High-Impact Public Speaking; Using a Pregnant Pause for Accentuating a Word or Sentence

Watch the video clip below. Notice how the speaker, Sen. Mitch McConnell, after stating what action he wants his party members to undertake, makes a long, deliberate pause (i.e., a pregnant pause) to give emphasis to the word that is about to follow--“first.” Placing a pregnant pause just before the last word in a sentence is not an everyday occurrence, which is why I felt this clip to be worthy of being featured in my blog. Usually, speakers use a pregnant pause just before or after making an important statement (to let the words sink in), or between the asking of a rhetorical question and delivering the answer. What makes this particular illustration of a pregnant pause all the more remarkable is that its positioning in the sentence helps compensate for the speaker’s monotone, non-table pounding voice and bland facial expression. It enables him to sharply underline what according to him is the #1 priority for his party. An extraordinary bit of public speaking.

Important note: Please do not mistake this post to be an endorsement of Sen. McConnell or his agenda.
© Copyright 2011 V. J. Singal

Creating a Favorable Impression: A Dash of Color Will Go a Long Way, Says New Study

These may well be “ultra-modern” times, the age of millenarians, but people still seem to judge a book by its cover! In other words, when it comes to forming a first impression of a published work, society is as unsophisticated as, say, when books appeared for the first time.

Definitive proof that this atavistic impulse still reigns was provided by a piece aired on American Public Media’s “Marketplace” Monday before last (Aug. 22). According to a new study by the University of Miami’s business school, beautifying a company’s annual report by adding just one color can have the same impact on people’s perception of a company’s value as a 20% increase in revenue!

I believe the above has major implications for all manner of day-to-day activity, ranging from selecting attire--instead of a monochrome outfit, how about a dash of color--to selecting the cover for a report or proposal you are about to present to a client.

© Copyright 2011 V. J. Singal

Speaking Concisely—Rather, How to Compel the Long-winded or the Verbose to Communicate Concisely

Once in a while, somebody who is often required to chair meetings will confide in me that one of his/ her biggest obstacles when trying to run a meeting efficiently (and thus stay within the allotted time) is having one or more participants who talk on and on—people who are so verbose or long-winded that, for instance, they will take several sentences to respond to a simple question that can easily be answered in a single, short sentence.

While there are several ways to rein in someone who has a proclivity to ramble or perorate at every opportunity, here is a simple technique to force a relatively quick response to a question: Look at your watch—as if to imply that you are running out of time--and simultaneously preface your question with something like, ‘Pat, in one sentence, what would you say is the main reason for.....?’” You could go a step further and, instead of “in one sentence…,” you could say, with a smile, “in half a sentence…”

Call me at 281-463-2500 or email me if you have successfully tried some other techniques to help engender concise communication in your workplace.

© Copyright 2011 V. J. Singal

Glaring Mispronunciations by Top Media Personalities

Two glaring cases of mispronunciation by leading lights in the media this month, one involving a relatively common word “harbinger.”

1. In his fascinating piece about New York’s Archbishop Timothy Dolan on “60 Minutes” Sunday before last, Morly Safer described the corpulent personage as “this burly, overweight, cherubic Irish American charges through life like a holy bulldozer…” It was the word cherubic where Safer slipped up, pronouncing it as [che-RUB-ik] instead of [chuh-ROOB-ik.] Apparently, he thought the pronunciation of cherubic is a direct extension of the word “cherub” which is pronounced [cher-ub.]

2. The second instance involved American Enterprise Institute’s Norm Ornstein—a guest on all manner of radio and TV channels because of his unmatched knowledge and understanding of what’s going on in Congress. About five minutes into the August 10 edition of “The Diane Rehm Show,” while using the word harbinger, he made the fairly common error of pronouncing it as [hahr-bin-ger] instead of [hahr-bin-jur]. This one left me stupefied, considering that because of his decades-long career and popularity, Ornstein has appeared on countless panels, often surrounded by America’s most articulate.

