The adjective healthy gets a lot of use this time of year as so many of us resolve to eat healthy foods and embrace a healthy lifestyle in the new year. Robust is a synonym for healthy, but it is not used to describe food or behaviors that are conducive to good health. Robust emphasizes strength and vigor and is used to describe people that are in particularly fine fettle. It’s also used to describe markets or economies that are thriving or are especially resilient, and discussions or debates that are especially productive or spirited and engaging. You may even hear of a robust password or a robust method, each being strong and effective in all of most situations.

The adjective opposite is used to describe things that are opposed or are radically different from each other. Antithetical describes things that are diametrically opposed. The latter is a more pointed and precise adjective, and it is commonly used to highlight essential incompatibilities between ideas, behaviors, or values. For instance, if words or deeds are or are perceived as antithetical to democratic principles, then they go (or are perceived to go) against those principles starkly and irreconcilably.

To surpass someone or something is to go beyond it in amount, extent, or degree. A new product can surpass expectations if it does more than previously thought. Surpass can also mean to excel or to be superior to, as in, a student who surpasses his classmates in vocabulary knowledge or in sports trivia. If surpassing others in some way makes them look less outstanding or important by comparison, then the verb eclipse covers it. You may know the verb eclipse more for its use in astronomy to denote the blocking out of the light of the moon or sun, but its figurative meaning is relevant closer to home. For example, a basketball player can eclipse her rivals in free throw accuracy, meaning she has overshadowed them with her superior abilities. 

There’s nothing like a tasty treat! When that treat is tasty not because it is sweet, but because it has a rich flavor such as that associated with meat or roasted vegetables, it may be called savory. Savory means “pleasant or agreeable in taste or smell,” but has come to represent a particular taste profile in the culinary world. Of the five basic taste sensations, savory best aligns with umami, a word adopted from Japanese in the early 1960’s that describes a meaty or mushroom-like flavor featured in Asian cuisine. Savory can also refer to a pleasing or attractive person or thing, like a savory architecture book full of vivid photographs. Its antonym, unsavory, gives off a malodor, describing someone or something that is not wholesome, as in, “Her job as an undercover investigator involved interacting with some unsavory characters.”

A cheerful person is just that, full of cheer! Another word for being in good spirits and floating above life’s worries is buoyant. While buoyant describes the physical properties that allow an object to stay afloat, it also means “not easily depressed” or “cheerful.” Buoyant also can describe a resilient economy or the stock market when it is on a high trajectory. In general, something buoyant tends to rise, or has a lightness of spirit that keeps it bouncing along, you know, like a buoy.

Welcome to 2021, synonym seekers! To welcome someone is to greet their arrival with pleasure. To go a step further, we’d also like to embrace the new year (and our loved ones, but at a safe distance!). To embrace is not only to hug, but also to receive someone or something gladly or eagerly. It can also mean to accept or avail oneself of something, as in: “The new year is a time we can embrace new practices, like yoga or eating more green vegetables.” At a time when the future seems so uncertain, in 2021, let's resolve to embrace the present, or, as they say in Latin, carpe diem!

Someone or something that is bubbly is lively, enthusiastic, or, in the case of carbonated beverages, literally full of bubbles. There are many synonyms for bubbly, but while you would never call someone carbonated, you might refer to a particularly vivacious or irrepressible friend as effervescent. This ebullient adjective means having or giving off bubbles of gas, as well as showing enthusiasm, excitement, or liveliness. An effervescent person is someone for whom suppression is unlikely or impossible, but why would we want to stem their enthusiasm? Now that 2020 is almost over, be effervescent with joy!