5 adjectives to make you sound smart

http://www.engvid.com Do you want to impress your friends, colleagues, and teachers with more advanced vocabulary? Are you tired of using the same vocabulary again and again? In this lesson, you will improve your vocabulary by learning five advanced adjectives that will make you the intellectual life of the party! This lesson covers "maudlin", "lackadaisical", "interminable", "egregious", and "visceral". Grab a bottle of wine and get ready to enhance your lexicon! Then take the quiz here: http://www.engvid.com/5-adjectives-to-sound-smart/

TRANSCRIPT

Hi, guys. I'm Alex. Thanks for clicking, and welcome to this advanced vocabulary lesson on five adjectives to sound smart. So, in this lesson, I'm going to be looking at some uncommon adjectives that you can use in your speech and the adjectives I have chosen are understood by most native English speakers regardless, but they are a little bit more advanced and a little bit more formal. So let's look at some sentences, some vocabulary, and see if we can understand what these words mean.

The first one is: "maudlin". So, you can listen and repeat. One more time: "maudlin". All right, so let's look at the sentence:
"Looking at old photos makes me maudlin."
So, if you're looking at an old photo album of your childhood or your friends from elementary school or high school, how do you generally feel? I guess it depends on what kind of experience you had when you were a child, but in this context, I wanted it to mean like overly emotional and sentimental. Okay? So the meaning of "maudlin" we're going to put: overly - and that is supposed to be a "v" - overly emotional and - I'm going to put a plus for "and" - sentimental. Okay. So you can say, for example: "Drinking makes me maudlin." So if you drink too much and you start thinking about your past and your history, and you get very emotional, almost like teary thinking about it - you feel very maudlin. Okay?

The next adjective is: "lackadaisical". It's a very fun word to say, so say it with me: "lackadaisical". Okay, so sentence:
"Her work has been very lackadaisical lately."
Even when you think about the word and the sound of it like: "lackadaisical", it kind of sounds like lazy in a way and that actually is what it means. So lazy and careless. Lazy and careless; without care. Okay? So if I ask you: "Hey, how was your weekend? Was it productive?" And you can say: "No, I was really lackadaisical." Or: "I felt very lackadaisical." A person's work can be lackadaisical meaning that, again, lazy, careless, not a lot of attention paid to it. Okay?

All right, the next adjective is: "interminable". Okay? So say it with me: "interminable". Okay, so:
"His complaining is interminable!"
Now, when we look at this adjective, you might see in the middle: "terminable", "termina", "termina", okay, what does this word sound like? It almost sounds like "terminate". Right? Now, with the prefix: "in", this makes it negative, so not terminate, okay, not ending. So, if something is interminable, it's almost like it's endless or at least it feels like it's endless, like it's not going to end. So his complaining, the way he complains is interminable; he always complains, it doesn't end. So, basically, never ending or it feels like it's never ending. Now, at the time of this video, we are in the middle of winter in Canada and it's still going on, it's March and, you know, some of us are starting to feel that this winter is interminable; it's not going to end. This is 2014, by the way, at the time of recording.

All right, finally... Not finally, fourth. "Egregious". So very, very useful adjective.
"Sorry, but your logic is egregious."
So if someone gives you an explanation for something and the explanation, the logic is: "That doesn't make sense", like if it doesn't make any sense, it is egregious which means incredibly bad or terrible. Okay? So let's say: "Very bad". Normally, we talk about logic being egregious or a statement, something a person says as being egregious which just means it's just wrong. Okay? Now, we don't really use it to talk about people, like you can't really say: "He is egregious. He is really bad." Normally, it's things or actions that are egregious, things you say or your logic is egregious. Okay?

And finally, we have the word: "visceral". So when we look at the sentence:
"Skydiving" - which means jumping from a plane - "is an incredibly visceral experience."
So imagine jumping out of a plane, how do you feel emotionally, physically? Well, you probably do feel very emotional and your senses are, you know, engaged. So if something is visceral, it's emotional and instinctual which means that your senses are very much engaged during this activity, whatever it is.