Words of the day

By Kris Scheuer

Words are how I earn a living. That’s because I’ve been a published reporter and journalist for eleven years now. And I am always looking to improve on my writing style by adding new words to my written and oral vocabulary. While I try to focus on words in everyday usage, sometimes I pick words that aren’t practical as regular lingo but draw my attention nonetheless.
Here are my trio of words for the day.

This looks like a fun word  – pugnacious. It’s and adjective that means readily disposed to fight or belligerent. Perhaps you know someone that this describes? Happily, I don’t.
Paramour is a noun meaning a married person’s lover.
And putrescent an adjective meaning becoming putrid as in a state of decomposition. With Toronto in its 12th day of a garbage strike some of the temporary and legal neighbourhood dumps are surely housing bags of putrescent, organic waste.

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Words of the day

By Kris Scheuer

As a Toronto professional reporter and journalist, I am always trying to vary my written vocabulary. I am referring to words that sound great, but also have everyday meaning in society and aren’t too removed from how we speak.
Here are my three words for the day:

A new word for me today is inamorata meaning a person with whom one is in love, a lover from Latin amore or amor.

A fun word that I like is loquacious an adjective meaning a tendency to talk a lot. I first remember coming across this word in a headline “Why Lord Black is loquacious no more ” by Ian Brown describing how former Canadian media baron Conrad Black was not too talkative during his trial.

A commonly misspelled word is affidavit (not how it sounds affidavid) a legal term meaning a declaration in writing made upon an oath that something true.

I have several good vocabulary, spelling and grammar books but one of my favourites is Build Your Power Vocabulary published by Random House, that I bought in the city about two years ago.