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#90293 12/26/02 07:57 PM
Joined: Jan 2001
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wwh Offline OP
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Proud of your vocabulary? I'll bet you have forgotten or never knew quite few of these words.

http://www.physics.sfsu.edu/~senglish/page_1.html


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Quite a nice site there.. I can certainly learn more than a few new words, and refresh my memory on others! As a friend said to me last summer: "Your vocabulary's too big for me." Now, it'll get even bigger! Haha.

"Did you eat another dictionary?" -- what an online friend said to me once


"Did you eat another dictionary?" -- what an online friend said to me once
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Wow, that's really neat, Dr. Bill! I just read "The Minikin Incarnadine Cowl-Titivated Gamine", and you were right: there were many words I had forgotten or never knew.
Some were a stretch as used, but that wasn't the point. This was enjoyable; and all too often, that isn't the case with this kind of work-up.


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Kind of long, but may be amusing to some:

'Twas the nocturnal segment of the diurnal period preceding the annual Yuletide celebration and throughout our place of residence, kinetic activity was not in evidence among the possessors of this potential, including that species of diminutive rodent known as Mus musculus. Hosiery was meticulously suspended from the forward edge of the wood-burning caloric apparatus, pursuant to our anticipatory pleasure regarding an imminent visitation from an eccentric philanthropist among whose folkloric appellations is the honorific title of St. Nick.

The prepubescent siblings, comfortably ensconced in their respective accommodations of repose, were experiencing subconscious visual hallucinations of variegated saccarinose fruit confections performing choreography through their cerebrums. My conjugal partner and I, attired in our nocturnal head-coverings, were about to take slumberous advantage of the Arctic-like gloom when upon the avenaceous exterior portion of the grounds there ascended such a cacophony of dissonance that I felt compelled to arise with alacrity from my place of repose for the purpose of ascertaining the precise source thereof.

Hastening to the casement, I forthwith opened the barriers sealing this fenestration, noting thereupon that the lunar brilliance without, reflecting as it was upon the surface of a recent crystalline aqueous precipitation, might be said to rival that of the solar meridian itself--thus permitting my incredulous optical sensory organs to behold a miniature airborne runnered conveyance, drawn by an octet of diminutive specimens of the genus Rangifer, piloted by a miniscule, aged chauffeur so ebullient and nimble that it
became instantly apparent to me that he was indeed our anticipated beatified caller. With this ungulate motive power traveling at a greater vertiginous velocity than patriotic alar predators, he vociferated loudly, expelled breath musically through contracted labia, and addressed each of the octet by his or her cognomen: "Now Dasher, now Dancer," et al, guiding them to the uppermost exterior level of our abode, through which structure I could readily distinguish the concatenations of each of the sum total of the thirty-two cloven pedal extremities.

As I retracted my cranium from its erstwhile location and was performing a pi radians pivot, our distinguished visitant achieved, with utmost celerity, via a downward salutation, entry by way of the ceramic smoke passage. He was clad entirely in animal integuments, soiled by the ebony residue from partial oxidation of carboniferous fuels. His resemblance to a street vendor I attributed to the plethora of assorted playthings which he bore dorsally in a commodious cloth receptacle. His orbs were scintillant with reflected luminosity, while his submaxillary dermal indentations gave every evidence of engaging amiability.

The capillaries of his malar regions and nasal appurtenances were engorged with crimson circulatory fluid which, its chroma suffusing the dermal layers, approximated the retinal sensation reflected by the Prunus avium, or sweet cherry. His amusing sub- and supralabials resembled nothing so much as a flexible, curved strip of wood associated with the American aborigines and their ambient, hirsute, facial adornment had an absence of coloring comparable to crystalline frozen hydrogen oxide vapor.

Clenched firmly between his incisors was the posterior projection of acalumet whose gray colloidal aerosol fumes, forming a tenuous ellipticaltorus about his occiput, were suggestive of a decorative seasonal circlet of holly. His visage was wider than it was high, and when he waxed mirthful, his corpulent abdominal region undulated in the manner of inpectinated fruit syrup in a colloidal gel state within a hemispherical container. He was of Napoleonic stature, neither more nor less than an obese, jocund, multigenarian gnome, the optical perception of whom rendered me visibly frolicsome despite every effort to refrain from being so affected by this risiblity. By rapidly lowering and then elevating one eyelid and rotating his head slightly eccentricly, he indicated that trepidation on my part was superfluous. Without utterance, but with noticeable dispatch, he commenced filling the aforementioned appended hosiery with various of the articles of merchandise extracted from his aforementioned previously dorsally transported cloth receptacle.

Upon completion of this task, he executed an abrupt pi radian rotation about the vertical axis, placed a single manual digit in lateral juxtaposition to his olfactory organ, inclined his cranium forward in a gesture of leavetaking, and effected his egress by salutation up the smoke passage through which he had made ingress. He then propelled himself in a short vector onto his rustic winter conveyance. Contracting his oral sphincter, he emitted a shrill series of notes to the antlered quadrupeds of burden and proceeded to soar aloft in a movement hitherto observed chiefly among the seed bearing portions of a common weed. But I overheard his parting exclamation, audible immediately prior to his vehiculation beyond the limits of visibility: "Ecstatic Yuletide to the planetary constituency, and to the selfsame assemblage, my sincerest wishes for a salubriously beneficial and gratifyingly pleasurable period between sunset and dawn."




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