Dictionary of Emotions: Words for Feelings, Moods, & Emotions by Patrick Michael Ryan
Someone recommended this as a vocabulary builder and I thought it'd be more interesting than it was, but there was some value in leafing through it. It's basically a dictionary, but, hey, I'm exactly the sort of person who reads dictionaries. I dog-eared when there were words I didn't really know well. (Many of them I had heard, but was off a bit on what they meant, assuming this author is correct.)
Agape: selfless love without sexual implications (I needed to look up how to pronounce it)
Atrabilious: irritable as if suffering from indegestion
Barracked: Heckled or Jeered
Bathetic: insincerely emotional
Captious: prone to petty objections
Cavalier: gallant or courtly (that's not what I thought it meant.)
Chary: greatly cautious and wary (pronounced "cherry")
Disrelish: dislike or distaste
Dysphoric: unwell or unhappy from distress
Emulous: eager to surpass others
Etiolated: weak from stunted growth or development
Execrated: loathed and/or cursed by another
Fashed: troubled or worried
Galled: pained from rubbing the skin (I didn't know that!)
Inimical: not friendly
Liverish: irritable, as if suffering from indigestion
Lubricious: lustful in an intentional and/or offensive way
Mordant: harshly ironic or sinister
Moribund: near the point of death
Nonplussed: filled with bewilderment
Phlegmatic: Having little emotion; calm or sluggish
Recreant: abjectly fearful; cowardly
Sagacious: acutely insightful and wise
Saturnine: heavy, slow, and gloomy; bitter or scornful
Splenetic: very irritable (see "Liverish", above)
Trenchant: clearly or sharply defined in the mind
Truculent: defiantly aggressive
As a 12 year old I studied Spanish, then at 13 I took Latin, then from 14-18 French, then 18-22 German. English borrows words so liberally from all of those that I'm glad I focused on languages so much as a teenager. But I'm 55 now and noticing that there's still a lot of English for me to master. (Note: I'm back taking Spanish now, I'm 11 months into doing Spanish lessons every day.)
Agape: selfless love without sexual implications (I needed to look up how to pronounce it)
Atrabilious: irritable as if suffering from indegestion
Barracked: Heckled or Jeered
Bathetic: insincerely emotional
Captious: prone to petty objections
Cavalier: gallant or courtly (that's not what I thought it meant.)
Chary: greatly cautious and wary (pronounced "cherry")
Disrelish: dislike or distaste
Dysphoric: unwell or unhappy from distress
Emulous: eager to surpass others
Etiolated: weak from stunted growth or development
Execrated: loathed and/or cursed by another
Fashed: troubled or worried
Galled: pained from rubbing the skin (I didn't know that!)
Inimical: not friendly
Liverish: irritable, as if suffering from indigestion
Lubricious: lustful in an intentional and/or offensive way
Mordant: harshly ironic or sinister
Moribund: near the point of death
Nonplussed: filled with bewilderment
Phlegmatic: Having little emotion; calm or sluggish
Recreant: abjectly fearful; cowardly
Sagacious: acutely insightful and wise
Saturnine: heavy, slow, and gloomy; bitter or scornful
Splenetic: very irritable (see "Liverish", above)
Trenchant: clearly or sharply defined in the mind
Truculent: defiantly aggressive
As a 12 year old I studied Spanish, then at 13 I took Latin, then from 14-18 French, then 18-22 German. English borrows words so liberally from all of those that I'm glad I focused on languages so much as a teenager. But I'm 55 now and noticing that there's still a lot of English for me to master. (Note: I'm back taking Spanish now, I'm 11 months into doing Spanish lessons every day.)