05/05/14 Flashcards
Enjoin
a. In early use: To impose (a penalty, task, duty, or obligation); said esp.of a spiritual director (to enjoin penance, etc.). Hence in mod. use: To prescribe authoritatively and with emphasis (an action, a course of conduct, state of feeling, etc.). Const. on, upon (a person); formerly to, ordat. (or acc.: see 2b); also simply.
-Chavez’s associates enjoined him to figure out something better than the hiring hall, and yet he seemed to resent the suggestion.
verb (used with object) 1. to prescribe (a course of action) with authority or emphasis:The doctor enjoined a strict diet.
-But you are right, and I enjoin your husband to obtain a backpack, or better, to purify his being and pare his walkabout needs to cash, one card and a single key. It makes doing errands feel positively monastic.
2. to direct or order to do something: He was enjoined to live more frugally.
-After all, the scriptures enjoin Christians to render “unto Caesar the things which are Caesar’s; and unto God the things that are God’s.”
3. Law. to prohibit or restrain by an injunction.
Judge Won’t Enjoin Nazi Rally in Buffalo
Hew
1. to strike forcibly with an ax, sword, or other cutting instrument;chop; hack.
**2. to make, shape, smooth, etc., with cutting blows: to hew apassage through the crowd; to hew a **statue from marble.
3.to sever (a part) from a whole by means of cutting blows(usually followed by away, off, out, from, etc.): to hew branches from the tree.
4. to cut down; fell: to hew wood; trees hewed down by the storm.
verb (used without object), hewed, hewed or hewn, hew·ing.
5. to strike with cutting blows; cut: He hewed more vigorously eachtime.
6. to uphold, follow closely, or conform (usually followed by to ): to hew to the tenets of one’s political party.
-Pawel’s book hews close to her archival research, avoiding dramatization and extensive exposition.
To Mete
** 5. trans. To apportion by measure; to assign in portions; to portion or deal out; esp. to allot (punishment, praise, reward, etc.). Also intr. Now usually (in trans. use) with out.**
-First came missionaries, building churches out of clay and meting out God’s kingdom to the native peoples.
Profligate
** 2. Given to or characterized by licentiousness; debauched.**
** 3. a. Recklessly extravagant, esp. with money; wasteful.**
-his father was a profligate businessman, though, and in the late thirties the county foreclosed on the property.
–The entertainment industry is viewed as a metric-free place of profligate whimsy by the engineering culture, and the valley is seen as a place that has no regard for intellectual property and a profound lack of taste
b. Lacking in moderation; abundant.
NOUN
A profligate person.
Licentious
li·cen·tious
1. sexually unrestrained; lascivious; libertine; lewd.
2. unrestrained by law or general morality; lawless; immoral.
3. going beyond customary or proper bounds or limits; disregarding rules.
Thesaurus: dissolute; gallant*; abandoned; rakish; unbridled; amorous; promiscuous; incestuous
Cipher
** 1. a. An arithmetical symbol or character (0) of no value by itself, but which increases or decreases the value of other figures according to its position. When placed after any figure or series of figures in a whole number it increases the value of that figure or series tenfold, and when placed before a figure in decimal fractions, it decreases its value in the same proportion.**
2. b. The zero-point, or zero, of a thermometer. U.S.
3. fig. a. A person who fills a place, but is of no importance or worth, a nonentity, a ‘mere nothing’.
-Chavez was a cipher even to colleagues, partly because
5a. A secret or disguised manner of writing, whether by characters arbitrarily invented (app. the earlier method), or by an arbitrary use of letters or characters in other than their ordinary sense, by making single words stand for sentences or phrases, or by other conventional methods intelligible only to those possessing the key; a cryptograph. Also anything written in cipher, and the key to such a system.
VERB
2. b. trans. To work out arithmetically. Also with out.
** c. To calculate, cast in the mind, think out. (U.S. colloq.)**
Smarmy
1. Excessively or unctuously flattering
-Like a comic-book hero, Mr. McHale, 38, leads a double life, though perhaps not the kind you’re thinking of. Yes, he holds down two gigs, as a snarkier-than-thou cable television host and as a smarmy, Sam Malone-type sitcom lead who holds together a dysfunctional Spanish study group.
2. Ingratiating ex. Emcee with smary welcome.
-IF you think David Spade is no different from Russell, the smart-alecky lothario he plays on the CBS comedy “Rules of Engagement,” or the skirt-chasing wisenheimer he played on “Just Shoot Me,” or the similarly smarmy characters he played in any number of “Saturday Night Live” sketches of yore, you could not be more mistaken.
A man offering loads of smarmalade
Beseech
1) To implore urgently ex: they besought him to go at once
2) to beg eagerly for; solicit
Prelate
an ecclesiastic of a high order: archbishop, bishop, etc
Bravura
1) Music: a florid passage or piece requiring great skill and spirit in performer. 2)a display of daring, brilliant performance. adj) Music–spirited, florid, brilliant.
Canny
1) careful, cautious, prudent ex. a canny reply 2)astute, shrewd, knowing, sagacious: a canny negotiator. 3) Skilled, expert. ex. The canny tailoring of Saville Row. 4) Frugal; thrifty–canny housewife.
Indigent
1) Poor 2) Lacking food, clothing, etc
a. Lacking in what is requisite; falling short of the proper measure or standard; wanting, deficient.
Kishke
1) Beef or fowl intestine stuffed with a mixture 2) Slang: innermost parts; guts.
Maroon
1) to put shore and abandon on a desolate island or coast by way of punishment. ex: those marooned to Tasmania in the 1800’s 2) To place in an isolated and often dangerous position. 3) abandon and leave without aid. The democrat marooned by his own party for supporting gun regulation. N) a person who is marooned.
Flit
Move quickly
