Time To Bring Out The Thesaurus Once Again.

I have always prided myself on my knowledge of the meaning of words. I might not be the world's greatest writer, but I have always felt that I could hold my own in any word definition contest, and I always feel I should step forward and make a confidant flourish with the pen whenever the subject of words and meanings comes up at the local pub quiz.  But I don't as I have learnt that the breadth and scope of my vocabulary has planet sized holes.

The reason for this is that quiz masters and writers never ever ask things like; what does anachronistic or pusillanimous or serendipitous or reciprocity mean.  Not particularly difficult or grand words you might think - but I'd put my entire life's wealth on half the people in my local not knowing some or all of them. I know them, and a good many more, but this is not helping. The words that are asked about instead have a tendency to be strange constructions that exist but are hardly ever used outside of specialist writing or thinking. Something like 'what does a funambilist practice (tight rope walking) or what's the name for someone who collects matchboxes? (Filuminast since you ask.)  Weirdly, some of those simple souls at the pub (you know who you are) actually do know some of these aberrations. So I'm here to announce to the world that the words round is not my strength. It might even be my weakness ,(although history,science and geography would all run it close in a race to the bottom of my knowledge cache - Kevin Ashman I aint!)

These are examples of different kinds of words that have never concerned me as they would never have had me looking them up and wondering how i could get away with using them to make me sound clever. Dictionary trawling is certainly something I picked up as a dull child since I was so useless at all other subjects. I thought I could at least impress everyone with my word smitherery. And I did and I have for most of my life. But I'm not getting these darn word questions down at my local and it's really really annoying.

So I'm going to start compiling a few lists. And if I can peg enough of them together I'm going to create a study stack of them for my (and it probably will be my) use.