... the energetic singer who cannot repress the impromptu urge to versify the mundane things going on around him. Franklin D. Lewis, "Introduction," Rumi: Swallowing the Sun, 2008
He served in Africa, southern France and Italy during World War II, a period that he said led him to "versify in earnest." Harrison Smith, "Richard Wilbur, American poet who twice won the Pulitzer Prize, dies at 96," Washington Post, October 15, 2017
The fool, one of the oldest English desserts, is basically nothing more than a mixture of puréed fruit, sugar, and thick cream, the simplest thing in the world. James Beard, Beard on Food, 1974
One of the simplest ways to prepare strawberries when you want a departure from serving them plain is to chop them into a Fool. Moira Hodgson, "Desserts Made from the Fresh Berries of Summer," New York Times, July 14, 1985
He picked up his bread, pulled open the crust so the soft velutinous white inside was exposed, pushed it into a piece of omelet, then lifted the dripping morsel to his lips and bit upon it. M. J. Carter, The Devil's Feast, 2016
The deep shag of a plush carpet was beneath our feet and velutinous purple flocked wallpaper covered the walls. Cavan Scott, Sherlock Holmes: Cry of the Innocents, 2017
At the nadir of the global stock market crash in March 2009, the kronor hit a low of 8.48 euro cents per kronor .... Heather Farmbrough, "After Sweden's Election, What Next for the Kronor?" Forbes, September 8, 2018
... [the] fragment was hurled from what had seemed the nadir of horror to black, clutching pits of a horror still more profound. H. P. Lovecraft and E. Hoffmann Price, "Through the Gates of the Silver Key," Weird Tales, July 1934
''NOO-kyuh-luhr''-sayers, who number in the many millions, in fact, move the l in nuclear to the final syllable and thus avoid the unusual pattern. (Linguists refer to this sound-switching process as metathesis.) Frank Abate, "On Language: Nuclear," New York Times Magazine, January 12, 2003
Remember this when the next time you hear someone complaining about aks for ask or nucular for nuclear, or even perscription. It's called metathesis, and it's a very common, perfectly natural process. David Shariatmadari, "8 pronunciation errors that made the English language what it is today," The Guardian, March 11, 2014
She was completely knackered. All she wanted was a shower and twelve hours of sleep. Elizabeth George, Playing for the Ashes, 1994
When they're knackered like that they start crying. Patrick O'Keeffe, The Visitors, 2014
Games impedimenta--hockey sticks, boxing gloves, a burst football, a pair of sweaty shorts turned inside out--lay all over the floor ... George Orwell, Nineteen Eighty-Four, 1949
Every man was piled up with impedimenta--broken, torn, soiled and cobbled impedimenta. Arnold Bennett, Over There, 1915