Peter

[Having this condition is also known as acrasia.] An akratic is a person who knows the right thing to do but can’t help doing the opposite. This is not just [British Prime Minster] Boris Johnson to a tee. It is also the reason why he embodies more than anyone else a Brexit project in which the very people who promised to take back control are utterly incapable of exercising it, even over themselves. (Fintan O’Toole, “The Ham of Fate,” New York Review of Books, 08/15/2009.)

This word can also be a synonym for undisciplined irresolute, feeble-minded and undisciplined.…

The exiled ex-monarch was attended by a huge number of maids, valets, gardeners, and scullions. (Author not given, “Nazi Skeletons in Coco’s Closet,” The Daily Telegraph, 7/13/2019.)

This word, when used in the above sense, can also be a synonym for maid, helper, or domestic. …

[This word comes from the donkey in A.A. Milne’s Winnie-the-Pooh]

Confession: I have a secret talent for making lemons out of lemonade. It may not be readily apparent. I smile a lot and make cheerful conversation …. But tucked inside me, almost always, is a grumbling Eeyore. That Eeyore is having her moment. The coronavirus is springtime for pessimists. (Jennifer Senior, “In Praise of Pessimism,” The New York Times, 04/26/2020.)

 …

Trump believes that paranoia can be useful. He sees the world as vicious and life as a battle for survival. As we draw closer to Trump getting a lump of coal in his Christmas stocking, with Nancy Pelosi implacably heading toward a holiday impeachment, his proditomania is revving up. (Maureen Dowd, “Trump’s White Whale,” The New York Times, 11/23/2019.)

This word, when used in the above sense, can also be a synonym for suspicion, distrust and mistrust …

[French. This word, often, but not necessarily, has a sexual connotation]

The tensions between lightness and seriousness, between the predictable and the unforeseen, weave themselves together constantly in Knott’s poems. Dark and death-obsessed as they are, so too do they possess an unmistakable jouissance — a kind of poetic [you only live once] expressed through wordplay. (Kathleen Rooney, An Outsider Who Courted Contradictions,” The New York Times, 04/07/2017.)

This word, when used in the above sense, can also be a synonym for joy, bliss, happiness, delight, pleasure and rapture…