Test Your Lexical Command

There are busy days and there are days like today. My brain was primed and ready to create, but with virtually nothing to do, I settled for thumbing through my pocket thesaurus for a while. Overall, Miriam-Webster’s Pocket Thesaurus is greatly lacking, but I did find some nice words to satiate my intellectual hunger. And what better way to share this knowledge than to give an old-fashioned vocab quiz.

So get out some college rule notebook paper, I’ll give you the words today and the definitions tomorrow. See how many you can get (I would have gotten 0 out of 10), don’t cheat off your neighbor’s test, and make sure to use a #2 pencil.

You may begin.


1. couchant

2. galumph

3. pasquinade

4. otiose

5. coxcomb

6. thaumaturgy

7. animadversion

8. frowzy

9. pap

10. raillery