25 Smart Synonyms You Should Be Using

A brangle is a squabble or a noisy argument; to embrangle someone is to throw them into a quandary or to utterly perplex them. An embranglement is a tricky, confusing situation.

If you’ve come down with the flu you might be feeling febrile, or feverish. It might only be a febricula (that’s a light or passing fever), but nevertheless, you might need a febrifuge (a drug that lowers your temperature).

If something glidders, it freezes over, which makes something gliddery very slippery, as if covered in ice.

That’s the medical name for this curious phenomenon, which is also called gooseflesh, henflesh, or goose-pimpling.

It’s a little on the old-fashioned side, but idoneous, derived from the Latin word idoneus, makes a perfectly, well, appropriate replacement for words like proper, fit, and suitable.

Derived from a Latin word meaning “to boast” or “speak out,” jactance or jactancy is vainglorious boasting.

A word from Scots dialect but with its roots in Scandinavia, kenspeck or kenspeckle means “easily recognizable” or “conspicuous.”

Laodicea was a city in ancient Asia Minor. According to the biblical Book of Revelation, the people of Laodicea were known for their religious apathy, their fair-weather faith, and their lukewarm interest in the church—all of which prompted a pretty stern letter from St. John. As a result, a Laodicean is an apathetic, indifferent, or unconcerned person when it comes to religion.

A mephitis is a noxious, foul-smelling fume emanating from inside the earth, and anything that smells as bad as that is mephitic. Case in point: Skunks were known as “mephitic weasels” in the 19th century (and the scientific name of the striped skunk is still Mephitis mephitis).

As well as being another name for a ship’s purser (the steward in charge of the ship’s accounts), a nipcheese is a mean, penny-pinching person. Feel free to also call your most miserly friend a nip-farthing, a shut-purse, or a pinch-plum.

If something obliquates, then it turns or bends to the side. The word is derived from the same root as the word oblique.

Ironically, the thesaurus is full of weird and wonderful words for people who don’t say very much. In addition to pauciloquent, people who like to keep things brief can be laconic, synoptic, or breviloquent.

Quintessence is already a fairly smart-sounding word, but you can up the stakes with quiddity. Derived from a Latin word meaning “who,” quiddity refers to the very essence or nature of something, or a distinctive feature or characteristic.

The word riant, meaning “cheerful” or “mirthful,” is derived via French from the Latin word for “laugh.” A riant landscape or image is one that makes you happy or is pleasurable to look at.

A saccade is an involuntary twitch or movement of the eye—and, figuratively, that makes someone who is saccadic characteristically fidgety, twitchy, or restless.

To tergiversate literally means “to turn your back on” something, but more loosely, it means to dodge a question or issue, or to avoid a straightforward explanation.

Probably originally meant to be onomatopoeic, ululation is a howling sound like that made by wolves. More figuratively, to ululate can be used to mean “to bewail” or “lament.”

Derived from the Latin word for a soothsayer or seer, to vaticinate is to prophesize or predict something.

Wanchance is an old Scots dialect word for misfortune. Derived from that, the adjective wanchancy has fallen into more widespread use to mean “unlucky,” “ill-fated,” or in some contexts, “uncanny” or “eerily coincidental.”

There are more yester– words in the dictionary than just yesterday. In addition to yesternight, there’s yesterweek, yestereve, and yestermorn.

Zoilus was one of the harshest critics of the ancient Greek writer Homer, and he was known for his scathing, nit-picking attacks on Homer’s Iliad and Odyssey. Derived from him, a zoilist is an overbearingly harsh critic, and unduly harsh criticism is zoilism.