11th July Flashcards
flux
If your likes, dislikes, attitudes, dreams, and even friends are changing all the time, you may be in flux.
Suppose you just had a great job interview and suddenly your friend invites you to go to Australia with her. You don’t know what to do because you don’t want to miss a call about the job — or Sydney! You’re in flux until you hear from the potential employer.
Ever since Elvira resigned as the head of marketing, everything about our sales strategy has been in a state of flux.
askance
1) looking with suspicion or disapproval
2with a side or oblique glance
The old couple looked askance on the teenagers seated next to them.
placate | appease
If you placate someone, you stop them from being angry by giving them something or doing something that pleases them.
If your little sister is mad that the dog ate her favorite teddy bear, you could placate her by buying her an ice cream cone.
But in Washington, Democratic leaders are now plainly more focused on heading off attacks from the right than placating the activist left.
I was able to placate the angry mob of students by promising to bring cookies on Monday
prudent
Describe an action as prudent if it is the wise thing to do under the existing circumstances.
If you’re getting in trouble, it is probably prudent to keep your mouth closed and just listen.
Hancock, the health secretary, said that all options remain on the table and that a short delay in lifting all restrictions might be the most prudent course.
“It is prudent to allow executives to act quickly and decisively in case of an emergency,” Mr. Mitchell said.
imprudent
To describes the opposite of being wise or shrewd or prudent.
Careless, wild, imprudent behavior can get you into big trouble!
Whatever the final numbers, the two Republican lawmakers called the parole policy “extremely imprudent.”
opulence | abundance | prosperity
A word that suggests extravagant excess, opulence describes lavish and visibly over-the-top living.
Wealth as evidenced by sumptuous living.
Russian oligarchs are famous for their opulence living in fancy homes and dining on expensive caviar.
construe | misconstrue
If you interpret something or make sense of it, you construe its meaning.
If the new girl in your class asks to sit with you at lunch, you could construe that she wants to be friends. To make an assumption based on evidence is to construe. You could construe that eating an entire box of cookies might make you feel a bit sick.
The opposite of construe is misconstrue, which means to falsely or wrongly interpret.
If you get a poor grade on an essay, you shouldn’t construe that your teacher dislikes you. If you do, you misconstrue your work for his feelings.
Please do not construe my decisions to be an endorsement of what happened in this case,” McHugh wrote.
The amendment includes a requirement that it be liberally construed in favor of voters’ rights.
dispassionate
unaffected by strong emotion or prejudice.
A good scientist should be dispassionate, focusing on what the evidence says, without the personal attachment.
nuance
Use nuance to refer to a very small difference in color, meaning, or feeling.
Because of the nuances involved in the case, I hired an outside consultant to advise us and help.
When you say a work of art was nuanced, it means there was a lot to it, but incorporated subtly.
One notable difference was that more female reporters were covering the race than in the past and they covered gender with more nuance, Ms. Fuchs said
economical
Avoiding waste | being efficient
truncate
Reduce the length of something
The soccer game was truncated when the monsoon rain began to fall.
polemic
A polemic is something that stirs up controversy by having a negative opinion.
A strong verbal or written attack on someone or something.
The professor launched into a polemic, claiming that Freudian theory was a pack of lies that absolutely destroyed European literary theory.
efficacious
When you really want to do something right, really nail it, really get at what you were going for — you’re trying to be efficacious, or produce the effect you intended.
Producing the intended result
An efficacious medicine is one that cures you of the ailment you had.
An efficacious recipe is one that comes out the way you intended it to taste.
deleterious ~- pernicious
If something is deleterious, it does harm or makes things worse. Smoking has obvious deleterious effects on your health, not to mention your social life.
My parents were worried that their divorce would have a deleterious effect on us kids, but in the end it was less harmful than watching them fight all the time.
For most plants, a lack of sunlight has very deleterious consequences, but there are some plants that actually do very well in the dark.
Terryl was doing a command performance for her debate team, arguing about the deleterious impact of violence in advertising.
Still, as a health care worker studying the virus’s deleterious effects, he thought it was important not to travel and risk infecting himself or his family.
harried ~- annoyed
Someone who is harried is feeling the stress of being rushed, overworked, or harassed.
A harried parent might be exhausted but still have to make 3 dozen cupcakes for school and help with a science project.
If the project you’re working on has been harried from start to finish, you’ll be lucky to keep your sanity.
The Brazilian government, after stalling several vaccine purchases to haggle and fret over costs, made a harried deal this year to buy an unapproved Indian vaccine at a suspiciously expensive price.
Mr. Putin portrayed Russia as harried by Western nations for years with hypocritical criticism and sanctions.
Related words : duress
