Welcome back to the Learn English Podcast, the podcast teaching English in context so you can learn naturally.
I teach English online to students who are learning it as a second language, and I've had a few students who have really good English vocabularies.
They use very fancy words, some words that you don't always hear in everyday conversation.
And when a student speaks and uses these words, it gets your attention.
You think, wow, this person has a really good vocabulary.
They really know English well.
And those are the types of words that I want to share with you today.
On today's episode, I'm going to give you six of my favorite words that are just fun to say and that can make it sound like you have a really good English vocabulary.
These are high level words.
These are sophisticated words, words that people use when they have a really good vocabulary and knowledge of English.
And those are the words I want to share with you today.
So if you're interested in learning some new vocabulary words, how to pronounce them, how to use them in conversation, then follow along because we're about to begin.
Before we get started, just a reminder to look in the description of this podcast episode and of all of our other podcast episodes, because you can find the vocabulary list of the words and phrases that I use.
You can take these words, start studying them and hopefully start using them in conversation yourself.
So let's talk about the words that we're going to go over today.
These are fun words.
These are words that I like to say just because they're fun to pronounce.
And they're also words that you can use when you're trying to add some flavor, some richness to your English, when you're trying to add meaning to your sentences.
And also when you're trying to say things in different ways or you're not stuck saying the same basic words over and over and over again.
What we're going to do is we're going to go over six words.
These words are going to be paired together.
So they're going to have similar meanings to each other.
I'm going to tell you how to pronounce the word, what the word means, and we'll go over some example sentences.
So let's get started with that.
Our first pair of words are bamboozled and hoodwinked.
Just listen to how fun those are to say.
They are so interesting as words.
And I can say that bamboozled is my favorite word.
So let's start with that.
Bamboozled has multiple syllables.
So I'm going to break it down into syllable form and then say the word so you can hear it.
That way you can practice saying it.
I would say practice saying the individual syllables first and then try putting it together to say the word.
So let's break it into syllables.
Bamboozled, bamboozled.
Oh my goodness, so fun to say.
Bamboozled is when someone is tricking you.
It's a fun word, but the meaning of the word isn't necessarily as nice.
So bamboozled is usually when someone is trying to trick you or trying to get you to act in a certain way, but it's not necessarily incredibly serious.
It's not something dangerous.
It's just something that's maybe more annoying or a little bit more playful.
Let's go over some examples.
Let's say that you are buying a car.
You go to a car dealership.
The salesman comes out, talks to you about a car, tells you that they have a great deal on this particular car that you're looking at.
The price is a great price.
You decide to buy that car.
And then when you're filling out the paperwork, you notice there's a lot of fees that they didn't tell you about.
You thought you were getting this one particular price, but you actually have to pay more because there's so many more fees.
You can say that the salesperson didn't tell you the price.
They didn't tell you the real price or they weren't honest with you.
Or you can say, the salesman bamboozled me about the price of this car.
That means that the salesman tricked you, the salesman wasn't honest, didn't tell you about everything that you had to pay for with this car.
They bamboozled you.
You can also say this if someone invites you over to the house.
Let's say that they say, hey, come over.
We can have dinner and watch a particular sports game that's on TV that night.
So you go to their house.
You're expecting just to spend time with them and watch a particular game on TV.
And then when you get there, there's a lot of people there.
And it's actually a surprise party for you.
It's your birthday and it's a surprise party of all your friends and your coworkers and your family.
You can say that they bamboozled you about the party.
They didn't tell you that there was going to be a party.
It was a surprise. You thought you were just going to spend time with them, but they got you to come to their house and they got you to the surprise party.
So they bamboozled you.
Like I said, bamboozled sometimes can be a little bit more playful or sometimes it can just be annoying like the car and having these hidden fees.
If something is more serious, if someone was really, really trying to trick you and was being maybe more intentional with it, they knew they were tricking you and the thing was a little bit more serious, we can use the word hoodwinked.
Hoodwinked. So this is going to be two syllables.
Hood, winked. Hoodwinked.
And this word means about the same thing that someone is tricking you, that someone is trying to get you to do something, but they're a little bit more intentional about it.
It's a little bit more serious.
For example, sometimes there are people who lie and get money.
