Caesar’s English Lesson Eight

incredulous skeptical perplex confuse Word definition placid calm singular unique amiable friendly incredulous skeptical perplex confuse

Perplexed humans were incredulous of Sully, a singularly amiable and placid monster.

placid - calm The peaceful English adjective placid means tranquil, calm, untroubled. We are pleased by the quiet and undisturbed feeling of a placid environment or a placid mind. This is to be expected, since placid comes to us from the Romans’ word placidus, a relative of placere, to please.

placid - calm Placid has variations such as the adverb placidly and the noun placidity, but it also has subtle word connections that may go unnoticed; when we placate someone, we make them placid, unless they are implacable.

singular - unique The meaning of singular is what you would expect: single in nature. Something that is singular can be unique, extraordinary, strange, or even exceptional.

singular - unique In Gulliver’s Travels, Jonathan Swift wrote that Gulliver had “never till then seen a race of mortals so singular in their shapes, habits, and countenances.”

Not singular

Singular

amiable - friendly The adjective amiable comes from the Latin amicabilis, friendly, which came from the Latin amicus, friend. Amiable means friendly, good- natured, or agreeable. The word is one of the greatest English classic words; it has been in constant literary use since the 1300s, when Chaucer used it in The Canterbury Tales.

In Peter Pan, Peter calls Tink’s name amiably. Kenneth Grahame used it to describe “your amiable friend Mole.”

incredulous - skeptical The dubious adjective incredulous, meaning full of disbelief, reached the English language from the shores of Italy. In other words, like the other words we have studied, incredulous comes from ancient Latin, where it was the Roman word incredulus. In 2,000 years, we have added one o to the word.

incredulous - skeptical Incredulous is part of a great family of words in English, including credulous, credulity, incredulity, credible, incredible, credit, credo, discredit, creed, and even miscreant. The key to all of these words is that the stem cred means belief.

They were incredulous that the teacher was asking them to do stock research in kindergarten!

In Grahame’s The Wind in the Willows, something happens “full in view of the astonished and hitherto incredulous Mole.”

perplex - confuse The verb perplex comes from the Latin perplexus, in which per meant thoroughly, and plexus meant involved. Does perplex still mean involved today? Usually, no. To perplex is to bewilder, confuse, or puzzle. The idea is that the perplexed person is lost, completely unable to grasp something or to think clearly about it.

What is that thing? It’s about as big as my head! I’m perplexed! Should I be afraid or amused?

Emily Bronte combined two of our words in a sentence of Wuthering Heights, when her character speaks “with a perplexed countenance.” In Jack London’s The Call of the Wild, we read that “The driver was perplexed.”

What Is This Writer Saying? From Joseph Conrad’s The Heart of Darkness: The swift and indifferent placidity of that look troubled me.

What Is This Writer Saying? From Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring: Our attitude toward plants is a singularly narrow one.

What Is This Writer Saying? From F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby: My incredulity was submerged into fascination now.

A Wordy Story With an acute alertness, the scientist peered through the tremulous leaves at the placid surface of the lake. Something prodigious and grotesque, she could sense, was stirring out there, and her countenance took on a profound perplexity as she shook off her afternoon languor and peered, incredulous, looking for something odious, something singular, something… but nothing was manifest. A blue jay clamored in the treetop. The wind made a sublime whisper of promise in the pines. What could be out there?

A Wordy Story She dared not even allude to it, even in her own mind. As she gazed at the lake, she realized that her thoughts were no longer serene; they were perturbed, and she waited impatiently for something to appear. And then, there it was: the ferry to the mainland, coming to take her off the island. With an amiable laugh, she ran down the trail to the beach.