Yak or Yack

yak or yack
verb, intransitive. To talk at length about trivial or boring subjects.
Noun: A trivial or unduly persistent conversation.

After the plane levelled off, he began: he introduced himself to the teenager sitting beside him, then asked the youngster a series of questions about his interests and his school experiences. She considered some of the questions too personal for a casual exchange between strangers, but since she could not hear the responses, she hoped that the young man was exercising discretion.

Every response elicited a harangue from the man. She hoped he would tire of the effort of making conversation with a reluctant partner, but as the flight continued, he yacked on, seemingly oblivious to the teenager's hesitations, which were glaringly apparent to her. She wondered how an adult, with years or decades of social experience, could be so clueless, but she supposed that the man was simply trying to pass the time entertainingly.

It was no more entertaining for her than it was for the man's seat-mate. The timbre of his voice ensured that it penetrated the upholstery of the backrest that separated her from him, and probably carried to the passengers in front of her. It overwhelmed the drone of the plane's engines. She found herself unable to focus on the magazine article she had started reading after take-off. She placed the periodical in her lap and gazed out the window at a uniform gray field of clouds. No relief there. She normally enjoyed flying, but guessed that this flight would be an exception until they landed. Nothing seemed to discourage the pedant behind her. She would have been more annoyed had she not had the unfortunate teenager who was his target to pity.

Definitions adapted from The New Oxford American Dictionary, Oxford University Press, Inc., 2005 (eBook Edition, copyright 2008), and from Webster's Seventh New Collegiate Dictionary, G. & C. Merriam Company, Publishers, Springfield, Massachusetts, USA, 1965, depending on which is more convenient to hand.

Radiate

radiate
verb, transitive. To emit energy, especially light or heat, in the form of rays or waves. Of a person, to clearly emanate a strong feeling or quality through the expression or bearing. Of a feeling or quality, to emanate clearly from.
Verb, intransitive. To diverge or spread from or as if from a central point.
Also an adjective.

"Here's the abstract piece our teacher had us do," her mother said, extracting the watercolor from within the stack and holding it up.

Liz caught her breath as she gazed at it. Broad strokes of color, varying shades of blue, framed a rectangle of palest yellow.

"I haven't given it a title yet."

Liz shook her head. "You don't have to. You can just call it 'Untitled number one,' or maybe just 'Untitled,' since it's your first."

"She also told us that everyone who looks at it will interpret the image in his own way," her mother said.

"I agree. It's the front door of my house," Liz stated. Her mother turned from the painting and looked at Liz with raised eyebrows. Liz, too, looked away from the painting. She smiled.

She was thinking of how sometimes, on Saturday, no one in the family would remember to walk to the end of the driveway to see if any mail had been delivered. Sometimes, no one would remember about the mail until after sunset. The watercolor reminded her of the way the open door appeared as she made her way back to the house along the rutted lane, surrounded by oaks heavy with leaves that hung still in the peaceful air that sunset always brought--a pause in the wind that occurred between daylight and full darkness. The doorway radiated light as she approached, beckoning her with a reminder of the warmth and life that awaited within.

Definitions adapted from The New Oxford American Dictionary, Oxford University Press, Inc., 2005 (eBook Edition, copyright 2008), and from Webster's Seventh New Collegiate Dictionary, G. & C. Merriam Company, Publishers, Springfield, Massachusetts, USA, 1965, depending on which is more convenient to hand.

Wade

wade
verb, intransitive. To walk through water or another liquid or soft substance.
Verb, transitive. To walk through something filled with water. "Wade through:" to read laboriously through a long piece of writing. "Wade into:" to get involved in something vigorously or forcefully. "Wade in:" to make a vigorous attack or intervention.

After planning for weeks, Marlie had all the components of her budget home-office upgrade ready. Now all she needed to do was sort through everything on top of the old writing desk and dispose of it. Some of that stuff had been piled there for years. She stood beside the chair and looked at the letter file, crammed with envelopes. Some of them contained family snapshots that she had never gotten around to placing in an album. She didn't dare throw the whole mess out because of those. The thought of the brittle, aged paper and the dust made her shudder.

There was no help for it. She had already cleared the computer desk. Doing the same to the older writing desk was a necessity. One end of it rested on one of the file cabinets destined to be a support for one end of the solid-core door that was to be the work surface of her new workstation. The file cabinet that would hold up the other end was waiting on the porch. Avidly, she thought of its empty drawers, waiting to hold the accumulated paperwork of the small business she had started a few months ago. The new home office was going to be a huge help, but first, she had to deal with the detritus of the past.

Marlie gazed out the window at the autumn leaves stippled with sunlight. She had taken a long exercise walk that morning, but it wouldn't hurt her to take another.... Faintly, she could hear voices as the children romped near Jim, who was tinkering with the lawnmower. Maybe she should join them instead of dealing with unfinished business and dust on such a fine afternoon....

"Stop it, Marlie," she chided. "Time's a wastin'" The only way to move ahead with her plan was to wade into this last project and deal with it. She sat, hitched the chair closer to the desk, and picked up the first piece of paper.