So they lie about something, they lie about selling something or having a particular product and people give them money and the product isn't real or it doesn't work like they said it would.
We call those people con artists.
You can be a con man if you're a man or a con woman if you're a woman and just the general gender neutral term would be con artist.
This is not a good thing.
You don't want to have a con artist around you.
You don't want to deal with a con artist.
You don't want to be a con artist and there are some famous examples.
One of the most recent example here in the United States is a woman named Elizabeth Holmes.
She had a company called Saranos.
She claimed that her company had this amazing medical technology, that they could take a single drop of blood from a person and run all of these medical tests on it.
It was considered to be amazing because no one thought that technology was possible and shockingly, it wasn't possible.
She was lying. She did not have this medical technology.
It's not possible to take one drop of blood and do a bunch of different medical tests on it.
She was lying, but she got a lot of money, millions of dollars, people who had a lot of money.
She took their money and they invested in her company that didn't really have anything that they could produce or use.
She knew that she was lying to people and she knew that she was taking money based on that lie.
Because she knew she was lying and because she was very intentional and did it anyways, we can say that she hoodwinked people.
She hoodwinked her investors into giving her money.
We can also say that her investors were hoodwinked by her, which means she tricked them.
She confused them. She took their money.
In this case, hoodwinked is used when something is more serious.
You wouldn't say bamboozled here.
Bamboozled seems too light for the situation because this is a more serious situation.
She ended up going to prison because of what she did.
Because it's more serious, if we wanted to use something besides tricked or lied, we could say hoodwinked, not bamboozled in this particular case.
Our next set of words has to do with people who are in a bad mood, who want to argue, who aren't really fun to be around.
We would say they're unpleasant to be around.
It's not fun to be around these people.
So our next set of words is curmudgeon and cantankerous.
More fun words to say.
Let's start with the first one.
We have cur -mudgeon, curmudgeon.
When you think of a curmudgeon, you think of an old man who is very angry, who doesn't like to talk to people, who just wants to stay in his house and not have to see anyone or hear anyone.
If you have seen the movie Up, the Disney animated movie Up, the main character, the old man in that movie, is someone we would consider to be a curmudgeon.
At the beginning of the movie, he is stuck in his house.
He doesn't want to sell his house.
He is very angry. He doesn't want people knocking on his door.
And he would be an example of a curmudgeon.
A curmudgeon is more of a permanent state.
Someone who is a curmudgeon is like that all the time.
Every time you deal with them, they're always wanting to argue.
They're always in a bad mood.
They're always wanting to be left alone.
Maybe you know someone like that, someone in your family or someone at your work who acts like that, but that is a permanent state for them.
They always act like that.
Our next word is not a permanent thing.
It is something that is more temporary.
Our next word is cantankerous.
A cantankerous person is someone who's in a bad mood, but it's temporary.
Something is going on that's making them act like that.
Let's say you're with your family member and your family member has not eaten all day and it is late in the afternoon and they are hangry.
So hangry is a combination word that we use here in the United States and it stands for hungry and angry.
So when you get hungry, sometimes you get angry.
Sometimes you don't want to be around people and you're mad and you just want to eat something.
But once you eat something, the bad mood goes away.
If someone is hangry around you, if someone is in a bad mood because they haven't eaten all day, you can say that they're being cantankerous.
Cantankerous is an adjective.
It's used to describe how someone is acting or the state of mood they're in.
They're in a cantankerous mood.
So if someone is arguing with you, if you have a spouse or a family member who is just criticizing everything you do and arguing with everything you do and they're just in a bad mood, you can tell them to stop being so cantankerous, which means stop being so moody, stopping in such a bad mood.
And again, it's just a great word to say and a great word to change someone's attitude when they are being cantankerous.
There's better ways to talk about the amount of something that you have and that is our next set of words.
We're going to say plethora and abundance.
Both of these words means that you have a lot of something that there are many of whatever thing you're using.
Now with plethora and abundance, what we're going to do is we're going to tie these words to the word of.
What you're going to do is say you have a plethora of something, right?
Fill in the blank there.
When you're talking about plethora, plethora can be a good thing, but it can also be a bad thing.
So it depends on what you're pairing it with.
Let's say you go to a food festival and there's all these different vendors and there's all this different food.
