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Jul 20, 2007

This week's theme
Words from the writing of Judge Bruce M. Selya

This week's words
aposematic
pleochroic
pastiche
haboob
resipiscent

Next week’s theme
Unusual words used in famous quotations

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resipiscent

adjective: Having returned to a saner mind.

[From Latin resipiscere (to recover one's senses), from re- (again) + sapere (to taste, to know). Ultimately from Indo-European root sep- (to taste or perceive) that is also the source of sage, savant, savvy, savor, sapid, sapient, and insipid.]

"I am a recidivist, frequently guilty of overwriting and overciting. But I am at least a resipiscent recidivist. I have come around to the view that, though it may take discipline to cut more quickly to the chase and to doff the security blanket that writers weave from string citations, we, as judges, must dedicate ourselves to the task."
Excerpt from Hon. Bruce M. Selya; In Search of Less; Texas Law Review; Volume 74, 1996.

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