11) visionary. The Columbia Guide to Standard American English. 1993
...The adjective is usually pejorative, meaning not practical, unrealistic ; imaginative, forward-looking, or idealistic would be more flattering if you intend no detriment....
12) enormity, enormousness. The Columbia Guide to Standard American English.
1993
...Enormousness means extremely large size and has no pejorative overtones, but enormity is in the midst of a major semantic change, and you must use it with great care....
13) addict, addiction, addicted. The Columbia Guide to Standard American
English. 1993
...All three are nearly always pejorative, not only because the most frequently mentioned addictions are to tobacco, alcohol, or drugs, but also because addiction implies...
14) scheme, schema. The Columbia Guide to Standard American English. 1993
...The verb has much the same pejorative meaning on both sides of the Atlantic: to make a plan, but particularly to intrigue, to plot. The noun scheme has that same...
15) artful, artistic, artsy-craftsy, arty, arty-crafty. The Columbia Guide to
Standard American English. 1993
...to those arts we think of as the fine arts: The performance was an artistic triumph. The pejorative edge appears if the praise seems faint or snide: She s very artistic...
16) 4533. Ashbery, John. The Columbia World of Quotations. 1996
...NUMBER:4533 QUOTATION:And that is whereThe pejorative sense of fear moves axles. ATTRIBUTION:John Ashbery (b. 1927), U.S. poet, critic. "The Recent Past."...
17) artificial, counterfeit, ersatz, fake, false, imitation, sham, spurious,
substitute, synthetic. The Columbia Guide to Standard American English.
1993
...be ameliorative: there is nothing innately bad about an artificial lake. But it can also be pejorative: The flower I had admired so much turned out to be artificial....
18) collude, collusion. The Columbia Guide to Standard American English. 1993
...These words are always pejorative: they involve cooperation for dishonest, illegal, unethical, or immoral purposes. To collude is to connive. 1...
19) venal, venial. The Columbia Guide to Standard American English. 1993
...Venal is a strongly pejorative adjective that means purchasable through corrupt means, associated with bribery, as in He was a venal judge in a venal system of courts....
20) verbiage. The Columbia Guide to Standard American English. 1993
...has two meanings: an older pejorative one meaning too many words, wordiness, as in Her ideas were lost in her verbiage, and a newer, more general one meaning words...
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