© Copyright 2011 V. J. Singal

Vocabulary Building Words: New Edition of “Words of the Month”

The latest edition of “Words of the Month,” my free vocabulary enrichment feature, has been online since the middle of this month. The six featured words, all of which lie within the conversational vocabulary of America’s most articulate (as is the case with all of the words featured in my book, “The Articulate Professional-3rd Edition”):

1. perorate
2. servile
3. solicitude
4. amalgamate
5. hyperventilate
6. neophyte

Here are extracts from some of my favorite examples conscientiously designed to help enhance your vocabulary:

-- does anyone ever mention a single word or idea uttered by Sen. Edward Everett, the main speaker at the 19 November, 1863, Gettysburg dedication ceremony, who perorated for nearly two hours....

-- tomorrow’s annual meeting promises to be different: it’s not going to be some insufferable peroration

-- from an irritated person in the audience: “Please, my question does not call for a peroration. Just a simple…”

-- here is a simple technique to get a quick answer from someone who has a propensity to ramble or perorate at every opportunity…..

-- over the past 20 years, our State of the Union addresses having become unending and wearisome perorations; in the bitter fight over abortion, those for freedom of choice perorating against pro-lifers, and vice versa

-- during confirmation hearings in the U.S. Senate for Supreme Court nominees, senators tending to perorate on one legal issue or the other instead of …..

-- some frustrated young workers in a Chinese city secretly telling Western interviewers about their servile employment

-- in the presence of his boss, he becomes so timid and submissive, even servile, that he’s barely audible

-- fawning officials bowing deeply, in a servile manner, when opening doors or….

-- do not behave obsequiously, and act like someone who is hopelessly servile

-- (if George W. Bush had been a very popular president during his last few years) current Republican presidential candidates would be trekking servilely to Dallas to …

-- a mule’s servility to his master…; successful CEOs surrounding themselves with smart people rather than servile employees; a bigwig who likes servile attention

-- in some cultures, a woman being required to show servile obedience to her husband

-- Amnesty International expressing solicitude for Saudi women (reference that nation’s laws barring females from driving)

-- our manager has consistently demonstrated solicitude for our health

-- my mother was applying, with tremendous solicitude, cold compresses on my forehead

-- if I see a stray dog on the street, my reaction is one of utmost solicitude for that…; she always showed great solicitude for my difficulties

-- a parent expressing so much solicitude for their teenager who has just gone to college that it borders on the overbearing and suffocating

-- the U.S., a melting pot because of the racial, ethnic, and cultural amalgamation that is constantly going on…

-- amalgamating three new parameters into the customer satisfaction index

-- he is a curious amalgam of contradictory and conflicting characteristics…; the food here is an amalgam of different cuisines from….; typical opera being an amalgam of singing, dancing, glittering sets….; the novel's hero is the amalgam of several remarkable people the author has met….

-- stock symbol HPQ appropriately representing the amalgamation of Hewlett-Packard and Compaq

-- the latest Harry Potter movie being praised as a wonderful amalgam of superb acting, gripping story, wall-to-wall action,….

-- France’s long-cherished goal of becoming a truly amalgamated nation

-- there’s no way you can effectively amalgamate these two subsidiaries because…

-- should these news reports really set off such hyperventilation throughout the nation?

-- on seeing their company’s founder and CEO up close for the first time, some of the employees began to hyperventilate

-- I’m hearing a lot of hyperventilated comments from employees about…

-- let me quickly call my boss….before he has a panic attack and starts to hyperventilate

-- dismissing a recent medical study, an expert saying: “the report is hyperventilating about small, inconsequential….”

-- following the release of the movie “Titanic,” teenaged girls swooning and hyperventilating if they saw Leonardo DiCaprio in public

-- some newspaper art, music, and theater reviews that are written in a hyperventilated style, packing language that is turgid, pompous, and bombastic

-- a travel website pointing out, justly, that guide books are “renowned for their glib hyperventilated prose”

-- a political neophyte; a neophyte at poker; neophyte investors falling victim to boiler-room stockbrokers

-- I agree that Diane is a marketing neophyte… but she is extremely smart and a quick study

-- being an absolute neophyte at trading when I was hired in your department, I was intimidated….

