luxuriate • \ˈlək-sh(ə-)rē-āt, -zh(ə-)rē-āt\ • verb
1. become extravagant; indulge (oneself) luxuriously
2. enjoy to excess
3. thrive profusely or flourish extensively
Note: Our Third Annual 15-Second Vocabulary Video Challenge is now underway. Students have until Feb. 23 at 7 a.m. Eastern time to enter.
Every Monday, we feature a Word of the Day that was the subject of one of our favorite entries in our 15-Second Vocabulary Video Contests from 2014 or 2013.
The word luxuriate has appeared in 15 New York Times articles in the past year, including on July 9 in “Theodore Roosevelt’s Sagamore Hill Home Cries ‘Bully!’ ” by William Grimes:
COVE NECK, N.Y. — The big house has been a pretty lonely place for a while now. It has been three and a half years since the public has been able to walk through Sagamore Hill, Theodore Roosevelt’s sprawling family home near Oyster Bay on the North Shore of Long Island. In December 2011 the doors closed, most of the artifacts were shipped out and crews of workers moved in for a $10 million restoration. Strollers on the grounds have been able to sit on its big front porch or press their noses to the windows, but the house itself has been locked up tight.
That changes on Sunday, when the National Park Service, manager of the property, throws open the doors, celebrating the event with the kind of reopening ceremony that Teddy would relish.
… If simple voyeurism is the motivation, then Sagamore Hill does not disappoint. Sniff around the kitchen, the dining room, the second-floor guest bedrooms, the third-floor maids’ rooms. Marvel at the lack of bathrooms. Luxuriate in the sense of solidity and permanence, the intoxicating aroma of the good life as it was lived in the United States in the late 19th century.
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