torpid - TOR-PID - lax, sloth-like, listless, sluggish

Example: "Sarah Palin's book, 'Going Rogue,' far from being torpid, depicts the McCain campaign as overscripted, defeatist, disorganized and dunder-headed - slow to shift focus from the Iraq war to the cratering economy, insufficiently tough on Mr. Obama and contradictory in its media strategy."

ineptitude - in-EP-tih-TOOD - having or showing no skills, clumsiness, incompetency

Example: "Sportswriter Jim LaJoie is quoted as saying, 'Even though I'm a Packers fan, a part of me wants to see the Detroit Lions finally turn around decades of ineptitude.'"

arcane - are-KANE - mysterious, secret, enigmatic

Example: "According to Newsweek Magazine, 'With upwards of 70% of all equity-trading done by high-frequency traders, the arcane world of such trading is one of the least understood practices in the market - in which sophisticated investors use computer programs to buy & sell huge amounts of stocks at breakneck speed.'"

volatile - VOL-uh-tuhl - unstable, likely to explode due to instability, liable to change quickly & for the worse

Example: "The Obama administration is being praised by teachers unions for adding flexibility to its 'Race to the Top' grant program, though it still retains politically volatile elements."

au courant - OH-curr-AHN - up-to-date, hip, current

Example: "This week's revival of the 1981 musical at Harlem's Apollo Theatre, "Dreamgirls," has been made au courant with a cast of 26 using more than 580 new outfits and 184 newly designed wigs."

cupidity - kyoo-PID-it-ee - greed (especially for money or possessions), avarice, rapaciousness

Example: "In his most explosive film to date ('Capitalism: A Love Story'), Flint native Michael Moore attacks the gross cupidity of financial powers like Goldman Sachs which, he sets out to prove in this thought-inducing documentary, are powerful enough to control Congress & the secretaries of the Treasury at the expense of the common taxpayer."

cacophony - kah-KOFF-uh-NEE - a harsh & discordant mixture of sounds, stridently noisy, raucous

Example: "The 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin wall tonight - which will be celebrated by tearing down a mile and a half long styrofoam wall constructed for the occasion - is expected to be boisterous, accompanied by beer drinking and a cacophony of sounds well into the night."