#41 exigency ~ exult Flashcards
exigency
/ˈɛksɪdʒənsi, ɪgˈzɪdʒən-/
n. an emergency; an urgency
- An academic exigency: You haven’t opened a book all term and the final is tomorrow morning.
Exigent means urgent.
existential
/ˌɛgzɪˈstɛnʃəl, ˌɛksɪ-/
adj. having to do with existence; having to do with the body of thought called existentialism, which basically holds that human beings are responsible for their own actions but is otherwise too complicated to summarize in a single sentence
This word is overused but under-understood by virtually all of the people who use it. Unless you have a very good reason for throwing it around, you should probably avoid it.
exonerate
/ɪgˈzɒnəˌreɪt/
v. to free completely from blame; to exculpate
- The defendant, who had always claimed he wasn’t guilty, expected to be exonerated by the testimony of his best friend.
- Our dog was exonerated when we discovered that it was in fact the cat that had eaten all the doughnuts.
expatriate
/v. ɛksˈpeɪtriˌeɪt or, esp. British, -ˈpætri-/
/n. ɛksˈpeɪtriɪt, -ˌeɪt or, esp. British, -ˈpætri-/
v. to throw (someone) out of his or her native land; to move away from one’s native land; to emigrate
- The rebels were expatriated by the nervous general, who feared that they would cause trouble if they were allowed to remain in the country.
- Hugo was fed up with his native country, so he expatriated to America. In doing so, Hugo became an expatriate.
repatriate
/v. riˈpeɪtriˌeɪt or, esp. British, -ˈpæ-; n. riˈpeɪtriɪt or, esp. British, -ˈpæ-/
v. to return to one’s native citizenship; to become a repatriate
expedient
/ɪkˈspidiənt/
adj. providing an immediate advantage; serving one’s immediate self-interest; practical
- Since the basement had nearly filled with water, the plumber felt it would be expedient to clear out the drain.
- The candidate’s position in favor of higher pay for teachers was an expedient one adopted for the national teachers’ convention but abandoned shortly afterward.
Expedient can also be used as a noun for sth. expedient.
- The car repairman did not have his tool kit handy, so he used chewing gum as an expedient to patch a hole.
The noun expedience or expediency is practicality or being esp. suited to a particular goal.
expedite
/ˈɛkspɪˌdaɪt/
v. to speed up or ease the progress of
- The post office expedited mail delivery by hiring more letter carriers.
- The lawyer expedited the progress of our case through the courts by bribing a few judges.
- Our wait for a table was expedited by a waiter who mistook Angela for a movie star.
explicit
/ɪkˈsplɪsɪt/
adj. clearly and directly expressed
- The sexually explicit movie received an X rating.
- The machine’s instructions were explicit - they told us exactly what to do.
- No one explicitly asked us to set the barn on fire, but we got the impression that that was what we were supposed to do.
implicit
/ɪmˈplɪsɪt/
adj. indirectly expressed or implied
- Gerry’s dissatisfaction with our work was implicit in his expression, although he never criticized us directly.
extol
/ɪkˈstoʊl, -ˈstɒl/
v. to praise highly; to laud
- The millionaire extolled the citizen who returned his gold watch but the only reward was a heartfelt handshake.
extraneous
/ɪkˈstreɪniəs/
adj. unnecessary; irrelevant; extra
- Extra ice cream would never be extraneous, unless everyone had already eaten so much that no one wanted any more.
- The book’s feeble plot was buried in a lot of extraneous material about a talking dog.
- The salad contained several extraneous ingredients, including hair, sand, and a single dead fly.
To be extraneous is to be extra and always with the sense of being unnecessary.
extrapolate
/ɪkˈstræpəˌleɪt/
v. to project or deduce from sth. known; to infer
- Goerge’s estimates were extrapolated from last year’s data; he simply took all the old numbers and doubled them.
- Emeril came up with a probably recipe by extrapolating from the taste of the cookies he had eaten at the store.
- By extrapolating from a handful of pottery fragments, the archaeologists formed a possible picture of the ancient civilization.
To extrapolate, a scientist uses the facts he has to project to facts outside; to interpolate, he tries to fill the gaps within his data.
extricate
/ˈɛkstrɪˌkeɪt/
v. to free from difficulty
- It took two and a half days to extricate the little girl from the abandoned well into which she had fallen.
- Yoshi had to pretend to be sick to extricate himself from the blind date with the ventriloquist who brought her puppet on the date with her.
- Monica had no trouble driving her car into the ditch, but she needed a tow truck to extricate it.
Sth. that is permanently stuck is inextricable.
extrovert
/ˈɛkstrəˌvɜrt, -stroʊ-/
n. an open, outgoing person; a person whose attention is focused on others rather than on himself or herself
- Maria was quite an extrovert; she walked boldly into the roomful of strange adults and struck up many friendly conversations.
- Damian was an extrovert in the sense that he was always more interested in other people’s business than in his own.
introvert
/ˈɪntrəˌvɜrt/
n. a person whose attention is directed inward and who is concerned with little outside himself or herself
- Ryan was an introvert; he spent virtually all his time in his room, writing in his diary and talking to himself. An introvert is usually introspective.
