Words, words, words

I have written here before about how I truly love language. Because I like the subject,
and have studied it somewhat intensively at various times in my life, I possess a
decently-extensive vocabulary. At times, my colleagues at work will playfully poke at me because I will say a word that I think “everyone” knows, when in reality I guess the word is lesser-known than I imagined.

I do have many interests beyond words; as a result, I read a variety of different materials on an assortment of unrelated topics. Today as I was skimming one of the magazines to which I subscribe, I came across five different words that I had never seen before – and I had absolutely no idea what any of these words meant. I could somewhat decipher their general meaning via the context of the sentences in which they were each used; but after I finished reading I went online to look up the full definition of each word I didn’t know. Here’s what I found:

• Erudition: knowledge acquired by study, research, etc.; learning; scholarship.
• Extirpate: to remove or destroy totally; do away with; pull up by the roots.
• Inchoate: not yet completed or fully developed; rudimentary.
• Technocratic: a system of society where government is controlled by scientists, engineers, and other experts.
• Apogee: the highest point, the climax.

Call me a geek, a nerd, a dork, whatever, but learning five different new words in a single day is super-cool to me, and super-fun. This definitely produced a sourire.

Stef