Sumiko's vocabulary list

As I have said elsewhere, Jill and I will do a podcast on these words. We also want others to submit similar lists of words they have trouble with so we can use them in a podcast and help everyone.

I thought I would experiment with Sumiko's list to see how it can help us learn.

The list is as follows:

opaque	But whether or not the codes lead to treasure, what captivates and infuriates cryptographers is that despite more than a century's worth of effort by the best minds and machines, the most important parts of the messages remain stubbornly opaque. check for examples
intriguingly	These messages might lead to a hidden stash of gold, silver, and jewels worth tens of millions of dollars, they might be genuine directions to a treasure that no longer exists, they might be a hoax or a joke, or, intriguingly, they might be a misunderstood charity fundraising gimmick. check for examples
hoax	These messages might lead to a hidden stash of gold, silver, and jewels worth tens of millions of dollars, they might be genuine directions to a treasure that no longer exists, they might be a hoax or a joke, or, intriguingly, they might be a misunderstood charity fundraising gimmick. check for examples
perilous	The hero undertakes a perilous adventure, outwitting villains who want to steal the treasure (as well as, perhaps, guardians who want to protect it), and eventually succeeds - only to discover that the treasure was not quite as it had been imagined after all. check for examples
absurdly	Leaving aside religious symbology and questions of historical accuracy, _The Da Vinci Code_ is just the latest in a long line of stories that follow roughly the same plot: someone discovers a series of mysterious clues (often with a code or a map thrown in) that supposedly lead to an absurdly valuable treasure. check for examples
regurgitates	The parent who's just returned from sea regurgitates squid and small fish for the youngsters to eat, and the other parent then takes a turn fishing. check for examples
merrily	I had, perhaps naievely, always thought that penguins lived only in very cold climates, but here they were in droves quite merrily hanging around like so many tourists basking on the beach on a bright summer day. check for examples
arid	Finally we turned onto a dirt road and headed out toward the Atlantic coast, where the arid steppe abruptly gave way to ocean, without any intermediate region of vegetation. check for examples
embellishment	I knew that we would see penguins in the wild on our trip to Patagonia, but I figured that would make nothing more than a nice embellishment to the story, as in, "We were so close to Antarctica, we even saw _penguins_!" check for examples
waddles	The novelty of encountering a flightless bird that lives on the ice, looks like it's wearing a tuxedo, and waddles comically when it walks wore off by the time I was five years old. check for examples
treacherous	The pass was often used by pilgrims making their way from France into Italy to visit Rome, and was known as a treacherous and forbidding spot. check for examples
seclusion	It was not for seclusion that Bernard chose this particular spot, at a snowy pass some 8,000 feet (2500m) high. check for examples
viable	If it's not commercially viable. check for examples

So what do we have here?

First we have adjectives:

opaque

arid

perilous

treacherous

viable

Let's try using these adjectives. See if you understand the meaning.

The company makes a semi-opaque type of glass for use in libraries to protect ancient documents from strong light. This requires a special kind of sand found only in the most arid areas of the country and deserts. To harvest this special sand, teams make perilous journeys through a region full of treacherous bandits. Still, the business is viable because the price for the glass is very high.

Next we have adverbs.

intriguingly

absurdly

merrily

How does the mind work? The brain is just a few kilograms of meat, like some of our other organs. This soft organ apparently controls our thoughts and our sensations. How can that be? It seems too simple an explanation, absurdly so, ridiculously so. There must be another device somewhere that controls this organ, the brain. Intriguingly, and mysteriously, research has shown that our will, our mind, our mental force, can change our own brain. It used to be thought that we were conditioned by our environment, and that the brain was formed early on in childhood and did not change. Now scientists tell us that our brain maintains its neuroplasticity, its flexibility well into old age. The power of our mental force, of our will can change our brain, and we can go merrily and happily on learning languages and transforming our brain right into old age.

Now lets look at the nouns.

hoax

embellishment

seclusion

Is this a joke or some kind of hoax? Are you trying to fool me. You may try to embellish the situation or make it seem better than it is, but the fact remains that I am not your guest here. I am your prisoner. You keep me all by myself in a small room, in total seclusion. Seclusion is something I seek when I want a quiet place to read or think. It is not something I want imposed on me. You must set me free!

We also have two verbs. These words happen to be less useful. You may learn them for this context and then not worry about them again for quite a while.

waddle

regurgitate

Penguins waddle when they walk, and the parent penguins eat fish which they regurgitate or bring back up from their own stomachs to feed their young.