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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
Teetotaler: one who abstains completely from drinking alcohol
Tenable: reasonable, defensible
Tenet: a principle, belief or doctrine shared by a group
Termagant: an overbearing woman; a nag
Tessellated: having a checkered appearance; adorned with a mosaic
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