breaking the ice

this time - because of numerous popular request: new words with descriptions


Brown-nosed:
1. to curry favor; behave obsequiously.
2. to seek favors from (a person) in an obsequious manner; fawn over.
3. Also, brown-noser. a toady; sycophant.

Strained:
affected or produced by effort; not natural or spontaneous; forced: strained hospitality.

Scintillation:
1. the act of scintillating; sparkling.
2. a spark or flash.
3. Astronomy. the twinkling or tremulous effect of the light of the stars.
4. Meteorology. any small-scale twinkling or shimmering of objects that are viewed through the atmosphere, caused by an interception of the observer's line of view by inhomogeneities in the atmospheric refractive index.
5. Physics.
a. a flash of light from the ionization of a phosphor struck by an energetic photon or particle.
b. random fluctuation of the amplitude, phase, or polarization of an electromagnetic wave.
6. (on a radar display) a slight, rapid shifting of a spot of light or the image of an object about its mean position.

Infatuate:
1. to inspire or possess with a foolish or unreasoning passion, as of love.
2. to affect with folly; make foolish or fatuous.
3. infatuated.
4. a person who is infatuated.