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Words To Go is a blog for folks looking to expand and improve their everyday vocabulary.  Each day, three new words will be featured with their definitions and examples of their use.

Make a commitment to use the words both conversationally and in the written word. 

Word For Today:  January 6, 2012

Phonetic

Caricature

Asperity

Phonetic

Corresponding to pronunciation.

Agreeing with pronunciation.

Concerning or involving the discrimination of non-distinctive elements of a language. 

She pronounces her words phonetically. 

Caricature

A picture, description, etc., ludicrously exaggerating the peculiarities or defects of persons or things:  His caricature of the mayor in this morning's paper is the best he's ever drawn.

The art or process of producing such pictures and descriptions.

Any imitation or copy so distorted or inferior as to be ludicrous.

While shopping at the mall, we asked the artist to draw caricatures of each of us. 

Asperity

Harshness or sharpness of tone, temper, or manner; severity; acrimony:  The cause of her anger did not warrant such asperity.

Hardship; difficulty; rigor:  The asperities of polar weather.

Roughness of surface; unevenness.

Something rough or harsh.

I don't think she deserved the asperity that he displayed toward her, especially in front of others.