Vivify \VIV-uh-fy\, transitive verb:

1. To endue with life; to make alive; to animate.
2. To make more lively or intense.

Examples of how the word is used:

• Can the writer isolate and vivify all in experience that most deeply engages our intellects and our hearts? - Annie Dillard
• Stories not only provide context for statistical statements but can illustrate and vivify them as well. - John Allen Paulos
• They collaborated on, and for our benefit specialized in, like paleontologists, the painstaking reconstruction of vanished jokes from extant tag lines. They could vivify old New Yorker cartoons, source of many tag lines. - Annie Dillard

Vivify comes from French vivifier, from Late Latin vivificare, from Latin vivus, alive.

Billet-doux \bil-ay-DOO\, noun;

plural billets-doux \bil-ay-DOO(Z)\:

1. A love letter or note.

 Examples of how the word is used:

• Perhaps she just looked first into the bouquet, to see whether there was a billet-doux hidden among the flowers; but there was no letter. - William Makepeace Thackeray
• This is very amusing, Paul, writing critics little billet-doux in one's head is always good for a giggle, but you really ought to find yourself a pot and get it boiling, don't you think? - Stephen King

In French, billet-doux means "sweet note;" or "short note" (billet, "note" + doux, "sweet," from Latin dulcis).

Emolument \ih-MOL-yuh-muhnt\, noun:

1. The wages or perquisites arising from office, employment, or labor; gain; compensation.

Examples of how the word is used:

• The record indicates that few grandees who pleaded poverty to avoid service were left without substantial maintenance grants and emoluments and that the Crown gladly financed their luxurious military lifestyles.  Fernando Gonzales de Leon,
• Although not very rich, he is easy in his circumstances and would not with a view to emolument alone wish for employment.- Henry Dundas

Emolument derives from Latin emolumentum, originally a sum paid to a miller for grinding out one's wheat, from molere, "to grind." It is related to molar, the "grinding" tooth.

Chimera \ky-MIR-uh\, noun:

1. (Capitalized) A fire-breathing she-monster represented as having a lion's head, a goat's body, and a serpent's tail.
2. Any imaginary monster made up of grotesquely incongruous parts.
3. An illusion or mental fabrication; a grotesque product of the imagination.
4. An individual, organ, or part consisting of tissues of diverse genetic constitution, produced as a result of organ transplant, grafting, or genetic engineering.

Examples of how the word is used:

• Asa Whitney, with no previous experience and having nothing but his faith and self-assurance to tell him he was not pursuing a chimera, began to outline how he would get a railroad across the vast, uninhabited middle of the American continent to the Pacific shores, where the lure of Asia beckoned, within reach.- David Haward Bain
• These "chimeras" can be created because of our power--derived from the recombinant DNA technology developed in the early 1970s--to move DNA from one species to another.- Bryan Appleyard

Chimera comes from Latin chimaera, from Greek chimaira "she-goat, chimera."

Recherche \ruh-sher-SHAY\, adjective:

1. Uncommon; exotic; rare.
2. Exquisite; choice.
3. Excessively refined; affected.
4. Pretentious; overblown.

Examples of how the word is used:

• . . .recherche topics interesting only to university specialists. - Katharine Washburn and John F. Thornton
• She was mocking the pretensions of the cookery writer who insists on recherche ingredients not because of their qualities but their snob value. - Angela Carter
• In recent years, Garber's appetite for the rigors of theory seems to have diminished. The books have kept coming, but the italics-heavy meditations and the recherche terminology have receded. - Zoë Heller

Recherche comes from French, from rechercher, "to seek out," from re + chercher, "to look for, to seek."

Copse \KOPS\, noun:

1. A thicket or grove of small trees.

Examples of how the word is used:

• A lit window shone from between the trees below them, then vanished again as the car dipped over a ditch and passed through a copse.- Kate Bingham
• They sang freely in the copses and thickets round Bohain, and in the ruins of the mediaeval castle where he played as a boy. - Hilary Spurling

Copse derives from Old French copeiz, "a thicket for cutting," from coper, couper, "to cut." It is related to coupon, at root "the part that is cut off."

Disport \dis-PORT\, intransitive verb:

• To amuse oneself in light or lively manner; to frolic.

transitive verb:

1. To divert or amuse.
2. To display.

Examples of how the word is used:

• If you confine the kids' drinking to the college area, they will disport there and lessen the problem of the drunken car ride coming back from the out-of-town bar. - William F. Buckley Jr
• I had to laugh, picturing Stuart and me in a red enamel tub, disporting ourselves among the suds. - Jacquelyn Mitchard, The Most Wanted
• Few of the "carriage ladies and gentlemen" who disport themselves in Newport during the summer months, yachting and dancing through the short season, then flitting away to fresh fields and pastures new, realize that their daintily shod feet have been treading historic ground, or care to cast a thought back to the past. - Eliot Gregory
• those dolphins and narwhals who disport themselves upon the edges of old maps. - Virginia Woolf

Disport derives from Old French desporter, "to divert," from des-, "apart" (from Latin dis-) + porter, "to carry" (from Latin portare) -- hence to disport is at root "to carry apart, or away" (from business or seriousness).

Clandestine \klan-DES-tin\, adjective:

1. Characterized by, done in, or executed with secrecy or concealment, esp. for purposes of subversion or deception.

Examples of how the word is used:

• One of the many shiny art panels at the back of the room is actually a clandestine two-way mirror (look carefully, the color is slightly different). Back in the day (perhaps now) it allowed managers to survey service and presentation, which are still impeccable.- Ike DeLorenzo
• I was commanded by Paramount's publicists -- the Legion of Women With Clipboards -- to come alone to an advance, clandestine screening of "Star Trek" a couple of weeks ago.- Hank Stuever
• They can also stealthily enlist a computer into so-called botnets - computers that have been clandestinely networked to perform tasks without the knowledge of their owners and operators.- Scott Duke

Clandestine is from Latin clandestīnus, probably a blend of clam-de, secretly and intestīnus, internal. 

Sources:

www.dictionary.com

Article Last updated: 22 February 2010