For never was a story of more woe...

than this of Juliet and her Romeo. Isn't that just about the best ending line ever. Being an English teacher makes me a nerd about some things (like maybe starting a blog about vocabulary words...), and one of those things is beginning and ending lines to books, plays, etc. If you start to pay attention, you'll notice that most good books grab you in the first few lines and leave you begging for more at the end. We finished Romeo and Juliet today. It's just such a sad story. No matter how many times I read it, I still kind of hope that they'll make it out this time. Sadly enough, I never get my wish. I also love some of the expressions found in Shakespeare's writing. I tend to think that our laziness as a culture has made our speech really boring. The unwillingness to learn new words and the unwillingness to use big words has made the English language somewhat simple and repetitive in many cases. Maybe that's just where I live, but it seems a bit like an epidemic. I'm sure every generation says this and the language is fine now. Either way, I really want to reintroduce some of his cool phrases. My new favorite is "hie you hence." It basically means hurry up or go quickly; at least that's the way I would use it.

Now on to my new words:
1. defer: to postpone; to yield to another
2. denigrate: to defame
3. didactic: excessively instructive (I love this word)
4. countenance: a look of approval or support; composure; appearance
5. credulous: gullible
6. covert: concealed; a hiding place
7. conundrum: a problem without a suitable solution; a riddle whose answer is a play on words
8. contention: a point put forward in a debate; a conflict
9. decadent: decaying; self-indulgent (interesting pairing huh?)
10. crass: (also a word I love) crude and insensitive

So there you have it. Most of these will probably be pretty familiar, but I figure it's always a good review. Also--I finished reading a really interesting book this weekend. It's called The Professor and the Madman. It's all about the writing of the Oxford English Dictionary. I never really thought about how one might go about creating a dictionary from scratch. It's quite a bit harder than one might think, but at least in this story, it helps to have a bored guy in an insane asylum to help you out.

I was looking in my notecard bag today. This week makes a total of 60 new words. It seems like when I hit 100 I should do some kind of review. We'll see.