“Word of the Day” Provides an Occasional Smile

I know I’ve mentioned that my mom and I have a good time joking about the “Word of the Day” on dictionary.com, and kidding each other about our diametrically opposing political views.  Here’s my email to her this morning that combines the two:

Subject: Fwd: pestiferous | Word of the Day – October 15, 2017

pestiferous  [pe-STIF-er-uh s]

adjective

[1] bringing or bearing disease

[2] pestilential

Hi, Mom.

I got two good laughs out of this.  One is the word itself, just thinking how pompous I’d sound using it.  The other is the second definition, “pestilential,” which is probably even worse than “pestiferous.”

As always, I like to use new words in sentences so as to incorporate them into my working vocabulary. How about this?

Washington had become pestiferous, or, dare I say pestilential, so we needed an honest and intelligent president like Donald Trump to, in his bold and incisive words, “drain the swamp.”  And Heavens to Betsy, he was expeditious; within a matter of a few months he had installed billionaires and sycophants in all cabinet positions. so as to bring down our public schools, our environment, our healthcare system, our rights under the First Amendment, the esteem we formerly had on the world stage, and the personal safety from nuclear weaponry we had enjoyed for half a century….literally everything that anyone cared about….except billionaires that is, who received enormous tax cuts.