These 41 words should be of some use to any educated person including helping professionals in their speaking, writing, or reading. Like many words, these have multiple definitions. I’ve chosen the definition most widely used, especially in a psychological context.

apperception: perceiving something in light of previous experience.
badinage: banter
baleful: foreboding
benighted: ignorant
cant: informal jargon
casuistry: shallow often dishonest moralizing
contumacious: stubbornly disobedient
craven: contemptibly cowardly
diffident: reticent behavior because of shyness
discomfited: disconcerted
disquisition: an erudite explication
emulous: eager to emulate an older or more respected person
enjoin: an authority ordering an action
expiate: to make amends for
factitious: false or fake
folie a deux: a delusion shared by two people with close emotional ties.
fractious: unruly, quarrelsome
fulsome: excessively flattering
imperious: arrogant and domineering
importune: to implore, to beg urgently or persistently
ineluctable: inescapable as in a conclusion or event.
invidious: unjust, likely to cause anger
lubricious: salacious
lucubrate: to study or write learnedly and laboriously, especially at night.
malediction: a curse
mammon: material wealth that has a debasing influence
meretricious: only superficially attractive, of less worth than is apparent.
miasma: an oppressive or unwholesome atmosphere
nee: the word preceding a maiden name, e.g., Mrs. Smith, nee Jones.
noisome: bad-smelling
peroration: a long, pompous speech.
perquisite: a job’s perk
pertinacious: too persistent
propinquity: proximity or kinship
propitiate: appease
protean: versatile
querulous: whiny
redoubtable: formidable, especially used to describe an opponent
reify: to concretize an abstraction.
venal: predisposed to being corrupted.

Use as many of them as you can in a story.

@PensivePost