L
- He was so emotionally labile that he could be crying one minute and laughing the next.
- Radioactive isotopes are labile because they undergo change.
- His lachrymose apology didn’t move me; he was going to have to do a lot more than shed a few tears before I was ready to forgive him.
- Beth’s lachrymose portrayal of the heroine didn’t work very well since the play was supposed to be a comedy.
- We took her “good” as high praise indeed, since that was more than our laconic band teacher usually said in a whole week.
- His laconic public persona was just a front; once you got to know him he wouldn’t shut up.
Need an antonym? Garrulous and loquacious are both opposites to laconic.
- Those two push-ups I attempted filled me with lassitude for the rest of the day.
- It wouldn’t be so bad to be in a constant state of lassitude as long as I could have someone to wave palm fronds over me and feed me grapes, since I would be too exhausted to do it myself.
- His first novel was so universally lauded that it seemed almost impossible that his second book could live up to the expectations.
- It is a good idea to laud your partner’s skills at house cleaning; otherwise you’ll just end up having to do more of it yourself.
- No expense was spared in giving the astronauts a lavish homecoming, complete with welcome feasts and a parade down Fifth Avenue, after their arduous mission.
As a verb, to lavish is to bestow something in great quantities, or to cover liberally.
- Though Ryan loves to run through 18 holes of disc golf in 100-degree weather, I am left too lethargic to so much as pick up my bag.
The noun form of lethargic is lethargy.
- Ben can sit on the balcony for hours doing almost nothing, but his seeming lethargy is actually an intense concentration that most people don’t reach because of all of their activity.
- We discovered that she was quite the libertine when it was revealed that she was having affairs on three different continents at the same time.
- Casanova has become the archetypal libertine in popular culture, the very embodiment of a single-minded pursuit of pleasure.
Libertine can also be an adjective, as in his libertine disregard for the moral conventions of the day.
Match each word in the first column with its definition in the second column. Check your answers here.
| 1. lassitude |
a. travel around |
| 2. jejune |
b. immature |
| 3. laud |
c. agree with |
| 4. labile |
d. joking |
| 5. jocose |
e. open to change |
| 6. laconic |
f. tearful |
| 7. itinerate |
g. lively |
| 8. lavish |
h. listlessness |
| 9. libertine |
i. praise highly |
| 10. jibe |
j. unrestrained by morality |
| 11. lethargic |
k. sluggish |
| 12. lachrymose |
l. extravagant |
| 13. kinetic |
m. terse |
- The painter limned the old man’s face in such exquisite and expressive lines that it almost looked as if he might open his mouth and speak.
- The surveyors limned the valley in order to provide an exact topographical map for the construction crew to follow.
- The once-limpid pond had become a nasty soup of algae, beer cans, and a random tennis shoe or two.
- The article’s limpid style was a welcome break from the dense and convoluted theoretical stuff I’d been reading for days’ in other words, its limpidity was a relief.
- He was lionized everywhere after winning the Nobel Prize in medicine.
- Modern society has come to lionize wealth and business success.
- The ship listed to one side after running aground on a rock and filling partially with water.
- After a little too much celebrating, he was listing badly to one side and threatening to topple over as he walked up the front steps.
- I knew something had to be wrong when my usually loquacious friend didn’t say a word for two whole minutes.
- His loquacity was legendary; in fact, he held the county record for uninterrupted talking at three days, ten hours and fourteen minutes.
- The lucid water in the tidepool allowed us to see the bottom clearly.
- Despite the lucidity of Lucia’s explanation, which allowed me to understand the concept for the first time, I remained skeptical about the method’s practicality.
- The truck lumbered about like a drunken dinosaur.
- His usually lumbering gait gave no hint to his remarkable grace as a skater.
- The luminous stars and full moon made it as bright as if it were the middle of the day.
- It was amazing that he could write such luminous prose when his speech was so confusing and thoughtless.
Many words having to do with light have the same root, such as illuminate and even luster. Just remember Lumiere, the candle from the animated Beauty and the Beast, and you have your word association.