Word count: 274 words
Reading time: About 1 minute
Increase your vocabulary and you’ll make your writing much more precise. That’s why I provide a word of the week. Today’s word: virescent.
I’m re-reading Spunk and Bite right now — a marvellous book on writing by the inimitable Art Plotnik. Let me tell you: I feel skittish using the words “marvellous” and “inimitable” when speaking about Plotnik. They are too hackneyed. Too lily-livered. Too lame.
I say this because Plotnik is also the author of Better Than Great. His subtitle gives away the theme: A Plenitudinous Compendium of Wallopingly Fresh Superlatives. Essentially, the book is a thesaurus for superlatives. I keep it by my desk and use it every week.
Returning to Spunk and Bite, however, I remain charmed by Plotnik’s wit. I don’t like all of his writing — I find some of his sentences too dense for my taste (I’m more of an E.B. White fan.) But I am in awe of his vocabulary. Here is a sentence from Spunk:
Jessant shoots erupted like virescent starbursts.
Two of those words are new to me. Not just virescent but also jessant. The former, an adjective, means “becoming green or somewhat greenish” and the word dates back to 1825, from the Latin virescens, which is the present participle of virescere, meaning, “to become green.” I intend to remember it by linking it to the French word vert, for green.
The word jessant, also an adjective, means something that springs up or emerges and is generally applied to plants or animals. It is thought to come from Middle French, although the origins are unclear.
