Rare & Beautiful Words — Set 2: In Context flashcards
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Fill the blank: 25 of the Set 2 words, each in a fresh sentence from gardens, trails, kitchens and fairgrounds, whose clues point to one word of the pack (where a second also fits, the back says so).
Learn deck · part of Rare & Beautiful Words · written against: 200 uncommon words with their own Merriam-Webster entries, chosen for sound and precision. Updated 2026-10-10.
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Forty winters of feeding cattle in the wind had left Mr. Szabo's face ______: a deep, healthy red, not pink and not leathery brown.rubicundLight & Color
A face reddened to a healthy glow by years of fresh air is rubicund. Roseate (rosy pink) and russet (reddish-brown) are both ruled out, and incarnadine's blood-red says nothing of good health. -
Held up to the kitchen window, the jar of clover honey looked ______, glowing gold all the way through, not just tinted or coated on the surface.aureateLight & Color
Shining with a rich, gold-like glow is aureate, and this honey glows gold right through. Gilded means given a coat of gold or just a touch of gold color, which the sentence rules out, and lustrous is a soft surface sheen. -
Even read in a flat monotone, the poem is ______: lines full of soft m's and l's, like "mellow moon on meadow lane," simply sound lovely.euphoniousSound & Speech
A smooth, pleasing mix of sounds makes words euphonious, however they are read. Lilting needs a rising and falling rhythm, which a monotone takes away, and sibilant needs hissing s sounds. -
Stuck in the dugout through a two-hour rain delay, the catchers traded easy ______, puns and silly riddles flying back and forth with nobody mocking anyone or anything.badinageSound & Speech
Light joking traded back and forth to pass the time is badinage. Raillery pokes fun at someone's habits or mistakes; here nobody mocks anything. Persiflage often mocks gently and makes a joke of everything, but it can also be plain light banter.
Also right: persiflage -
Behind the ranger station, a ______ ravine of oaks, hazel and tangled blackberry hides the creek from view.boskyWeather & Nature
Land where trees and bushes grow close together is bosky. Willowy can mean full of willows, but this ravine holds oaks, hazel and blackberry. -
For months after her dog died, Corinne looked for ______ in long bike rides; they never brought her peace, but for an hour at a time she forgot the ache of missing him.nepentheMood & Feeling
A means of escaping grief by forgetting it is nepenthe, and for an hour the rides did that. Heartsease is peace of mind, which the rides never brought. -
Strutting along the pool deck in mirrored sunglasses, flexing for anyone who looked and sneering at the "amateurs" in the slow lane, the forty-year-old swim coach was a real ______.popinjayPeople & Manner
Someone puffed up with self-regard who swaggers, shows off and treats others as beneath them is a popinjay. A whippersnapper is a brash upstart with more nerve than standing, usually a young one; this forty-year-old's fault is vanity, not cheek. -
Working slowly and steadily, the tailor finished the costumes ______, with a full week to spare before opening night.betimesTime & Change
Early, or in good time, is betimes. Apace means swiftly, which "slowly and steadily" rules out. -
Gran pieced the quilt from hundreds of small triangles in a dozen colors, fitted together with no gaps or overlaps, so the finished top was ______ from edge to edge.tessellatedForm & Texture
Small shapes fitted closely in a mosaic pattern make a surface tessellated. Piebald means two colors in large patches, and dappled means a contrasting shade in scattered spots, not shapes fitted edge to edge. -
When the drizzle started at the ballpark, Mr. Ostrowski popped open his giant striped ______ and blocked the view of the whole row behind him.bumbershootPlayful Words
An umbrella, in a playful American word, is a bumbershoot. No other word of the pack names something you pop open in the rain.
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About these cards
Review status: Second-reader reviewed, with corrections applied.
Checked against:
- Senses, parts of speech and pronunciations checked against Merriam-Webster.com, the American Heritage Dictionary and the Oxford Learner's, Longman and Cambridge learner's dictionaries; all definitions, notes and example sentences are original.
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