Dear Geist,

Hello Geist? Oh, it's the answering reply . . . Anyway, can you possibly tell me immediately, or sooner, the difference if any between luxurious and luxuriant? I'm rushing an essay to my prof right now but a colleague took a quick look and said I got the two luxuries wrong and he had to run. I left my phone on my bedside table, so I'm calling you from a pay phone on campus! I'll call you back in five minutes. Thank you!

—Fingers-Crossed Dean

Dear Readers,

We did manage to sort out the luxuries for Dean moments before he turned in his essay, and we're summarizing it here to help any other Lit-Lorn readers avoid a similar pickle—though it's unlikely anyone else will be so far from a dictionary or working phone that they'd have to call us from a phone booth.

Luxurious is an adjective meaning characterized by luxury; the noun is luxuriousness.

Luxuriant is an adjective meaning growing or producing with abundance—soil, grass and so forth. The noun is luxuriance.

—The Editors