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Lake Superior State University releases a list every New Year's Eve of words and phrases that it would like to see disappear. A fellow Michigan institution, Wayne State University, takes a different approach: as a new year starts, the university releases a list of words that have been neglected and that deserve greater use. Here's this year's list, released Tuesday, with the university's definitions, and a sentence using each word.
Insuperable
- Impossible to overcome.
- He never considered an obstacle insuperable; if a mountain were in his path, he'd simply learn to climb.
Eucatastrophe
- A sudden and favorable resolution of events in a story; a happy ending.
- No matter how convoluted the story gets, every romantic comedy ends in a eucatastrophe.
Frangible
- Fragile; brittle.
- He picked up the frangible remains of the stained-glass display, which promptly fell apart in his hands.
Couth
- Cultured, refined and well mannered.
- Her couth delivery was a relief following the blithering performance of her predecessor.
Compunction
- A feeling of guilt or moral scruple that prevents or follows the doing of something bad.
- He unleashed the flurry of tweets with no compunction about the bile he spewed.
Recondite
- (Of a subject or knowledge) little known; abstruse.
- He couldn't pass a history quiz to save his life, but the voracious reader was a repository of facts and recondite information.
Nugatory
- Of no value or importance.
- He rambled on for hours, his big words masking the nugatory contribution he made to the debate.
Bilious
- Spiteful; bad-tempered.
- He was in a bilious mood, given that it was Monday morning and he hadn't yet had his coffee.
Littoral
- Relating to or situated on the shore of the sea or a lake.
- We drove along Michigan's west coast, passing a variety of littoral towns and villages.
Picaresque
- Relating to an episodic style of fiction dealing with the adventures of a rough and dishonest but appealing hero.
- The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn is one of the most picaresque novels ever written.
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