Recently Added Articles Page #115

assiduous - vocabulary

assiduous - adjective Constant or unremitting activity, as in assiduous exercise; constant in application or effort; diligent or persevering, as in an assiduous medical student. Callendar's concern was pursued in the 1950s by numerous American scient...

assuage - vocabulary

assuage - verb To cause to be less harsh, severe, or violent, usually in reference to appetite, pain, disease, or excitement, as in She assuaged the pain of her terminally ill patient. As psychologists begin to explore the boundaries of regret, marke...

astringent - vocabulary

astringent - noun A substance that contracts canals or tissues in the body; in cosmetics, a substance that cleans the skin and constricts the pores.adjectiveHarsh in disposition or character; in medicine, constricting or contracting. About the size a...

audacious - vocabulary

audacious - adjective Fearless, bold, daring, as in an audacious explorer; extremely original or inventive, as in his audacious vision for improving the tax laws. The Bush administration's audacious plan to rebuild Iraq envisions a sweeping overhaul ...

augur - vocabulary

augur - verb Note: Used as either a transitive verb (where the verb requires an object) or an intransitive verb (where the verb does not require an object). Also note the spelling. The noun auger is a drill.Augur (transitive): to divine, predict, or ...

avarice - vocabulary

avarice - noun An unquenchable desire for riches; a miserly desire. By avarice and selfishness, and a groveling habit, from which none of us is free, of regarding the soil as property, or the means of acquiring property chiefly, the landscape is defo...

aver - vocabulary

aver - verb To assert or affirm with confidence; to declare in a preemptory or positive manner. In law, to allege something as a fact, often followed by a that clause, as in The plaintiff averred that defendant was negligent. So General Grant, after ...

averse - vocabulary

averse - adjective Strongly disinclined, a strong feeling of opposition, as in She was averse to taking the risk.Note: Often used with the negative not, as in I am not averse to having yet another glass of fine pinot noir. I've never downloaded a pod...

banal - vocabulary

banal - adjective Drearily commonplace, hackneyed, trite, lacking in originality. If you killed off Lizzie McGuire's entire family and sent her to live with an evil stepmother and two stepsisters in the Valley, you'd have the basic setup for "A Cinde...

belie - vocabulary

belie - verb To misrepresent, to show to be false; to refute, disprove, gainsay. Often used to show an action directly contrary to the true situation, as in His shaking hands belied his calm smile and voice. Hitler's outward hatred for Jews and Russi...

bemoan - vocabulary

bemoan - verb To lament; to express grief or distress over; to regard with disapproval or regret. Back in May, Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton publicly admonished young folks for thinking of work as a "four-letter word," prompting a shaming from her own ...

beset - vocabulary

beset - verb To attack on all sides, to assail, to harass, as in beset by financial difficulties; to surround or hem in, as in the little town beset on all sides with housing developments; to place or set upon, as in the ring beset with diamonds.Note...

bilateral - vocabulary

bilateral - adjective Pertaining to two sides, parties, or factions, as in a bilateral treaty. In law, a bilateral contract binds two parties to reciprocal duties. Recently, President Bush and Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki signed a joint commu...

blaspheme - vocabulary

blaspheme - verb To speak irreverently of God or sacred things or beliefs; to speak evil of someone or something. Used as either a transitive verb (with object), as in She blasphemed the pastor of her church, or an intransitive verb (without object)...

boorish - vocabulary

boorish - adjective Like a boor, insensitive, crude; without good manners, as in His boorish behavior offended everyone at the party. Today’s New York Times features a story on the boorish and disgusting behavior by large bunches of drunk and rowdy...

cabal - vocabulary

cabal - verb To hatch a scheme, to plot.nounA small group of plotters who hatch a scheme against the government or persons in authority. The word also refers to the scheme itself. But now the British say Santa's corpulence isn't cute, it's a health h...

cacophony - vocabulary

cacophony - noun A harsh and discordant sound; a meaningless mixture of sounds. Poets who know no better rhapsodize about the peace of nature, but a well-populated marsh is a cacophony.—Bern Keating “Birders’ Heaven” Connoisseur, April 1986 N...

calumny - vocabulary

calumny - noun A false and misleading statement designed to destroy the reputation of someone or something; the act of uttering calumnies. It is harder to kill a whisper than even a shouted calumny.—Mary Stewart The Last Enchantment (1979) Note: Yo...

cant - vocabulary

cant - verb To talk in a singsong, preaching, whining tone; to speak tediously with affected solemnity.nounMonotonous speech crammed with platitudes; the special vocabulary of a group or profession; whining speech. All gentle cant and philosophizing ...

captious - vocabulary

captious - adjective One who finds fault, is difficult to please; designed to perplex or confuse, as in captious questions. Pat Oliphant's cartoon is notable because of the classic grace of the lines of the Statue of Liberty. The point is that freedo...

caricature - vocabulary

caricature - noun A picture or depiction that ludicrously exaggerates the features or defects of persons or things. The most perfect caricature is that which, on a small surface, with the simplest means, most accurately exaggerates, to the highest po...

castigate - vocabulary

castigate - verb To criticize harshly; to punish for the purpose of correcting; to reprimand severely. How can you support a policy of racial preferences and then attack one of its supposed beneficiaries as undeserving? This, ultimately, is the intri...

chagrin - vocabulary

chagrin - verb To vex by disappointment or humiliation, as in The defeat chagrined him deeply.nounA feeling of vexation; disappointment or humiliation. Silence is the universal refuge, the sequel to all dull discourses and all foolish acts, a balm to...

charlatan - vocabulary

charlatan - noun A person pretending to have more knowledge or skill than he or she actually possesses; a quack; a flamboyant deceiver. There is hardly any mental misery worse than that of having our own serious phrases, our own rooted beliefs, cari...

circumlocution - vocabulary

circumlocution - noun A roundabout way of speaking, usually using more words than necessary; evasion in speech or writing. Whatever was required to be done, the Circumlocution Office was beforehand with all the public departments in the art of percei...