Note: Today’s vocabulary comes from my high school days, an actual English assignment I turned in one week, lo, oh-so-many years ago. My apologies
1. intrepid — dauntless
The intrepid explorer carefully circuited around the yellow patch of snow as he neared the pole’s barber shop on his maggot-driven sled.
2. labyrinth — maze
Corn in ancient times was so precious that indians used to hide it in a labyrinth, which is how it got the name maize.
3. nomad — wanderer
The hungry nomads were forced to kill their transportation and eat the red, meaty camel guts.
4. ostentatious — intended to attract notice
He wore a pendant in the shape of a flaming cross, an ostentatious symbol of his membership in the Audubon Society.
5. paradox — one whose character is inconsistent
He entered the girl’s restroom, and the way that the toilet seat was up struck him as a curious paradox to what he had expected.
6. pathos — the quality that arouses feelings of sympathy
To arouse pathos and public support for himself, the presidential candidate ordered his wife killed by having her eaten by a titmouse.
7. pensive — engrossed in serious, quiet reflection
He sat in pensive thought as he tried to determine which of the six beauties deserved the $1.98.
8. poignant — painful and afflicting
After the furor had died down, he was overcome with a poignant realization that he would never beat his wife again; she was dead.
9. reticent — uncommunicative
The corpse remained reticent about the nature of his death, only rambling about inconsequential matters such as the weather, a girl he had gone out with at fourteen years of age, and his latest novel, dealing with the oppression of the lower-class midgets of left Australia.
10. succinct — terse
Let me be succinct.