-- discouraging somebody from trying a blue run, the ski guide saying: “It’s not for the neophyte”

-- a presenter pausing to explain some of the jargon for the benefit of the neophytes in the audience

-- a computer manufacturer’s customer service department finding itself shorthanded because of the surprisingly high percentage of calls coming in from total neophytes


© Copyright 2011 V. J. Singal

High Impact Presentations; Overcoming the Accent Handicap: Other Easy Strategies and Tactics for Foreign-borns

Yesterday’s post focused on one of the tactics I use in the case of words that are extremely relevant to my presentations but which are sometimes misunderstood or are unintelligible to some in the audience because of my enunciation (words such as “thrust”).

Of course, as discussed in previous blog posts, foreign-borns have several other strategies and tactics in their arsenal to minimize the loss of communication that can result because of an accent. Some of these preemptive actions:

1. Speaking slower, especially at the beginning of a conversation or presentation.
2. Clearly enunciating every syllable and consonant because that is unquestionably the most effective antidote to an accent.
3. Maintaining a list of “troublesome” words—words that pose difficulty for your audiences because of the way you pronounce them—and developing a corresponding list of alternate words. [For instance, a few years ago, when I found people were having difficulty with my enunciation of “burp,” I immediately switched to saying “belch” instead.]
4. As another alternative to dealing with your list of “troublesome” words, especially while delivering presentations, having that word appear in print on a PowerPoint slide just as you are about to utter it in front of that audience for the first time.
5. Each time you say a word that you believe may not be fully understood by everyone in the audience, immediately following-up with a synonym or synonymous phrase.

For a fuller discussion of the above five tips, I would urge you to visit my blog post of June 24, 2010.

© Copyright 2011 V. J. Singal

For the Foreign-borns: Spelling Out a Word as a Tactic to Offset Loss of Communication Because of Accent

If you speak with an accent, as I do, chances are that some of the words you typically use in a presentation are unintelligible to many in the audience. For instance, when talking about the power of the synonym technique, I love to use the word “thrust” because it is so very apt (it’ll be clear why after you’ve read the next paragraph). Unfortunately, some in the audience mistake my “thrust” to be “trust” and, not surprisingly, become confused. So, what is the one easy tactic I employ to offset that bit of loss in communication? I simply spell out the word immediately after uttering it. I elaborate below.

Earlier this year, while speaking before large audiences at dental conventions in Phoenix and Portland (Oregon), I said “thrust” at least once in each session, and the first time I used that word before each audience, I followed up that utterance by hurriedly spelling it out as well, thus ensuring 100% understanding by everyone in the room. To go into even more detail, here is an example of what I said: “…..synonyms work powerfully because the second word amplifies or reinforces the previous word’s thrust—as in t-h-r-u-s-t—and thus makes that piece of communication much more robust, indelible, and impactful….” [In the previous sentence, I have bolded thrust to imply that it was uttered with greater emphasis and amplitude than the subsequent “as in t-h-r-u-s-t.”]

© Copyright 2011 V. J. Singal

Visual, Evocative Words to Emphasize Something: Grover Norquist’s Messianic Anti-Government Agenda

Whether you are a supporter or a critic of anti-tax zealot Grover Norquist, you’ll probably agree with the following statement: Norquist’s agenda is simply to gut the government, period. (It’s an agenda which, in my view, is utterly misguided, myopic, and reprehensible because, over the long term, a marketplace with zero regulation will severely undermine, among other things, the quality of life and safety of the American middleclass and prove ruinous for this nation’s international economic competitiveness as well as for its environment and wildlife.)

But it was only this evening, while watching “NBC Nightly News,” that I learned about the extraordinarily evocative terms in which Norquist has articulated his messianic and unambiguous anti-government fervor in the past: According to NBC’s Andrea Mitchell, Norquist once told NPR: “I don’t want to abolish government, I simply want to reduce the size where I can drag it to the bathroom and drown it in the bathtub.”

© Copyright 2011 V. J. Singal

Words to Describe the Grand Canyon: Going Beyond the Trite and the Banal

Ask anyone who has visited the Grand Canyon what they think about that great natural wonder of the world and, more often that not, his or her face will instantly light up and adjectives such as beautiful, awesome, great, extraordinary, wonderful, tremendous… will come out of that person’s mouth.

