- imprimatur: official approval or sanction
- vainglory: excessive vanity
- anodyne: unlikely to offend, often deliberately so
- equanimity: calmness or composure in difficult situations
- third rail: dangerous area of discussion, commonly used in politics
- moratorium: a temporary suspension of activity
- disabuse: to rid oneself or another of error or fallacy
- cachet: prestige, or the state of being respected
- blithely: happily, or in a joyous manner
- specious: superficially plausible, but actually wrong
- expiate: to make amends, atone
- purgatory: a place or condition of suffering or expiation
- denouement: the final resolution of the intricacies of a plot
- ineluctable: inevitable, inescapable
- demure: reserved, modest, and shy
- grist: useful material to support an argument
- legerdemain: a display of skill or adroitness, wizardry
- l'esprit de l'escalier: thinking of the perfect retort too late
- leitmotif: a dominant or recurring theme
- waiflike: apparently homeless, starving, or forsaken
- salient: most noticeable or important
- raise Cain: to raise trouble, raise hell
- magisterial: having or showing great authority
- spurious: false or fake
- apophenia: seeing connections or patterns in random data
- provenance: the origin or earliest known history of something
- unrequited: (of a feeling, esp. love) not returned or rewarded
- attenuated: weakened in force or effect
- opprobrium: public disgrace arising from shameful conduct
- cosset: care for and protect in an overindulgent way
- puerile: childishly silly and trivial