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Word Wednesday: Perspicacious


per·spi·ca·cious
adj \ˌpər-spə-ˈkā-shəs\

Definition of PERSPICACIOUS
: of acute mental vision or discernment : keen
— per·spi·ca·cious·ly adverb
— per·spi·ca·cious·ness noun
— per·spi·cac·i·ty noun

Origin of PERSPICACIOUS
Latin perspicac-, perspicax, from perspicere
First Known Use: 1640

Use it in a sentence!
People who don’t enjoy Harry Potter obviously lack perspicacity.
I might kill myself if my children aren’t perspicacious.
People with telepathy absolutely possess great amounts of perspicaciousness.

Incidentally, Word’s spellchecker doesn’t recognize perspicaciousness as a word. I hate when it tells me I’m wrong when I know I have spelled something right. It makes me feel like I am going crazy and then I end up typing, deleting, and re-typing the same word about ten times before deciding to move on.
I received this word in a “Word of the Day” email a loooong time ago. It has always stuck with me because it sounds so much like a really sophisticated insult. It’s not really insulting, in fact, it is complimentary.
I used it once in a conversation with my husband. He asked me what it meant and I told him to look it up for himself. Instead, he has just started throwing it in here and there, in different contexts, in attempts to discover its meaning:
Me: “I’m feeling tired.”
Norris: “Or, are you feeling perspicacious?”
Me: “You are being such a dork right now.”
Norris: “So I’m being perspicacious.”
Every time I tell him that he doesn’t have it quite right and admonish him to look it up online. Every time, he refuses. And every time it makes me laugh.
So there you have it. Call someone in your life perspicacious today, and watch their face light up!
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Comments

  1. Hanna C. HowardOctober 12, 2011 at 4:13 PM

    This is a very Hermione-ish word. Not necessarily because she would use it (though she might very well), but because it makes me think of her.

    On the downside, I was unable to find an email subscription to your blog. It's possible I'm just dense, but it's also possible that you need to get yourself an email widget (may I recommend Feed Burner?) and then notify me immediately when you have done so.

    You're so perspicacious. (Which also reminds me of Mary Poppins.)

    ReplyDelete

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