Building a Better Vocabulary

Lecture 22: Cranky Words and Cool Words

z We’ve all probably been a bit rebellious at some point in our

lives, but truly fractious people seem to stir up trouble wherever

they go. They can also be cranky, peevish, and irritable, but it’s

their disobedience or opposition to established authority that

differentiates the fractious from the splenetic.

z In addition to people, fractious is also used to describe troublesome,

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the fractious relationship he had with his father as a teenager.”

z Fractious is close in meaning to one of our target words from an

earlier lecture, contumacious, an adjective meaning stubbornly

rebellious; willfully and obstinately disobedient.

z The root fract in fractious is derived from the verb Latin frango,

meaning “to break.” Other words with this root include fracture

(a broken bone or a break), fraction (a whole broken into parts),

and infraction (a breaking of the rules). This root also appears

in a synonym for fractious, refractory, which means stubbornly

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Asperity (noun)

Roughness or harshness of surface, sound, climate, condition, manner,

or temper.

z Asperity can mean harsh and rough both literally, as in “the asperity

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her manner.”

z Asperity comes from the Latin word asper, meaning “rough, harsh,”

and was used in Latin to describe sour wine, bad weather, and

hard times.

z A related word to asperity is exasperate7KH SUH¿[ex- usually

means “out of” (export), but in exasperate, it has the connotation

of “completely, thoroughly.” When combined with asper (“harsh,