Definitions adapted from The New Oxford American Dictionary, Oxford University Press, Inc., 2005 (eBook Edition, copyright 2008), and from Webster's Seventh New Collegiate Dictionary, G. & C. Merriam Company, Publishers, Springfield, Massachusetts, USA, 1965, depending on which is more convenient to hand.

Vandalize

vandalize
verb, transitive. To deliberately destroy or damage public or private property.

Even though it had happened several times since they had moved to the country and started raising chickens, Mike was still not prepared for it: entering the coop in the morning and finding all the chickens dead. Whatever had done it had also vandalized the little building, knocking one roost askew and leaving a pile of droppings.

He coldly proceeded with his response. He got the leghold traps out of the cupboard in the garage where they had been stored since the last chicken-coop-invasion. They were rusty, so he spent more than an hour wire-brushing the hinges and oiling them. He found one heavy steel bar with a hole and a few pieces of scrap lumber that he could attach to the traps' chains as drags, then he carried them to the coop and set them. Four traps, in various sizes, hidden beneath drifts of alfalfa hay on the floor. He left the chicken carcasses where they lay, as bait.

The following morning, he walked to the coop with his revolver loaded. As he approached, he could hear the sound of a struggle. Inside was a fat, boar raccoon, returned to the scene of his crime. One bullet to the head dispatched him. Only then did Mike allow himself to mourn his lost flock, and the life of the predator he had just taken.

Definitions adapted from The New Oxford American Dictionary, Oxford University Press, Inc., 2005 (eBook Edition, copyright 2008), and from Webster's Seventh New Collegiate Dictionary, G. & C. Merriam Company, Publishers, Springfield, Massachusetts, USA, 1965, depending on which is more convenient to hand.

Sacralize

sacralize
verb, transitive. To imbue with or treat as having a sacred character or quality.

They were never able to understand him, not even after living with him for a year and a half. He made it his life's mission to topple one icon of American culture after another, but sacralized the gathering of the household around the dinner table every evening. Anna privately surmised that it was another of his power grabs. He could direct and monopolize the conversation more easily when everyone was together, eating and sharing events of the day. He had done so over and over, choosing a statement made by another adult as a launch pad for one of his diatribes. She had lost count of the times she had sat at the table hungry and eager for conversation, only to have it hijacked and turned into another harangue on her own shortcomings. When her stomach began to clench and protest the tension, she sometimes asked to be excused, no longer able to choke down the food, only to be shouted back into her chair. She resented this so much, she sometimes fantasized about vomiting onto the table in protest.

Definitions adapted from The New Oxford American Dictionary, Oxford University Press, Inc., 2005 (eBook Edition, copyright 2008), and from Webster's Seventh New Collegiate Dictionary, G. & C. Merriam Company, Publishers, Springfield, Massachusetts, USA, 1965, depending on which is more convenient to hand.

Quadruple

quadruple
verb. To increase or to be increased fourfold.
adjective. Consisting of four parts or elements. Consisting of four times as much or as many as usual.
Also a noun.

Tucking her hair up into the net, Cilla began to read the kitchen manager's list for the night's production. Item two made her pause in disbelief. Ninety-six-dozen blueberry muffins? That quantity was unprecedented in Cilla's tenure as night baker. It had to be a special order. She exhaled loudly, pursing her lips, and calculated in her head. She would have to quadruple the usual batch in order to get that yield. She looked away from the list and searched the kitchen visually for the batch book. She had never had to resort to it, but she knew it had to be in the kitchen somewhere. She was too well-trained to think she could simply increase the amount of every ingredient by a factor of four and expect the muffins to come out edible, much less attractive enough to sell. There was a formula and she knew she had to find it unless she wanted to suffer through making four separate batches.

Her gaze had just landed on the cupboard on the wall between the convection oven and the proof box when Marcy entered, tying her apron.

"Hey, Cilla. How's it going?"

"I was okay, then I read the production list. There's a special order for blueberry muffins--the usual production has to be quadrupled!"

"Eek," Marcy stated more mildly than the situation required. She was so laid-back, Cilla sometimes found her irritating.

"Do you know where the batch book is?"

Marcy began to survey the kitchen in search of it. After a moment, she stepped into the small hallway that connected the kitchen, storeroom and the office. In one corner was a steel cupboard. She tried its door. She had to struggle with it briefly, but it opened and revealed a stack of loose-leaf notebooks.

Marcy craned her neck and looked at Cilla, still in the kitchen.

"You'd better come here and look. I don't know what it looks like."

Cilla entered the hallway and looked at the contents of the cupboard. Her face suddenly lit with joy. "There it is!" she cried, reaching to pull one of the notebooks from the stack. "You must be psychic! Thank you!" she told her assistant. Marcy shrugged.

"Glad I could help."

Definitions adapted from The New Oxford American Dictionary, Oxford University Press, Inc., 2005 (eBook Edition, copyright 2008), and from Webster's Seventh New Collegiate Dictionary, G. & C. Merriam Company, Publishers, Springfield, Massachusetts, USA, 1965, depending on which is more convenient to hand.