Well, I was at the Grand Canyon’s South Rim earlier this month and it occurred to me that you might be interested to know some of the words that flashed in my mind while undertaking three hikes during the day and a half I spent there in the company of my son. [As in the case of previous posts, I am assuming that you appreciate the power of words that are fresh, out-of-the ordinary, and evocative.] Rest assured, each of the terms below is in the conversational vocabulary of articulate Americans.

-- addictive (because one can’t get tired of taking in the sights)
-- stupefying
-- overwhelming
-- mesmerizing
-- spellbinding
-- stunning
-- a prodigious sight
-- indescribable
-- enthralling
-- ineffable
-- spectacular
-- ethereal
-- captivating
-- kaleidoscopic
-- spiritual, emotional, or a religious experience

And finally, in response to the question that I had had for over ten years -- “For most people, why does the Grand Canyon have a greater impact than any other natural feature on earth?” – I had the following epiphany in the late 1990s, just after a visit to the North Rim: “When you look down intently into that vast chasm of overpowering beauty and mystery, you get the sense that Mother Earth has opened her bosom and is whispering: 'Come, peer into me for this is where you are from.'”

© Copyright 2011 V. J. Singal

The King James Bible: Source of Many of Today’s Phrases and Idiomatic Expressions

Earlier this week, while watching a segment about the King James Bible in the April 24, 2011, edition of “CBS Sunday Morning,” my favorite television program, I was surprised to learn that many of the phrases and idiomatic expressions that are alive and well in the English language of today originated in that seminal work. Here are some that were highlighted in that CBS program:

“…drop in the bucket…” – Isaiah 40:15

“…my cup runneth over” – Psalms 23:5

“…see eye to eye…” – Isaiah 52:8

“Fight the good fight…” – First Timothy 6:12

“…powers that be…” – Romans 13:11

“…root of the matter…” – Job 19:28

“…labour of love…” – Hebrews 6:10

“…there’s nothing new under the sun…” – Ecclesiastes 1:09

“…in the twinkling of an eye…” – Corinthians 15:52

“…pearls before swine…” – Matthews 7:6

Building a Powerful Vocabulary: New Edition of “Words of the Month”

The latest edition of “Words of the Month,” my free vocabulary enhancement feature, has been online since the beginning of this month. Among the featured words, all of which lie within the conversational vocabulary of America’s most articulate (as is the case with all of the words featured in my book "The Articulate Professional -- 3rd Edition"):

1. statuesque
2. kaleidoscopic
3. paucity
4. wistful
5. attenuate

Here are extracts from some of my favorite examples:

-- a statuesque building in Houston: the 901-feet tall Williams Tower (formerly the Transco Tower)

-- in this picture showing our company’s top five execs, each of them looks statuesquely tall, and I suppose that is because of …

-- a dancer posing statuesquely; an example of a statuesque American actress: the six-feet tall…

-- given the kaleidoscope of shifting information, it’s hard to predict where the hurricane will make landfall

-- last night’s “Charlie Rose” was a kaleidoscope of currently controversial issues

-- kaleidoscopic fall colors; a folk dance becoming a kaleidoscope of colors

-- John Eliot Gardiner saying: “Beethoven’s music is so full of rhythm, and excitement, and kaleidoscopic changes of emotion”

-- the fate of the first President Bush being a perfect example of the voting public’s capriciousness

-- I am pretty capricious when it comes to picking a route to go to work each morning

-- a capricious theater critic; a special attraction of the Seychelles—they are less prone to capricious weather

-- having wistful moments when you wish you had accepted that offer from IBM instead of…

-- I try to avoid thinking or speaking wistfully of the past because life is short and…

-- I kept staring at her because there was such an air of wistfulness about her

-- South Koreans musing wistfully that the two Koreas show no sign of unifying; the wistfulness in Boris Yeltsin’s comments made shortly after the failed Soviet coup

-- it appears that Osama bin Laden’s influence had not attenuated quite as much as….

