Word day

As I have mentioned earlier I like to learn new peculiar words. And usually these new words show up one at a time which makes it easier to learn them. But today I've come across a whole fountain of exciting words and I'm not quite sure how to deal with it.

It all started out nicely when I was reading a research paper which had some exceptionally well written prose. The research content was good alright but it was equally readable for the language. So, in the middle of the paper I come across the word "chutzpah". Never heard of before but clearly derived from Hebrew. Clearly a useful word.

As a matter of fact I've taken two lessons in Hebrew. I have a friend who is pretty much fluent in Hebrew and he was going to give a course in it. Since he had very little teaching experience he wanted to practice lecturing and for that he needed some students. I happily volunteered. But I can't say I remember much of it now though.

The next word that showed up today was "trifecta". Exotic alright and semi-useful. But two words in a day is one too much if you don't want to spend too much energy on learning them.

But then the real killer came. A link to the site wordsmith.org. A complete treasure trove of cool exotic words. But it might be a bit more than I am ready to handle. We'll see what I do with it. Btw, I got the link from the freakonomics blog which have provided exotic words before.