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Paradoxical Nouns

David Foster Wallace's list of paradoxical nouns, words with meanings opposite to the words themselves.
12 words 5 learners

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Full list of words from this list:

  1. foreign
    not deriving from the essential nature of something
  2. big
    above average in size or number or quantity
  3. diminutive
    very small
  4. incomprehensible
    difficult to understand
  5. pulchritude
    physical beauty, especially of a woman
  6. unwritten
    based on custom rather than documentation
  7. indefinable
    not capable of being precisely or readily described
  8. misspell
    write the letters of incorrectly
  9. vulgar
    of or associated with the great masses of people
  10. high-class
    pretentiously elegant
  11. invisible
    impossible or nearly impossible to see
  12. obscene
    offensive to the mind
Created on Thu Oct 25 12:46:52 EDT 2012 (updated Thu Oct 25 12:52:35 EDT 2012)

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