-- frequent coffee breaks will attenuate the momentum (of the discussion)

-- attenuation of a manager’s autocratic style; hot peppers can attenuate hunger because they contain..; a vaccine that will attenuate the AIDS virus; the attenuated physique of an anorexic; gravel traps being used to attenuate the speed of a car

-- the vast wetlands surrounding New Orleans helping attenuate the destructive force of hurricanes

-- a paucity of strong leadership at the top; a disheartening paucity of creative thinking; blaming the setback on a paucity of knowledge and experience

-- an amazing paucity of information with regard to prevention of cancer

-- apparel shoppers disappointed by the paucity of exciting new designs; parents of school-age children complaining about the paucity of worthwhile programs on television

-- Japan being one of the world’s top five industrial powers despite its paucity of natural resources

© Copyright 2011 V. J. Singal

What’s in a Name? Pronouncing Somebody’s Uncommon Name Correctly Is Your First Sign of Respect For That Person Plus Much More

The “name-botching” incident at Wimbledon last week when, in the middle of the match, German tennis star Julia Goerges lambasted the umpire for repeatedly mangling her last name, reminded me of an incident at a Toastmasters’ speech contest here in Houston some ten years ago. Hugh Vrsalovic, an accomplished speaker and my long-time friend, was one of the participants. When it was his turn to deliver a speech, here’s how the evening’s emcee (referred to as the “Toastmaster of the contest or event”) announced his name: “Our next contestant is Hugh V…R…S…” and then, after some further struggle, she came up with a badly mangled version of Hugh’s last name which, in actuality, takes only a few seconds to master, if you ask him. It is vruh-SAHL-uh-vik.]

Clearly, the contest Toastmaster had not done her homework. As any responsible emcee, she should have taken a few moments to familiarize herself with the names, speech titles, etc. before the event started. Sure, her blunder may have helped wipe off, for a second or two, the ever-pleasant expression on Hugh’s face, but the real damage was to her own reputation. She created a poor impression with that evening’s huge audience by demonstrating irresponsibility and a cavalier attitude.

If a new acquaintance’s name happens to be an uncommon one, then pronouncing it correctly (the same goes for spelling it, if and when writing them an email) is your first indication of respect for that person, provided you’ve had an opportunity to find out the correct pronunciation. It helps create a good first impression by signaling that you are meticulous, thorough, caring, thoughtful, urbane, and so on.

INTERVIEW CANDIDATES, please make a special note of the above.

© Copyright 2011 V. J. Singal

Interviewing; ABC’s “This Week” Panel Highlights Two Key Ingredients for a Successful Job Interview

Enthusiasm! As I’ve said in previous posts, a candidate's enthusiasm is the one quality that must be on full display during job interviews and the like. Here are two specific ideas on how or where to exhibit enthusiasm.

Yesterday’s edition of ABC’s “This Week with Christiane Amanpour” had a segment focusing on the dim job prospects for the Class of 2011 and what job seekers can and should do to stand out from the crowd. The panel comprised four newly minted grads and two “entrepreneur CEOs”–famous publisher Mort Zukerman and Qwiki founder Doug Imbruce. When asked, each of the two CEOs identified one quality or attribute that he looks for in job candidates as a predictor of future success:

Zukerman: “Evidence of determination.”
Imbruce: “Passion about the company’s products or services.”

LESSON: Sharpen your communication skills—both verbal and nonverbal—so that your enthusiasm, vigor, motivation, staunchness, unwavering or unyielding nature, unflagging zeal for work, etc. are manifest during the interview.

© Copyright 2011 V. J. Singal

My Appearance on Houston’s Channel 39 (KIAH-TV) Earlier This Month; The Consequences of Egregiously Bad Grammar During Job Interview

In a post three weeks ago, I wrote that Houston’s Channel 39 had interviewed me with regard to how poor language skills can obliterate one’s chances of success during a job interview or sales call. Well, the station did broadcast segments of that interview a few days later and you can see what they aired by clicking on the one-and-a-half-minute video clip below. Of particular interest to job seekers: My comment on how the use of typical text-messaging lingo during an interview might portray you as someone who is much too cavalier or irresponsible to handle serious tasks and who therefore cannot be entrusted with big-time responsibility.

© Copyright 2011 V. J. Singal

Obama’s “synaptic misfire” resulting in his using a completely wrong word during “60 Minutes” Interview; My Answer to Last Sunday’s Quick Quiz

To make sense of this post, you need to first read the previous one – that of last Sunday, May 15.

