Alright, this is so @Jayna's fault. She was all "Oh, you're so talented and smart and funny and handsome, you should write posts like mine where you define a word, give examples, etc, etc." It basically went exactly like that.

Anyways

I googled "essential words for fiction writing" and I found an insanely intensive list of over 300 words. Yikes! That's kinda stupid, but I found a word even stupider that I thought was worth sharing:

Shellacking ( shə-ˈla-kiŋ )

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A good shellacking refers to a decisive defeat. Quite simple. It's a noun somehow, even with the -ing at the end. Isn't English the best? (dies inside)

Example!

The Yankees suffered an awful shellacking, dealt out by the far superior Red Sox. (loses 50 followers)

Here's another!

"Oi mate, ye muver got uh shellacking over ur dear pop, mate." Just so we can represent other dialects...

Your Turn!

Wait, no, I don't wanna...

Sure you do! Just find a word that will help us all learn and grow as writers and post about it! Provide a pronunciation, definition, other versions of the word, what sentence part (noun, verb, etc.) it is, and provide some examples! And make sure you use the clever #learnwords tag @Jayna conjured for this purpose!

Can't wait to see what you come up with!

Caleb