2 January 2017

• Interminable: Endless or apparently endless
• She began to think that solving the interminable problem of work-life balance, rather than being an employee perk, could instead be central to her job. (Brigid Schulte) 

24 September 2016

• Prelate: A bishop or other high ecclesiastical dignitary
• The prelates included Egypt's grand Imam. (Robert Fisk)
• Doleful: Causing grief of misfortune
• The presence in Grozny of Grand Imam al-Tayeb of Egypt was particularly infuriating for the Saudis who have poured millions of dollars into Egyptian economy since Brigadier-General-President al-Sissi staged his doleful military coup more than three years ago. (Robert Fisk)
• Fawning: Displaying exaggerated flattery or affection
• What, the Saudis must be asking themselves, has happened to the fawning leaders who would normally grovel to the Kingdom? (Robert Fisk)

12 July 2016

• Unfetter: Release from restrain or inhibition
• Sawatsky felt comfortable enough this summer to invite me to Bristol and offer unfettered access to his seminar. (David Folkenflik)
• Eviscerate: To take out the internal organ of an animal
• John Sawatsky methodically eviscerates the nation's most prominent television journalists. (David Folkenflik)
• Cross the Rubicon: To make a decision that cannot be changed later
• It can bridge the ever expanding void between stasis and evolution, which is precisely the Rubicon we have been struggling to cross for so many years. (Martin Binks) 

4 July 2016

• Oafish: Rough or clumsy and unintelligent.
• (Simon Critchley)
• Flake away: (For bits of something) to brake away from the whole gradually or from natural causes.
• Amidst all this madness, all these ghosts and memories of times passed, it feels like world around me is crumbling, slowly flaking away. (Fatima Bhutto) 
• Malleable: Capable of being shaped or formed, as by hammering or pressure. 
• Abilities of all kinds are profoundly malleable. (Heidi Grant Halvorson) 
• The human brain is malleable, making it hard to distinguish between activities for which humans might be fundamentally wired, and those for which our minds are simply adjusting to meet the demands of the moment. (Cal Newport in The New Yorker)  (14/11/22)
• Cultures are more malleable than people, and often we view foreignness as precisely that, something that won't change us. (Mark Fried) 21/11/22 

3 July 2016

• Execrable: Extremely bad or unpleasant.
• I could go on, but truly the quality of England's moving and passing was execrable.(Simon Critchley)
• Scurrilous: Making or spreading scandalous claims about someone with the intention of damaging their reputation. 
• It was rather amusing to read last week that Bild, the scurrilous but very widely-read German tabloid newspaper, even offered to recognize the legitimacy of that goal if the English decided to stay in EU. (Simon Critchley) 
• Minutiae: The small, precise or trivial details of something.
• There may have been better chroniclers who evoked the hellish minutiae of the German death machine. (Joseph Berger) 

29 January 2016

Prelapsarian: Characteristic of the time before the fall of man; unspoiled; innocent

• The notion that walling out immigrants from within or beyond Europe's borders will return the country to a Prelapsarian state, in which human labor will once more be the center of a brisk economy, is fantastical.  (Andrew Solomon)
• This is an important reminder that the world before email was no prelapsarian paradise. (Cal Newport in A World Without Email pg. 69) 17/11/2022

Forestall: Prevent or obstruct ( an anticipated event or action) by taking advance action. 

• By refusing to look at the rest of the globe, one forestalls seeing oneself. (Andrew Solomon) 

Desolation: A state of complete emptiness or destruction; great unhappiness or loneliness. 

• The ability to tolerate or even celebrate coinciding identities is one of the hallmarks of sophistication; the absence of that ability is a mark of desolation. (Andrew Solomon)

16 June 2015

• Pedantic: Ostentatious in one's learning; overly concerned with minute details or formalisms, especially in teaching
  
• Societal is the pedantic alternative to social. (Mark Nichol)

15 June 2015

• Carbon footprint: The amount of carbon dioxide or other carbon compounds released into the atmosphere as a result of the activities of a particular individual, organization, or community.
• It's worth emphasizing that the few companies that are making material progress on their carbon footprint are those with explicit emissions reduction  commitments measured in absolute terms. (Gregory Unruh) 

26 December 2007

Rapt: Deeply engrossed or absorbed.

• Suddenly the micro-forest of the turf seemed to swell and become one with the universe, and with the rapt mind of the boy contemplating it.
• The visionary theater-director Peter Brook told me he'd bring all his productions to Japan because even in his nine-hour rendition of The Mahabharata, without subtitles, Japanese audiences sat rapt. (Pico Iyer)

Snigger: a disrespectful laugh.

• Anyway, you can see why atheists snigger.

Clarion: clear and shrill

• This book is a clarion call to cower no longer.

Crosshairs: A center of interest.

• Not only did the award make the professor emeritus of philosophy at Montreal's McGill University nearly £800,000 richer, but it also brought him into the crosshairs of Richard Dawkins who, in his 2006 bestseller The God Delusion, argued that the Templeton involved "a very large sum of money given [...] usually to a scientist who is prepared to say something nice about religion".

Vituperative: Marked by harshly abusive criticism.

• Taylor's account is much more complicated. There is chronology, but hardly a straightforward narrative that might explain why the only recent bestseller about religion was written by a vituperative atheist.