Carolina Institute for Faith & Culture

Benign is an adjective meaning “mild or favorable (result). Gentle, kind, good.” It is often used in relation to medical cases, like “The tumor was benign.” According to www.etymonline.com, the […]

Paul Schleifer According to www.dictionary.com, cacophony means “harsh discordance of sound; dissonance; a discordant and meaningless mixture of sounds.” The etymology, according to www.etymonline.com, is actually kind of fun: “1650s, […]

Paul Schleifer Enervate is one of those words that means the opposite of what you might think it means. It sounds something like energize, right? So you might think it […]

Paul Schleifer Swank, to English speakers in the US, means “fancy, elegant and showy.” In the UK, swank can also be a verb “to display one’s wealth, knowledge, or achievements […]

Paul Schleifer According to the OED, taciturn means “Characterized by silence or disinclination to conversation; reserved in speech; saying little; uncommunicative.” The first recorded use is from the Tobias Smollett […]

Paul Schleifer According to the OED, evanescent is an adjective describing something “That is on the point of vanishing or becoming imperceptible” or something “That quickly vanishes or passes away; […]

Paul Schleifer This is a new one for me. In fact, it is so new that it draws the red squiggly line under it in MicroSoft Word. Adultescent refers to […]

Paul Schleifer Royal is an adjective that means “of or related to a king, queen, or other sovereign.” There are also noun forms of royal, but the chief one, royals, […]

Paul Schleifer The noun egress means three different but similar things: “the act of going out,” “the place where one goes out,” or “the right to go out.” There is […]

Paul Schleifer Facile is primarily an adjective, but it has a variety of meanings, in part depending upon the type of noun that it is modifying. The OED lists its […]

Paul Schleifer Babble is a flexible word. As a verb, it can be intransitive (used without an object) or transitive (used with an object). It means “to utter sounds or […]