Vocab Building

If you have found this blog because you are preparing for the GRE, then I want to recommend something that I wish I would have found about 30 days ago, when I seriously started working on my vocabulary.  Access the Oxford English Dictionary online edition via your schools library.  For me, it was simply, I went to my schools library webpage, did a search for the OED, found the link, typed in my library ID number and password and I was on the OED online.  The entries are so much better than dictionary.com or websters.com.  The OED is not only more detailed, it gives interesting information about the

• Dilatory (adj.) tending to cause delay; made for the purpose of delaying time or deferring decision or action
• The computer was created for quite the opposite of dilatory role it now serves in many consumer's lives.  
• Melancholy (n.) a mood state of sadness, introspection, or dejection 
• Mournful: expressing sorrow; inducing sadness
• Plaintive: expressing sorrow or melancholy 
• Soporific: tending to cause sleep
• Quiescent: not active or activated; in a state of repose 
• Torpor: state of rest or hibernation 
• The funeral induced melancholy, which the children counterattacked by smoking marijuana.  
• Middling (n.) a middle thing, a median (adj.) of moderate quality 
• The middling hours after awakening but before working are the best time, in my opinion, to relate to your significant other.  This is the time during which you can express love and dedication and let your partner know that your thoughts are with them while you are away at work.  
• Squall (n.) a discordant or violent scream 
• Despite my attempt to obviate noise, the obnoxious squall of the woman at Dunkin' Donut's was penetrating through my ear plugs.  
• Rapacious (adj.) inordinately given to taking; gluttonously greedy  
• The rapacious hands of the children grabbed at the candy from the unattended basket. 
• Notice how I'm using the word in a figurative sense since it is not their hand that are rapacious but their appetites, their minds, or their personalities.  
• Inordinate (adj.) not 'ordered'; not regulated, controlled, or restrained 
•  Inordinate time is wasted with frivolous actions, usually of a dilatory nature.   
• Perhaps a physiological illness in itself, an inordinate appetite is surely the cause of some cases of obesity.
• Salubrious (adj.) favorable or conducive to health 
• Fruits and vegetables are salubrious foods made by God for his creatures.   
• Irascible (adj.) easily provoked to anger; hot-tempered; passionate 
• My irascible friend Brittney often finds reasons to burnish her vituperation against sensitive soul  
• Dirge (n.) a song sung at the burial of, or in commemoration of the dead; a song of mourning or lament 
• Dirge at an end, the departed is placed in the funeral bed (Virgil's Aened).
• Onerous (adj.) of the nature of a burden; burdensome; troublesome 
• To some police officers its an onerous task, but Officer Schoolcraft enjoys walking the beat.