You can say that you have a plethora of food choices, which means there's so many different food options.
There's so many things to pick from.
Usually someone would consider that to be a good thing, but it could also be a bad thing if we say something negative with plethora.
Let's say that I'm talking about my students and I say I have a plethora of homework assignments to grade.
Grading takes time.
It takes a lot of work.
It's a lot of things I have to do.
If I have a plethora of homework assignments to grade, that would be a negative thing.
That means I feel overwhelmed.
It's going to take me too much time.
I don't want to do it.
So a plethora of homework assignments is a bad thing.
That's not something I want.
I can also say I have a plethora of things to do, which again would make it seem like I'm overwhelmed.
I have so many things to do.
It's going to take so much time.
I don't know where to start.
You might also hear the phrase plethora of ideas.
I have a plethora of ideas for this podcast.
That could be a good thing that there's so many ideas, so many episodes to do or a bad thing.
I have so many ideas.
I don't know where to start.
I feel overwhelmed.
So plethora could be either way.
It kind of depends on the context on the thing.
The person is saying they have a plethora of and the tone of their voice.
Are they saying a good thing?
I have a plethora of ideas or a bad thing.
I have a plethora of ideas.
Two different ways of saying that sentence, two different meanings depending on the context and how the person says it.
Abundance on the other hand is usually not a negative thing.
Usually you say abundance when you want something to be a positive thing or at least neutral.
Just like plethora, we're going to tie this to the word of and at the beginning.
We're going to say an because the word abundance starts with a vowel sound.
When you say this phrase, you're always going to say, I have an abundance of something.
Again, this is going to be a positive thing.
Something you like.
Let's say that you are at that surprise party.
You are at the party at someone's house for your birthday and there's all of these people around you, all of your friends, all of your loved ones.
You can say that you have an abundance of people who care about you.
There's a lot of people who care about you and that's a great thing.
You can say that you have an abundance of support.
That means all of these people are here to support you because they love you.
You can also say that you have an abundance of love in your heart for these people and those are all great things.
Another example, let's say you go to Africa.
You decide to go on a safari.
You're going to go with a guide and you're going to go look at the wild animals in Africa.
You want to go see elephants and zebras and gazelles, all of this amazing wildlife.
So you go on your safari and you see all of these things.
You go and see all of these animals.
You can say there was an abundance of wildlife on the safari.
Let's say you're a photographer and that's why you went on safari and you wanted to get some amazing pictures.
You can say there was an abundance of photo opportunities, which means there were so many different options, so many opportunities for you to take some amazing photos.
You took some great photos on the safari.
Abundance for positive things, for things that you liked, for things that you enjoyed.
I hope you liked this episode.
I hope you learned some new vocabulary, how to pronounce these words, what the meaning of these words is and how to use them in sentences.
I know some of these words are tricky.
There's a lot of syllables or some weird vowel sounds, but just practice.
Break them down into the syllables, practice the individual syllables and then put it together in a word and you'll have it.
The more you practice, the better you become with it and the easier it is to say.
Also look at the description of this podcast episode, take all of those definitions and those words, start studying them so you can start using them in conversation.
I want to help build your vocabulary because of course that helps when you're speaking English.
It helps with your fluency and it helps when you're trying to articulate your ideas to whomever you are speaking with.
If you liked this episode, if you enjoyed it, if you liked learning these new vocabulary words, please let me know.
If you're watching on YouTube, leave a comment.
Tell me what you liked about the episode.
If you want more episodes like this, we only went over six words and there are so many words in the English language.
There's so much more we can do, but I don't know if you like these episodes unless you tell me.
So tell me if you like them, if you want future episodes and what you would like to learn more about.
If this podcast is helping you in general with English, if it's helping you with your listening comprehension and your vocabulary and just improving your English overall, please consider leaving us a rating on whatever app you are using to listen to this podcast on.
You can also tell a friend, tell a family member, tell someone who is learning English.
That way we can continue to grow our audience.
We want an abundance of audience members, so please help us grow the podcast.
You can also follow us on social media at Learn English Pod.
The website is LearnEnglishPod .com and remember to like and subscribe so you don't miss our next episode when it comes out next week.
Until then, keep learning English.
