UM-brij
He took umbrage at the suggestion that his work wasn’t original.
Fun Fact
Originally, “umbrage” simply meant “shade” (from the Latin umbra). Over time, it evolved metaphorically—just as people retreat into the shade to escape the sun, they might retreat emotionally when they feel insulted.
TUR-jid
(adjective) Swollen and distended; or, in reference to language, pompously inflated and unnecessarily complex
The report’s turgid prose buried what should have been a straightforward recommendation under layers of jargon and self-importance.
Turgid derives from the Latin turgidus, meaning “swollen” or “inflated,” from turgere (“to swell”). It entered English in the 17th century first in its literal biological sense — describing swollen tissue or distended plant cells — before its metaphorical application to bloated, overblown language became equally common.
Fun Fact
The literary meaning of turgid has inspired some memorable criticism. The 18th and 19th centuries produced enormous quantities of turgid prose — elaborate, ornate writing that prized complexity and grandeur over clarity. Samuel Johnson, himself no stranger to elaborate sentences, nonetheless skewered writers who used inflated language to disguise thin ideas. George Orwell made combating turgid prose a personal mission, arguing in his famous essay Politics and the English Language that pompous, swollen writing was not just aesthetically bad but politically dangerous — a tool for obscuring meaning and evading accountability.