My English Words List - February - 2025

cello

cello

noun

A cellist

Yo-Yo Ma is probably the best-known classical musician and Cello player in the world - but he’s also famous for his kindness, generosity, and commitment to using music to bring joy to others. - Kid Musicians, by Robin Stevenson.

gazelle

gazelle

noun

Illustration of gazelle

tokamak

tokamak

noun

A USSR stamp, 1987: Tokamak thermonuclear system

In the earyly 1950s, the Soviet theoretician I. E. Tamm and A. D. Sakharov refined Thomason and Blackman’s analysis by including magnetic coils in addition to the toroidal geometry in a device they named the Tokamak. The Tokomak uses the electric current resulting from the plasma flow to generate a helical magnetic field to produce stability in the plasma. This was so successful that in 1968 the USSR announced the production of the first quasistationary thermonuclear fusion reaction at Novosibirsk. - Nuclear Power, A very short introduction, by Maxwell Irvine

chip

chip

noun

banana chips

potato chip

chocolate chips

I had a sandwich and a bag of potato chips for lunch.

biscotto

biscotto

noun

Carquinyolis, a Catalan variation of biscotti made with whole or sliced almonds

Biscotti

hustle

hustle

noun

  • informal : a dishonest plan for getting money : scam

Not only is Bitcoin an ecological disaster, it’s a hustle, a ponzi scheme, a gift to criminals, and just stupid. There are so many useful ways to spend energy. - James Gosling

hindsight

hindsight

noun

and as we know, hindsight is anything but 20/20.

Hindsight is twenty-twenty.

fentanyl

fentanyl

noun

Trump has demanded that Canada, Mexico and China curb the flow of fentanyl into the U.S. — Courtenay Brown, Axios, 1 Feb. 2025

cannabis

cannabis

noun

Cannabis in the drying phase

Cannabis (drug)

Recreational cannabis is now legal in 24 states and three more could legalize some form of marijuana sales this year. — Will Yakowicz, Forbes, 3 Jan. 2025

marijuana

marijuana

noun

anti-marijuana legislation

upend

upend

verb

The security inspector upended my bag and dumped everything out.

A giant wave upended the surfers.

Undergraduate Upends a 40-Year-Old Data Science Conjecture

mean

mean

adjective

When someone is mean, they are not nice or kind.

How could you be so mean?

nemesis

nemesis

noun

Nemesis! Thank you. That was bugging me.

Oświęcim

Oświęcim was the site of the World War II Nazi concentration camp usually called Auschwitz.

culinary

culinary

adjective

culinary recipes

culinary schools

They serve a variety of culinary delights.

The notorious LVB was obsessively particular about making his own coffee. Unlike many composers of his day, he was a commoner and had the culinary skills for the task. It starts with grinding precisely 60 coffee beans — no more, no less. He would even count the beans out to be certain, and if he made a mistake in his count, he would start over. He did it even if he had visitors watching him. As the youngest, and without a noble title, young Beethoven was given kitchen duties, serving in the galley as a scullion.