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Question 1

cant

Answer 1

cant n. insincere talk; language of a particular group
Many of the beat artists of the 1950s reacted against what they regarded as the cant of bourgeois society.

Question 2

capricious

Answer 2

capricious adj. fickle
The rule of law is regarded by many historians as one of humanity’s great achievements because since its inception citizens are no
longer subject to capricious decisions and penalties of rulers.

Caprice is a noun meaning an inclination to change one’s mind
compulsively.
Styles in high fashion seem governed by caprice as much as anything else.

Question 3

castigation

Answer 3

castigation n. punishment; chastisement; criticism
Many British writers recall with loathing the castigation they
received at school.

Question 4

catalyst

Answer 4

catalyst n. something causing change
Among the catalysts of the Romantic movement were the libertarian ideals of the French Revolution.

Question 5

chicanery

Answer 5

chicanery n. trickery; fraud
The governor ordered an audit to investigate alleged financial chicanery.

Question 6

coagulate

Answer 6

coagulate v. thicken; congeal
In normal individuals, blood begins to coagulate about 20 seconds
after a wound is sustained, thus preventing further bleeding.

Question 7

commensurate

Answer 7

commensurate adj. proportional
In the United States, malpractice suits have raised the cost of
medicine because doctors must pay more for insurance, and thus
increase their fees commensurately.

Question 8

compendium

Answer 8

compendium n. brief, comprehensive summary
The Mozart Compendium: A Guide to Mozart’s Life and Music
by H. C. Robbins Landon is a convenient reference for finding
information about the life and music of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart.

Question 9

complaisant

Answer 9

complaisant adj. overly polite; willing to please; obliging
Although France and Germany have a close relationship, neither
would consider the other a complaisant ally.

Question 10

conciliatory

Answer 10

conciliatory adj. overcoming distrust or hostility
The leader of the country made conciliatory statements assuring
the world that his country did not intend to acquire nuclear weapons.

Question 11

concomitant

Answer 11

concomitant n. existing concurrently
A rebuttal of the argument that homo sapiens’s higher cognitive
functions could not be the result solely of evolution is that such
abilities arose as concomitants of language, which gave early
hominids a tremendous advantage over other species.

Question 12

confound

Answer 12

confound v. to baffle; perplex; mix up
Everyone but astrophysicists seems to be confounded by the
question, “What happened before the Big Bang?”

Question 13

contentious

Answer 13

contentious adj. quarrelsome; causing quarrels
When genetic engineering began in the 1970s, there was a
contentious, and sometimes acrimonious, debate among scientists
themselves about its dangers.

Question 14

conundrum

Answer 14

conundrum n. riddle; puzzle with no solution
The paradoxical statement “This statement is false” presents us
with a conundrum.

Question 14

convoluted

Answer 14

convoluted adj. twisted; complicated
Unraveling the convoluted genetic code is one of the great
achievements of modern science.

Question 15

cosmology

Answer 15

cosmology n. study of the universe as a totality; theory of the origin
and structure of the universe
Albert Einstein downplayed the strength of the evidence for
quantum theory because a universe governed by laws that are
inconsistent in their application was not congruent with his
personal cosmology.
Cosmos is a noun meaning the physical universe regarded as a
totality.
Shakespeare embodies the incredible confidence and vitality of
Renaissance artists and writers, depicting the entire cosmos, not
intimidated by its vastness.
Cosmic is an adjective meaning relating to the physical universe,
especially as distinct from Earth, and suggests infinite vastness.
The gods of ancient Greece were concerned not only with cosmic
events, but also with the ordinary events of everyday life.

Question 16

craven

Answer 16

craven adj. cowardly
In the Hindu epic poem the Bhagavad-Gita, Lord Krishna warns
the hero, who is reluctant to fight, that refusing to fight would be a
craven act.

Question 17

credence

Answer 17

credence n. acceptance of something as true
One of the lessons in Aesop’s fable “The Shepherd Boy and the
Wolf ” is that if a person “cries wolf ” too many times without real
danger being present (that is, raises too many false alarms) people
will be less likely to give credence to future alarms raised by that
person.

Question 18

decorum

Answer 18

decorum n. proper behavior
When addressing the nation, the president generally has an air of
decorum.
The adjective is decorous.

Question 19

deference

Answer 19

deference n. respect; regard for another’s wish
There was a movement to condemn slavery among some of the
writers of the Declaration of Independence, but despite many
misgivings, the proposal was dropped in deference to the objections
of a number of people.
The verb defer means to submit to the wishes of another due to
respect or recognition of the person’s authority or knowledge.
The young lawyer deferred to the view of the senior partner in the
law firm.

Question 20

delineate

Answer 20

delineate v. to represent or depict
Quantum theory led to the formulation of the uncertainty principle,
which was delineated in 1937 by Werner Heisenberg.

Question 21

demotic

Answer 21

demotic adj. pertaining to people
Walt Whitman is considered by many to be a quintessentially
American poet, a poet who celebrated the glory of the ordinary
person; one critic praised him as a poet who was able to “make the
demotic sing.”

Question 22

demur

Answer 22

demur v. to express doubt
The Supreme Court’s decision was not unanimous; one justice
demurred, saying that the majority decision used specious
reasoning.

Question 23

denigrate

Answer 23

denigrate v. to slur someone’s reputation
According to a recent biography of Napoleon Bonaparte, the famous
leader felt a need to denigrate women.

Question 24

denoument

Answer 24

denouement n. outcome; unraveling of the plot of a play or work of
literature
The book tells the story of what was for Europe a rather embarrassing denouement to the Crusades.

Question 24

derivative

Answer 24

derivative n. something derived; unoriginal
The drug morphine—considered by doctors to be one of the most
effective analgesics—is the principal derivative of opium, which is
the juice in the unripe seed pods of the opium poppy.
Derivative is also an adjective.
The critic dismissed the new novel as dull and derivative.
The verb derive means obtained from another source.
One of the attempts to create a lingua franca resulted in Esperanto,
a synthetic language whose vocabulary is created by adding various
affixes to individual roots and is derived from Latin and Greek, as
well as Germanic and Romance languages.

Question 25

desiccate

Answer 25

desiccate v. to dry completely
The dry desert air caused the bodies of the dead animals to
desiccate quickly.

Question 26

desultory

Answer 26

desultory adj. random; disconnected; rambling
The jury had difficulty following the witnesses’ desultory testimony.

Question 27

diatribe

Answer 27

diatribe n. bitter verbal attack
The speaker launched into a diatribe against what he called “the
evils of technology.”

Question 28

dichotomy

Answer 28

dichotomy n. division into two usually contradictory parts
The philosopher is a dualist who argues that there is a dichotomy
between the mind and physical phenomena.

Question 29

diffidence

Answer 29

diffidence n. shyness; lack of confidence
As a result of the strength of his opposition to the Vietnam
War Senator Eugene McCarthy overcame his diffidence and ran
against President Lyndon Johnson for the Democratic nomination
for president.

Question 30

diffuse

Answer 30

diffuse v. to spread out
The idea of equality and liberty diffused through society after the
French Revolution.
Diffuse is also an adjective meaning wordy; rambling; spread out.
This essay is so diffuse it is difficult to follow its central argument.