In my judgment, the only word that sounds similar to the wrong word (denigrate) and which would have accurately expressed what Obama was trying to say is degrade. [The word downgrade is an alternative but a poor one.] In other words, he meant to say “We’ve degraded al Qaeda significantly even before we got bin Laden and I think….”

© Copyright 2011 V. J. Singal

Quick Quiz: Guess Which Word the "60 Minutes" Guest Had in Mind When He Misspoke and Uttered "Denigrate"; Case of "Synaptic Misfire"

At one point during his “60 Minutes” interview Sunday, President Obama was asked to respond to the many “influential people on both sides of the aisle” in Congress who were saying that with Osama bin Laden now dead, we should hasten our withdrawal from Afghanistan. Obama replied by pointing out that the U.S. had increased troop levels in Afghanistan to “blunt the momentum of the Taliban and create platforms that would allow us to go after al Qaeda directly.” He then added, “We’ve denigrated al Qaeda significantly even before we got bin Laden and I think it’s important for everybody to understand that the work that’s been done in Afghanistan helped to prepare us for being able to take bin Laden out……”

Clearly, the word denigrate does not fit into the context at all. See for yourself by playing the video clip below. In fact, as soon as I heard this sentence while playing the recording on my DVR, it was apparent to me that Obama, whose command of the language is stellar, meant to utter a similar-sounding word which has a completely different meaning and that he had fallen victim to what I call “synaptic misfire” or a “synaptic malfunction” – something that happens once in a while to even the best of us.

As an intellectual challenge, I urge you to try and guess the similar sounding word which would have correctly expressed Obama's thought and which would fit into the context perfectly. Feel free to email me or call me at 281-463-2500. My next post—about a week from now—will have the answer to this "quick quiz."

© Copyright 2011 V. J. Singal

The Consequences of Grossly Abusing Grammar During a Job interview or While Talking to a Client or Customer

This morning, I was interviewed by award-winning journalist David Solano for his upcoming story on how extremely poor language skills can sharply diminish one’s chances of success during a jon interview or sales call. [The story is to be aired early next week on Solana’s station KIAH-TV -- Houston’s Channel 39.]

Here is what I said with regard to the severe consequences stemming from egregious grammar errors:

During a job interview or while making a sales call, murdering grammar can be lethal! [Some examples of outrageous grammatical errors: subject-verb disagreement; using first person subject pronoun “I” when it should be object pronoun “me” and the vice versa; wrong tense or wrong verb form; uttering "aks" instead of "ask."] Among the many reasons why such gross abuses of grammar can sharply diminish your prospects of being hired or of consummating a sale:

1. Unless the listener is intimately familiar with your educational background and the many college degrees you have amassed, he or she will conclude that you are poorly educated.

2. You will give the impression of being a slow, unenthusiastic learner--someone who will have difficulty quickly adapting to a potential employer's workplace culture or way of doing things.

3. As a potential employee, you will be viewed as more of a liability than an asset because:
(i) Your conspicuous grammar missteps are likely to be such a serious distraction--even an annoyance--that listeners will be unable to stay focused on your message, and
(ii) You could even end up becoming a laughing stock among not only your would-be peers but also among clients, thus severely tarnishing the company's image.

© Copyright 2011 V. J. Singal

Uninspiring Female Attire: Example of a Highly Intelligent PR Exec Looking Boring and Unimaginative

Click on the video clip below, a 34-second excerpt from last Sunday’s “ABC This Week with Christiane Amanpour.” You’ll see Torie Clarke, Pentagon’s top PR executive during Donald Rumsfeld’s rule, wearing clothes that are uniformly of one color--a color that happens to be identical to the color of her hair and eyebrows. And further, because the color of her hair is not much different to her complexion, we see a woman looking monochromatic--a vision of one color from top to bottom! I was amazed to see this highly intelligent and super-sharp communicator show up on a major Sunday morning television show in such a boring, unappealing, and unimaginative attire.

What could Torie Clarke have done differently to look more appealing and attractive, at the very minimum? No fashionista I, but two simple alternatives immediately come to mind: She could have worn, for instance, a blue dress (which incidentally would match the color of her eyes) or worn something in, say, maroon, rust, or peach and put on lipstick of a near matching shade for a nice balance. Easy!

