Here’s a list of some words you always have to look up so you can improve your vocabulary
Nonplussed
There’s so much going on with nonplussed. First of all, if non- means “not” (nontoxic) or “unimportant” (nonissues), what is being negated? What is the opposite of being plussed?
It turns out that nonplus comes from the Latin words non plus, meaning “no more,” and originally referred to a point in reasoning or argument at which “one is unable to proceed or decide,” according to Noah Webster’s definition from 1828. It meant “a state of bafflement or perplexity,” a synonym of quandary.
Nonplussed, therefore, means “perplexed.”
Anodyne
Sometimes words sort of seem to telegraph their meaning: pernicious sounds like a bad thing rather than a good thing, and beatific sounds like something to be desired as opposed to something to be avoided.
This is all fairly subjective, of course, but the sounds of words can have an effect on how we perceive them.
Anodyne doesn’t give us many clues in that way. It turns out that anodyne is a good thing: it means “serving to alleviate pain” or “innocuous,” from the Greek word with similar meanings.
Supercilious
Supercilious is a five-syllable word used to describe people who are arrogant and haughty or give off a superior attitude. It comes from the Latin word meaning “eyebrow,” and was used in Latin to refer to the expression of arrogant people, and this meaning was transferred to English.
Amusingly, the word supercilious was added to some dictionaries in the 1600s—a time when many Latin words were translated literally into English—with the meanings “pertaining to the eyebrows” or “having great eyebrows.”
This use is now rare enough to raise an eyebrow.
Stochastic
This word has been in the news in recent years, but still has a ring of scientific or legal jargon—sending many people to the dictionary to check its meaning.
In scientific and technical uses, stochastic usually means “involving probability” or “determined by probability,” and is frequently paired with words like demand, model, processing, and volatility. Stochastic comes from the Greek word meaning “skillful at aiming,” which had become a metaphor for “guessing.”
Anathema
Anathema means “something or someone that is strongly disliked” and was initially used to refer to a person who had been excommunicated from the Catholic church. It came from Greek through Latin into English with the meaning of “curse” or “thing devoted to evil,” but today refers to anything that is disapproved of or to be avoided.
There is a strangeness about the way this word is used in a sentence. Because anathema is usually used without an or the, as in “raincoats are anathema to high fashion” or “those ideas are anathema in this class” it may seem just odd enough to send people to the dictionary when they encounter it.