model on which something is now based |
| Precipitate | to cause to happen (usually suddenly) |
| Preempt | to take the place of; to seize upon to the exclusion of something or someone else |
| Prevail | to triumph, win out, overcome adversity |
| Pristine | unspoiled, clean, pure |
| Procreate | to produce offspring; to reproduce |
| Prodigious | enormous; monstrous; extraordinary |
| Proficient | highly competent; skillful; expert |
| Profound | deep, either in the physical sense or intellecturally |
| Progeny | offspring, descendants, children |
| Prolific | fruitful, fertile; abundantly productive |
| Promulgate | to proclaim; to declare; to make publicly known |
| Propitious | favorable, auspicious, advantageous; benevolent |
| Prosaic | dull, ordinary, everyday; unimaginative |
| Proselytize | to actively seek to convert to a belief, usually religious; to recruit to your point of view |
| Provincial | narrow, limited in viewpoint or attitude |
| Puerile | childish, silly, juvenile |
| Purloin | to acquire wrongfully, usually through a breach of trust; to steal |
| Putative | commonly accepted; supposed, reputed |
| Pyrrhic victory | an empty, not worthwhile "victory", because the cost is too high a price to pay |
| Quantify | to set the number of; to make clear or express the quantity involved |
| Querulous | constantly complaining; whining, fretful |
| Quiescent | quiet; showing no sign of activity; latent, in repose |
| Quintessence | the essence of a thing |
| Quixotic | capricious; unpredictable, foolishly romantic or idealistic; impractical |
| Raiment | clothing, garments |
| Rampike | a still standing, but broken, or dead tree |
| Rapacious | greedily excessive; voracious, ravenous, plundering |
| Raucous | boisterously loud and disorderly |
| Reclusive | withdrawn from society; solitary, hermitlike |
| Recondite | difficult to understand; deep, obscure, beyond comprehension |
| Redundant | excessive repetition; superfluous, repetitive |
| Regale | to entertain by providing a lavish feast; to delight with things that are pleasing or amusing |
| Relegate | to send into exile; to banish, or assign appropriately |
| Remuneration | payment, compensation |
| Reparation | payment for damage done, make amends by compensations |
| Repast | meal, mealtime; feast |
| reprove | to critisize kindly, mildly |
| Restive | fidgety, characterized by restlessness |
| Revere | to regard highly; to honor, hold in great esteem, respect |
| Ribald | crude, offensive; coarse |
| Roil | to stir up, disturb, rile |
| Ruminate | to ponder over, mull over, contemplate |
| Rustic | rural, lacking in sophistication and polish; primitive |
| Saccharine | overly sweet; phony sweet; too sweet, disgustingly so |
| Sacrilege | blasphemy; a violation of the holy or sacred |
| Sagacity | wisdom; shrewdness, keenness of insight or judgment |
| Salinize | to treat with salt, impregnate with salt |
| Salvo | a volley of fire; a sudden burst; a spirited verbal attack |
| Sanguine | healthy, optimistic; hopeful, cheerful |
| Saturnine | sullen, gloomy, surly; slow to act or change |
| Scintillate | to sparkle, literally or figuratively |
| Scrupulous | careful, painstaking; upright; having moral integrity |
| Scuttlebutt | rumor, gossip, word around town |
| Sedition | incitement of resistance to, or rebellion against, established authority; treason |
| Sensory | of or relating to sensation or the senses |
| Sentient | able to perceive by the senses; aware |
| Serendipity | faculty of finding valuable things without seeking; accidental good fortune |
| Servile | subservient; abject; like a slave or servant |
| Shunt | to move or turn to one side; to switch from one track to another |
| Specious | seemingly so; deceptively plausible, falsely attractive; appearing true and genuine reality |
| Spurious | false, fake |
| Staid | grave, sober, serious |
| Stature | status or rank gained through achievement, growth, and development |
| Stealth | imperceptible movement; unobstrusive; unnoticed; hidden; undercover |
| Stigmatize | to label negatively, brand with shame or disgrace |
| Stipulate | to set forth, express what is required in an agreement or statement |
| Stoic | outwardly indifferent, not showin emotion, reaction, or response |
| Stuporous | as if in a stupor; lethargic, apathetic, dull and dazed |
| Subjective | from a personal, not objective or detached, point of view |
| Subordinate | secondary in importance; lower in position |
| Substantive | real, having substance, solid |
| Succumb | to give in to; to yield, including, to die |
| Superfluous | more than what is necessary; redundant |
| Surreal | having the intense irrational reality of a dream |
| Surrogate | substitute (person) deputy |
| Svelte | slender, lithe, smooth |
| Sycophant | a servile, self-seeking flatterer; one who sucks up to others; a parasite |
| Symbiotic | the joining of two dissimilar organisms in a mutually beneficial relationship |
| Tabloid | half the page size of ordinary newspapers, condensed news, many photos-tended toward gossip and exaggeration |
| Taciturn | temperamentally disinclined to talk; silent |
| Tangential | slightly connected |
| Tantalize | to tease, excite, work up interest in |
| Tarry | to delay, linger, stay |
| Tessellated | having a checkered appearance; adorned with a mosaic |
| Tenable | reasonable, defensible |
| Tenet | a principle, belief or doctrine shared by a group |
| Termagant | an overbearing woman; a nag |
| Teetotaler | one who abstains completely from drinking alcohol |
| Toothsome | attractive, including sexually; also, palatable, delicious |
| Transcend | to rise above; to surpass |
| Transgress | to sin; to violate a law or command |
| Transmogrify | to change, transform, alter greatly, often with grotesque or humorous results |
| Truculent | belligerent, scathingly harsh; vitriolic; destructive |
| Twerp | silly, insignificant, or contemptible person |
| Ubiquitous | widespread; everywhere at once; encountered constantly |
| Umpteenth | too many times to be countable |
| Uncouth | lacking in polish or grace; uncultivated in appearance or behavior |
| Undulate | to move like the flow of a wave; fluctuate |
| Unremitting | incessant; relentless; constant |
| Unwitting | not aware of the full facts, not intentional |
| Urbane | sophisticated; suave; polished |
| Usurp | to seize power by force or without right |
| Utilitarian | pragmatic; valuing usefulness above all |
| Vacuous | empty; stupid, inane |
| Venerate | to revere, to honor |
| Veracity | truthfulness; honesty |
| Verdant | not ripe in experience or judgment |
| Verity | something fundamentally true; state of being honest |
| Vestige | remaining mark, sign, or trace of something |
| Viable | sustainable; capable of living, developing, functioning; viable seeds, viable options |
| Vicissitude | changes in fortune; fluctuation in state or conditions, usually hardships, beyond one's control |
| Vigilant | ever watchful; keeping watch, ever alert, awake |
| Vindictive | revengeful; seeking revenge |
| Virtuoso | singularly excellent in a particular field |
| Vitiate | to spoil or impair the quality or efficiency of |
| Vituperative | given to censure and verbal abuse |
| Volatility | explosiveness; instablility |
| Waggish | roguishly or mischievously merry; playful |
| Wanderlust | strong impulse or desire to move about or travel |
| Wanton | malicious; merciless without provocation; also, lewd, lustful, bawdy |
| Welsh | to not pay a debt; to break one's word |
| Wizen | to be or become dry, shrunken, shriveled, usually through aging |
| Xenophobia | fear and hatred of things and people that are foreign or strange |
| Yeoman | one who performs great and loyal service |
| Zenith | highest point attainable; culminating point; acme |