Vocabulary Today....

Okie...We move to vocabulary today. Here are some of my favourite words, which doesn't necessary describe me. I trust that my friends reading this can vouch for me?

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faineant \fay-nay-AWN\, adjective:

Doing nothing or given to doing nothing; idle; lazy.

noun:
A do-nothing; an idle fellow; a sluggard.

According to Felipe Fernandez-Armesto, Charles II was no faineant half-wit but a conscientious and reflective king.
--David Gilmour, "The falsity of 'true Spain,'" The Spectator, July 22, 2000

Faineant is from French, from Middle French fait, "does" + néant, "nothing."

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pukka, also pucka \PUHK-uh\, adjective:

1. Authentic; genuine.
2. Good of its kind; first-class.

He talks like the quintessential pukka Englishman and quotes Chesterton and Kipling by the yard and yet he has chosen to live most of his adult life abroad.
--Lynn Barber, "Bell, book . . . and then what?" The Observer, August 27, 2000

If he does not have a house, the government gives him a pukka residence, not a . . . shack on the pavement but a solid construction.
--Salman Rushdie, The Ground Beneath Her Feet

Pukka comes from Hindi pakka, "cooked, ripe," from Sanskrit pakva-, from pacati, "he cooks."

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indurate \IN-dur-it; -dyur-\, adjective:

Physically or morally hardened; unfeeling; stubborn.

\IN-dur-ayt; -dyur-\, transitive verb:
1. To make hard; to harden.
2. To harden against; to make hardy; to habituate.
3. To make hardened; to make callous or stubborn.
4. To establish; to fix firmly.

intransitive verb:
1. To grow hard; to harden.
2. To become established or fixed.

But "hard cheeses indurate, soft cheeses collapse." (Flaubert's Parrot). People don't change, they set in.

Indurate is derived from the past participle of Latin indurare, from in-, intensive prefix + durare, "to harden," from durus, "hard."

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spoonerism \SPOO-nuh-riz-uhm\, noun:

The transposition of usually initial sounds in a pair of words.

Some examples:

• We all know what it is to have a half-warmed fish ["half-formed wish"] inside us.
• The Lord is a shoving leopard ["loving shepherd"].
• It is kisstomary to cuss ["customary to kiss"] the bride.
• Is the bean dizzy ["dean busy"]?
• When the boys come back from France, we'll have the hags flung out ["flags hung out"]!
• Let me sew you to your sheet ["show you to your seat"].
• Lunder and Tightning ["Thunder and Lightning"].
  

Spoonerism comes from the name of the Rev. William Archibald Spooner (1844-1930), a kindly but nervous Anglican clergyman and educationalist. All the above examples were committed by (or attributed to) him.

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