Recently Added Articles Page #118

obtuse - vocabulary

adjectiveNot alert or quick in perception or feeling; dull; not observant; not sharp or pointed, blunt in form. It is because the public are a mass—inert, obtuse, and passive—that they need to be shaken up from time to time so that we can tell fr...

obviate - vocabulary

verbTo anticipate, eliminate, or prevent difficulties by effective measures, as in to obviate the risk of injury. The Internet, on the other hand, not only creates niche communities—of young people, beer aficionados, news junkies, Britney Spears fa...

officious - vocabulary

adjectiveIntermeddling with what is not one's concern; overly aggressive in offering one’s unwanted and unrequested services. The government is huge, stupid, greedy and makes nosy, officious and dangerous intrusions into the smallest corners of lif...

omniscience, omniscient - vocabulary

adjectiveOmniscient: having unlimited or infinite knowledge.nounOmniscience: unlimited or infinite knowledge. Philip felt that he ought to have been thoroughly happy in that answer of hers; she was as open and transparent as a rock-pool. Why was he n...

onerous - vocabulary

adjectiveBurdensome, oppressive, troublesome. We have the means to change the laws we find unjust or onerous. We cannot, as citizens, pick and choose the laws we will or will not obey.—Former President Ronald Reagan Speech to the United Brotherhood...

onus - vocabulary

nounA difficult burden, task, or responsibility. In law, the word onus refers to the burden of proof, as in The onus is on the plaintiff to prove the theory of the case. He proposed to call witnesses to show how the prisoner, a profligate and spendt...

opprobrium - vocabulary

nounThe disgrace or reproach incurred by outrageous or shameful conduct; ignominy. Yahoo has suffered a good deal of opprobrium since it was revealed last month that, when [Chinese] government officials came calling, the company's Hong Kong division ...

oral, verbal - vocabulary

adjectiveOral: uttered by the mouth, as in oral testimony; using or transmitted by speech, as in oral methods of teaching languages; involving the mouth, as in the oral cavity; taken, done, or administered through the mouth, as in an oral dose of med...

ostracize - vocabulary

verbTo exclude, by general agreement, from friendship, society, conversation, or privileges, as in His friends ostracized him after the scandal broke. Even after this skirmish, Democrats are unlikely to completely ostracize Fox [New Channel]. John Ed...

palpable - vocabulary

nounPlainly or readily seen, heard, or understood; evident; obvious; capable of being felt or touched; tangible. Is this a dagger which I see before me, The handle toward my hand? Come, let me clutch thee. I have thee not, and yet I see thee still. A...

panacea - vocabulary

nounA remedy or medicine for all disease, a cure-all; a solution for all difficulties or problems. "It's not all rubbish," cried Amory passionately. "This is the first time in my life I've argued Socialism. It's the only panacea I know. I'm restless....

pandemic - vocabulary

adjective, nounAffecting a whole people, all classes, or the whole world, as a disease; general or universal, as in pandemic fear of a pandemic. “The threat of an influenza pandemic is, at present, one of the most significant public health issues o...

parable - vocabulary

nounA brief story used to teach a truth or moral lesson; a statement or comment that conveys an indirect meaning through analogy or comparison. He put before them another parable: “The kingdom of heaven is like a mustard seed that someone took and ...

paradigm - vocabulary

nounA pattern or model; a set of assumptions, values, concepts, and practices that forms a way of viewing reality for the people who share those assumptions, etc., especially in an intellectual discipline. Manhattanism is the one urbanistic ideology ...

paragon - vocabulary

nounA pattern or model of excellence. Based on the novel by Charles Baxter, the movie is ostensibly an exploration of love in its many forms, but mostly it sticks to the credulity-and-patience-straining kind. Morgan Freeman, cast again as a paragon o...

parlance - vocabulary

nounA manner or way of speaking, vernacular, idiom, as in legal parlance. Every president after Jefferson has professed agreement with Jefferson’s concept that the freedom of the American press to print its versions of the facts, background and lik...

parody - vocabulary

verbA satirical or humorous imitation, usually of a serious piece of literature; any humorous, burlesque, or satirical imitation of a person, event, etc. The parody is the last refuge of the frustrated writer. Parodies are what you write when you are...

parsimonious - vocabulary

adjectiveUnduly sparing in the use or expenditure of money; stingy; cheap. The noun form is parsimony. England, however, as it has never been blessed with a very parsimonious government, so parsimony has at no time been the characteristical virtue of...

patronize - vocabulary

verbTo give a store or business one’s regular patronage; to trade with; to behave in an offensively condescending way. “Of course,” his mother persevered, “some of the programs are not very good, but we ought to patronize them and make the be...

paucity - vocabulary

nounSmallness of quantity; scarcity. It is very strange, and very melancholy, that the paucity of human pleasures should persuade us ever to call hunting one of them.—Samuel Johnson Anecdotes of Samuel Johnson (1786)...

pecuniary - vocabulary

adjectiveOf or relating to money. No genuine equality, no real freedom, no true manhood or womanhood can exist on any foundation save that of pecuniary independence. As a right over a man’s subsistence is a power over his moral being, so a right ov...

pedagogy - vocabulary

nounThe science and art of teaching; the function or work of a teacher. The first thing to know about Lan Samantha Chang, who has been named the new director of the Iowa Writers' Workshop, is that she has strong ideas about teaching.—Dinitia Smith ...

pedantic - vocabulary

adjectiveOstentatious in one’s learning; characterized by a detailed, often ostentatious, attention to formalisms, especially in teaching. Here, Nabokov's aristocratic dilettantism is perfect, because he uses it to flick off the Bolsheviks as if th...

pejorative - vocabulary

adjectiveCharacterized by a belittling, disparaging, or derogatory force or effect.nounThe statement itself. Never . . . use the word gossip in a pejorative sense. It’s the very stuff of biography and has to be woven in. To suggest that the perso...

penultimate - vocabulary

adjectiveNext to the last. When I was a school-boy, during the penultimate decade of the last century, the chief American grammar was “A Practical Grammar of the English Language,” by Thomas W. Harvey.  This formidable work was almost purely syn...