Dictionary.com, july 1999

sublunary \suhb-LOO-nuh-ree\, adjective:
Situated beneath the moon; hence, of or pertaining to this world; terrestrial; earthly.

In Shakespearean drama, both tragic and comic, the storms and calamities that shake the sublunary globe are reflections of turmoil in the hearts of men.
-- Pico Iyer, "The Philippines Midsummer Night's Dream", Time, July 21, 1986

It's hard to deny that finding oneself in an airless wooden box six feet underground, listening to the wriggling approach of what Poe called "Conqueror Worm," would be one of the worst possible ways to end one's existence in this sublunary sphere.
-- Gary Kamiya, "Buried alive!", Salon, March 7, 2001

May the lexicographer be derided, who being able to produce no example of a nation that has preserved their words and phrases from mutability, shall imagine that his dictionary can embalm his language, and secure it from corruption and decay, that it is in his power to change sublunary nature, and clear the world at once from folly, vanity, and affectation.
-- Samuel Johnson, Preface to the Dictionary of the English Language

Sublunary is from the Latin sublunaris, from sub, "under" + luna, "the moon."

ebullient \ih-BUL-yuhnt\, adjective:
1. Overflowing with enthusiasm or excitement; high-spirited.
2. Boiling up or over.

The glasses he wore for astigmatism gave him a deceptively clerkish appearance, for he had an ebullient, gregarious personality, a hot temper, and an outsized imagination.
-- Jon Lee Anderson, Che Guevara: A Revolutionary Life

He was no longer an ebullient, energetic adolescent.
-- Linda Simon, Genuine Reality: A Life of William James

Sometimes he would come back from the Drenchery Club holding on to the walls till he got to my office, where he'd be jolly and ebullient. At other times, he'd return morose.
-- Harriet Wasserman, Handsome Is: Adventures with Saul Bellow

Ebullient comes from Latin ebullire, "to bubble up," from e-, "out of, from" + bullire, "to bubble, to boil."

Brobdingnagian \brob-ding-NAG-ee-uhn\, adjective:
Of extraordinary size; gigantic; enormous.

The venture capital business has a size problem. A monstrous, staggering, stupefying one. Brobdingnagian even.
-- Russ Mitchell, "Too Much Ventured Nothing Gained", Fortune, November 11, 2002

Any savvy dealer . . . will try to talk you up to one of the latest behemoths, which have bloated to such Brobdingnagian dimensions as to have entered the realm of the absurd.
-- Jack Hitt, "The Hidden Life of SUVs", Mother Jones, July/August 1999

Brobdingnagian is from Brobdingnag, a country of giants in Swift's Gulliver's Travels.

verdant \VUR-dnt\, adjective:
1. Covered with growing plants or grass; green with vegetation.
2. Green.
3. Unripe in knowledge, judgment, or experience; unsophisticated; green.

Drab in winter, then suddenly sodden with alpine runoff, the region turns dazzlingly verdant in spring.
-- Patricia Albers, Shadows, Fire, Snow

Dry as the region just outside the delta may be, it would still be covered with grasses, yellowish in the dry season, verdant in the wet.
-- Niles Eldredge, Life in the Balance

I was verdant enough to think her Agrippine very fine.
-- Henry James, "The Théâtre Français"

Verdant comes from French verdoyant, present participle of verdoyer, "to be verdant, to grow green," from Old French verdoier, verdeier, from verd, vert, "green," from Latin viridis, "green," from virere, "to be green."

torrid \TOR-uhd\, adjective:
1. Violenty hot; drying or scorching with heat; burning; parching; as, "torrid heat."
2. Characterized by intense emotion; as, "a torrid love affair."
3. Emotionally charged and vigorously energetic; as, "a torrid dance."

Cyrene's torrid soil
-- Milton

Taniperla is a tumbledown coffee-farming outpost in torrid lowlands in Chiapas state.
-- "Mexico Sees Both Carrot and Stick Fail in Chiapas", New York Times, May 17, 1998

There are other treasures in this humorous phantasmagoria of song--the torrid pavement dancing of Fred Davis and Eddie Sledge, the bland gunman fooling of Harry Clark and Jack Diamond, the antic dancing masquerade that serves as first scene to 'The Taming of the Shrew' sequence.
-- "At the Theatre: 'Kiss Me, Kate'", New York Times, December 31, 1948

Still, the idea of a torrid affair between the teen-ager from Oak Park, Ill[inois], and the shapely auburn-haired nurse, fits the myth of Hemingway as an icon of male prowess -- hunter, drinker, fighter, writer and lover.
-- "A Hemingway Story, and Just as Fictional", New York Times, January 26, 1997

Fleisher has been going at a torrid pace as well, but he acknowledged after his second straight 67 that if he hadn't birdied two of his last three holes, O'Connor likely would have had a walkover today.
-- "O'Connor Turns Up Heat for Final Day: Irishman Is Seeking First Seniors Win", Washington Post, July 4, 1999

Stocks rose for a third consecutive session yesterday, pushed higher by money flowing into stocks of the biggest and most widely traded companies and torrid demand for companies that do business on the Internet.
-- "Stocks Rise Again, Buoyed by Technology and Internet Shares", New York Times, December 22, 1998

Torrid derives from Latin torridus, parched, burnt, dry, from torreo, torrere, to burn, parch, dry up with heat or thirst. The noun form of the word is torridness or torridity.