Here’s a list of more words you always have to look up
Bemused
Bemused is so close in sound to amused that they have blended together in usage, but they started as very different ideas: bemused originally meant “confused” or “bewildered,” a meaning stemming from the idea of musing or thinking carefully about something, which may be required in order to assess what isn’t easy to understand.
Many people insist that “confused” is still the only correct way to use bemused, but the joining of meanings with amused has resulted in the frequent use of this word to mean “showing wry or tolerant amusement,” a shade of meaning created from the combination.
Solipsistic
Solipsistic is a fancy word that means “extremely egocentric” or “self-referential.” It comes from the Latin roots solus (“alone,” the root of sole) and ipse (“self”). As this Latinate fanciness implies, this is a word used in philosophical treatises and debates. The egocentrism of solipsism has to do with the knowledge of the self, or more particularly the theory in philosophy that your own existence is the only thing that is real or that can be known.
Calling an idea or a person solipsistic can be an insult that identifies a very limited and usually self-serving perspective, or it can be a way to isolate one’s perspective in a useful way. It’s a word with an abstract meaning, which is a good reason to check that meaning from time to time.
Tautology
A tautology is a needless or meaningless repetition of words or ideas. It’s a word about words that can be used in academic writing or as a hifalutin way of saying “redundancy,” as in “a beginner who just started learning.”
Since we value both clarity and originality, especially in writing, tautology is a word that usually carries a negative connotation and is used as a way to criticize a poorly formed sentence or a poorly argued position.
Perspicacious
The ability to see clearly is a powerful metaphor for being able to understand something. Being perspicacious means having an ability to notice and understand things that are difficult or not obvious, and it comes from the Latin verb meaning “to see through.”
Perspicacious means “perceptive,” and is often used along with words that have positive connotations like witty, clever, wise, alert, and insightful (another word that uses seeing as a metaphor for understanding).
Peripatetic
Peripatetic means “going from place to place,” and comes from the Greek word that means “to walk.” You can say someone who moves frequently has a “peripatetic existence,” or someone who has changed careers several times has had a “peripatetic professional trajectory.”
The root word “to walk” is usually more of a metaphor in the modern use of this word—it means frequent changes of place, yes, but it doesn’t necessarily mean that you are wearing out your shoes.
The original use of this word did use “walking” as a more literal image, however: it was a description of the way that the philosopher Aristotle preferred to give lectures to his students while walking back and forth, and the word has subsequently taken on a more metaphorical meaning.