Recently Added Articles Page #124

utilitarianism - vocabulary

nounThe ethical doctrine that actions are right because they are useful for the greatest number of people. A system of ethics according to which the rightness or wrongness of an action should be judged by its consequences. The goal of utilitarian eth...

vacuous - vocabulary

adjectiveEmpty, without content; lacking in intelligence or ideas; without purpose, idle. Television was not invented to make human beings vacuous, but is an emanation of their vacuity.—Malcolm Muggeridge “I Like Dwight” Tread Softly for You Tr...

vapid - vocabulary

adjectiveHaving lost sparkling quality and flavor; insipid; flat; dull or tedious. A society in which everyone works is not necessarily a free society and may indeed be a slave society; on the other hand, a society in which there is widespread econom...

vehement - vocabulary

adjectiveVery eager or urgent; zealous, ardent; characterized by rancor or anger; consisting of great exertion or energy. It is very natural for young men to be vehement, acrimonious and severe. For as they seldom comprehend at once all the consequen...

venal, venial - vocabulary

adjectiveVenal: willing to sell one’s influence in return for a bribe; associated with bribery. From what we already know, . . . some churchmen had dealings with the SB [Polish Secret Police] for no other reason than that anyone in Poland who wan...

vernacular - vocabulary

adjectiveConcerning language, indigenous or native, as opposed to learned or literary; using plain, ordinary language; also pertaining to a style of architecture employing techniques, decorative arts, materials, etc., common to a particular place or ...

vestige - vocabulary

nounA visible trace, mark, or impression, of something absent, lost, or gone; a surviving evidence of a condition or practice. Most people with whom I talk, men and women even of some originality and genius, have their scheme of the universe all cut ...

vicarious - vocabulary

adjectiveSuffered, done, received, or exercised in place of another, as in vicarious punishment; serving as a substitute; felt or enjoyed through imagination of experience of others, as in a vicarious thrill. Parents lend children their experience an...

vicissitude - vocabulary

nounA change, especially a complete change, of condition or circumstances, as of fortune; successive, alternating, or changing phases or conditions, as in We have been friends through the vicissitudes of 44 years of marriage. The greatest vicissitud...

vindicate - vocabulary

verbTo clear from accusation or suspicion; to provide justification for; to justify through argument; to get revenge. Psychology keeps trying to vindicate human nature. History keeps undermining the effort.—Mason Cooley City Aphorisms (1989)...

vindictive - vocabulary

adjectiveInclined toward revenge, vengeful; showing a revengeful spirit. “That’s why you were so much struck when I mentioned to Zossimov that Porfiry was inquiring for every one who had pledges!” Razumihin put in with obvious intention. This w...

virulent - vocabulary

adjectiveIntensely poisonous; in medicine, highly infective, as in a virulent disease; also, spitefully hostile. Every two years the American politics industry fills the airwaves with the most virulent, scurrilous, wall-to-wall character assassinatio...

visage - vocabulary

nounThe face, countenance, or look of a person; appearance, aspect, as in the bleak visage of February. He was small in stature, with a furrowed visage, which, as yet, could hardly be termed aged. There was a remarkable intelligence in his features, ...

vitiate - vocabulary

verbTo impair the quality of, spoil; to debase, corrupt. In law, to make defective, as in to vitiate a claim. We do not draw the moral lessons we might from history. On the contrary, without care it may be used to vitiate our minds and to destroy our...

vituperation - vocabulary

nounCensure or violent condemnation; verbal abuse, castigation. And as I grew into manhood, the newspapers rang on every side with disrespect for those in authority. Under the special dispensation of the liberty of the press, which was construed into...

vociferous - vocabulary

adjectiveThe quality of making a noisy and vehement outcry. In 2000 Mr. [Norman] Finkelstein, a vehement critic of Israel and the son of Holocaust survivors, published “The Holocaust Industry: Reflections on the Exploitation of Jewish Suffering,”...

volition - vocabulary

nounAn act or exercise of will; the act of choosing, willing, or resolving. The good, by affinity, seek the good; the vile, by affinity, the vile. Thus of their own volition, souls proceed into heaven, into hell.—Ralph Waldo Emerson Address before ...

voracious - vocabulary

adjectiveEating with greediness or in very large quantities; very eager or avid, as in a voracious reader. The fish in neighboring streams and lakes are so voracious, it is said, that fishermen have to stand out of sight behind trees while baiting th...

wanton - vocabulary

adjectiveDone, used, or shown maliciously, without justification; done without motive or provocation, headstrong; without regard for right and wrong; sexually loose, lascivious; excessively luxurious. At this moment, my small daughter being out, I am...

waive - vocabulary

verbTo relinquish, especially temporarily, as a right or claim; to refrain from claiming or insisting on; to put aside for a time, postpone, defer. In law, to relinquish a known right. "Well, even granting that, I don't think health has anything to d...

zealot - vocabulary

nounOne who espouses a cause or pursues an object in an immoderately partisan manner; a true believer. To attempt the destruction of our passions is the height of folly. What a noble aim is that of the zealot who tortures himself like a madman in ord...

zeitgeist - vocabulary

nounA German word, often appearing in the uppercase, which means “the spirit of the times” or “the general intellectual or temper characteristic of a particular period of time.” These days, it’s perfectly acceptable to write the word in the...

schadenfreude - vocabulary

A German word meaning the delight in the suffering of others. It often appears capitalized, as all German nouns are capitalized. But in English, the lowercase is perfectly proper.Pronounced: shahd-n-froi-duh. But I began to notice, both in media cove...

L'esprit de l'escalier - vocabulary

This French term describes the predicament everyone has experienced: thinking of the ideal comeback after the moment has passed, indeed, after it’s too late. The term literally translates to “stairway wit,” that is, thinking of the perfect reto...

Build Your Vocabulary

In this section, we have provided short discussions of 406 words. In each, we define the word and then provide an example of its use by top writers in literature or the media.This list will especially help young people studying for college-entrance e...