Underused words for your repertoire

Here are some fun ones worth elevating — and their Merriam-Webster definitions:

• apricity: the warmth of the sun in the winter
• protean: displaying great diversity or variety, like an actor who can do both comedy and tragedy
• doyen: a person considered to be uniquely skilled and experienced in a certain field
• petrichor: the pleasant smell of the earth after a rainstorm following a long dry period
• spindrift: sea spray
• susurrus: a whispering or rustling sound (it sounds like what it means!)
• avuncular: suggestive of an uncle especially in kindliness or geniality
• frabjous: wonderful, extraordinary, joyous (Fun fact: Axios chief financial correspondent Felix Salmon used frabjous in a story once.)
• perspicacious: possessing acute skills of discernment
• mellifluous: having a smooth, rich flow
• crepuscular: resembling twilight or something that occurs at twilight
• peripatetic: traveling from place to place
• halcyon: characterized by happiness, great success and prosperity
• jejune: devoid of significance or interest
• pauciloquy: brevity in speech
• hamartia: a tragic flaw in a hero or heroine

• bucolic: an idyllic quality typical of rural life
• popinjay: a strutting, supercilious person
• alacrity: promptness in response; cheerful readiness
• tintinnabulation: the ringing, jingling, tinkling of bells
• bloviate: verboseness in speaking or writing
• sangfroid: extreme calmness and steadiness under pressure

And one in Spanish...

• sobremesa: "It literally translates to 'over table,' and it refers to the time that people spend chatting and enjoying each other at the table once they have finished a meal," Finish Line reader Larisa Alvarez writes.

The bottom line: We can always expand our vocabularies to communicate our ideas with more precision — or just find new words that make us smile.