Ink Tea Stone Leaf

Welcome back to my weekly series, Vocab 128, in which I sit down with pen and paper and write 128 words beginning with the same letter, in more or less the order that I think of them, before scanning the page and posting it here. The result is a flex of my vocabulary muscles, an exposure of my handwriting to the world, and perhaps an insight into the psychology of my word associations.

Generally, I avoid words that are merely alternate forms of other words, and when I think of such a word I generally default to the appropriate noun form. Proper nouns I exclude as a rule (but we’ll see how that goes once I get to X).

P turned out to be just about the easiest letter to think up 128 words for; I left so many great words on the table, as it were, like “pugilism,” “pandemonium,” “pterosaur,” and “pimp.” I just didn’t think of them in time before I reached the end of the page! P is fertile ground indeed.

But uf, next week is Q. That is not going to be as easy as P.

This week’s list includes both a formal, Latin term for a part of the human sexual anatomy, and a vulgar, Anglo-Saxon-ish term for a different part of the human sexual anatomy. If that bothers you, then be reassured, it’s also a harmless synonym for “cat.”

How odd that I thought up “phytoplankton” before I simply thought of “plankton.” As soon as I had written it down, I blinked and said “well I can’t write them both down…”

I will admit, having “phantom” and “phantasm” together is thin ice. If you like, imagine I added “-agoria” to the second.

This week’s definition from American Heritage Dictionary:

pru·ri·ent (prrē-ənt)

adj.

1.

a. Characterized by an inordinate interest in sex: prurient thoughts.

b. Arousing or appealing to an inordinate interest in sex: prurient literature.

2. Inordinately interested in matters of sex; lascivious.

[Latin prūriēns, prūrient-, present participle of prūrīre, to yearn for, itch; see preus- in the Appendix of Indo-European roots.]