Sunday, September 25, 2011

Smiley Face Words

Found in the last batch of student papers (note: they have a 6th grade writing ability, 8th grade vocabulary, and senior level conceptual ability).

Clinquant - imitation gold leaf
Poltroonery - extreme cowardice
contumelious - abusive

I've never seen any of these words before, but upon reference, they were used perfectly. "To put it another way: they first struck me as mere clinquant, but turned out to have substance." Who knows what obscure thesaurus they dug these out of...  

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