© Copyright 2011 V.J. Singal

Immortal Speeches

Reference President Reagan’s famous speech delivered on June 12, 1987, from West Berlin’s Brandenburg Gate. In my post of January 28, I described that speech as being a first-rate example of a presentation that has become immortal because of a simple line within it having such acute resonance that the words reverberate even today, decades later. Finally, I have a video clip of that line, unquestionably the most famous words uttered publicly by Reagan during his eight years as president. Incidentally, this clip too is from CBS "Sunday Morning," my favorite television show.

Building a Powerful Vocabulary: New Edition of “Words of the Month”

The latest edition of “Words of the Month,” my free vocabulary enhancement feature, has been online since the beginning of this month. Among the featured words, all of which lie within the conversational vocabulary of America’s most articulate (as is the case with all of the words featured in my book, “The Articulate Professional-3^rd Edition”):

1. pecuniary

2. kerfuffle

3. tendentious

4. acolyte

5. duplicitous

6. impassioned

Here are extracts from some of my favorite examples, all carefully designed to help you implant the featured word into your conversational vocabulary and use it with confidence:

pecuniary

-- after the Tucson shootings, Sheriff Dupnik saying that much of the (political) venom being spouted on radio & TV arises from talk show hosts’ pecuniary motives

-- don’t park here—it’s a pecuniary offense; a lawyer being reprimanded by the judge for “putting his pecuniary interests above those of his client”

-- global warming will be less of an abstraction if we can explain to John Q. Public what sort of pecuniary effects it is having or will have on each individual

-- an NPR guest pointing out that in the case of poets, their pursuit does not arise out of a pecuniary goal

kerfuffle

-- the current kerfuffle in Washington D.C. over how to rein in the budget deficits

-- the proposal to reduce the football team’s budget causing such a kerfuffle that the idea was quickly dropped

-- (after two longtime members suddenly opposed everyone else’s unanimous choice for club president) “I tell you, the resulting kerfuffle has badly upset the harmony within the club”

tendentious

-- “No way can you call this book objective. It is highly tendentious.”

-- some radio and TV channels that are clearly tendentious, thus giving their audience a distorted and unbalanced perspective

-- the tendentiousness that invariably creeps into the “historical account” of any great battle because….

-- after looking at identical data, many leading economists and lawmakers coming up with totally different conclusions, thanks to their tendentious interpretation of the facts

-- somebody promoting a tendentious theory; a tendentious translation of an ancient scripture; a tendentious history

acolyte

-- according to CBS, WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange’s acolytes include “geek circles and hacking circles for whom he is a hero”

-- this author telling an audience: “I am a fervent acolyte of two television shows: ‘CBS Sunday Morning’ and ‘PBS NewsHour’”

-- in a recent interview, Donald Rumsfeld telling Diane Sawyer that the younger Bush appointed him defense secretary knowing full well that he (Rumsfeld) was a critic and detractor rather than an acolyte of George H.W. Bush

duplicitous

-- Tab Hunter, the young matinee idol of the 1950s, telling CBS that he had been duplicitous all along—that the portrayal of him as an eligible heartthrob…

-- somebody who is extremely straightforward and simply incapable of duplicity;  her snickering about my plans is really duplicitous of her because…

-- according to some leading economists, including Nobel laureate Joseph Stiglitz, the errors in judgment and duplicities of the credit rating agencies partly to blame for the recent financial crisis

-- New York’s then-attorney general Eliot Spitzer discovering that Wall Street analysts were engaging in stunningly duplicitous behavior

impassioned

-- one of JFK’s most memorable and impassioned lines from his presidential speeches: “Ask not what your country can do for you….”

-- I bet we’ll get an impassioned, table-pounding speech from …; he is one heck of an impassioned and articulate guy

-- an impassioned email;  impassioned support from a top exec giving a boost to your controversial plan; a defense attorney’s impassioned closing arguments; Julia Roberts’s impassioned plea before Congress for …; media being flooded with impassioned statements both in support of and against a U.S. Supreme Court nominee

© Copyright 2011  V. J. Singal