#54 judicious ~ levity

Question 1

judicious

/dʒuˈdɪʃəs/

Answer 1

adj. exercising sound judgment
- The judge was far from judicious; he told the jury that he thought the defendant looked guilty and said that anyone who would wear a red bow tie into a courtroom deserved to be sent to jail.
- The firefighters made judicious use of flame-retardant foam on the brush fire before it spread to nearby homes.

Question 2

juxtapose

/ˈdʒʌkstəˌpoʊz, ˌdʒʌkstəˈpoʊz/

Answer 2

v. to place side by side
- Comedy and tragedy were juxtaposed in the play, which was alternately funny and sad.
- Juxtaposing the genuine painting and the counterfeit made it much easier to tell which was which.
The noun is juxtaposition.

Question 3

kinetic

/kɪˈnɛtɪk, kaɪ-

Answer 3

adj. having to do with motion; lively; active
Kinetic energy is energy associated with motion. A speeding bullet has a lot of kinetic energy.
Kinetic art is art with things in it that move. A mobile is an example of kinetic art.
A kinetic personality is a lively, active, and moving personality.

Question 4

labyrinth

/ˈlæbərɪnθ/

Answer 4

n. a maze; sth. like a maze
- Each of the fifty floors in the office building was a labyrinth of dark corridors and narrow passageways.
- The bill took many months to pass through the labyrinth of congressional approval.

Question 5

labyrinthine

/ˌlæbəˈrɪnθɪn, -θin/

Answer 5

adj. mazelike
- Before beginning construction on the new house, the contractor had to weave his way through the labyrinthine bureaucracy in order to obtain a building permit.

Question 6

laconic

/ləˈkɒnɪk/

Answer 6

adj. using few words, esp. to the point of seeming rude
- The manager’s laconic dismissal letter left the fired employees feeling angry and hurt.
- When she went backstage, June discovered why the popular rock musician was so laconic in public: His voice was high and squeaky.

Question 7

lament

/ləˈmɛnt/

Answer 7

v. to mourn
- From the balcony of the bullet-pocked hotel, the foreign correspondents could hear hundreds of women and children lamenting the fallen soldiers.
- As the snowstorm gained in intensity, Stan lamented his decision that morning to dress in shorts and a T-shirt.

Question 8

lamentable

/ləˈmɛntəbəl, ˈlæməntə-/

Answer 8

adj. regrettable

Question 9

lampoon

/læmˈpuːn/

Answer 9

v. to satirize; to mock; to parody
- The irreverent students mercilessly lampooned their Latin teacher’s lisp in a skit at the school talent show.
- The Harvard Lampoon, the nation’s oldest humor magazine, has lampooned just about everything there is to lampoon.

Question 10

languish

/ˈlæŋgwɪʃ/

Answer 10

v. to become weak, listless, or depressed
- The formerly eager and vigorous accountant languished in his tedious job at the international conglomerate.
- The longer Jill remained unemployed, the more she languished and the less likely it became that she would find another job.

Question 11

languid

/ˈlæŋgwɪd/

Answer 11

adj. weak, listless, or depressed
- The child seemed so languid that his father thought he was sick and called the doctor. It turned out that the little boy had simply had an overdose of television.

Question 12

largess

/lɑrˈdʒɛs, ˈlɑrdʒɪs/

Answer 12

n. generous giving of gifts (or the gifts themselves); generosity; philanthropy
- Sam was marginally literate at best. Only the largess of his Uncle got Sam into the Ivy League school.
Largess can also be spelled largesse.

Question 13

latent

/ˈleɪtnt/

Answer 13

adj. present but not visible or apparent; potential

- At four, Maria was a latent shopaholic; she learned to read by browsing the descriptions in clothing catalogs.

Question 14

laud

/lɔd/

Answer 14

v. to praise; to applaud; to extol; to celebrate
- The bank manger lauded the hero who trapped the escaping robber. The local newspaper published a laudatory editorial on this intrepid individual.

Question 15

laudatory

/ˈlɔdəˌtɔri, -ˌtoʊri/

Answer 15

adj. praising

Question 16

laudable

/ˈlɔdəbəl/

Answer 16

adj. praiseworthy

- Giving several million dollars to charity is a laudable act of philanthropy.

Question 17

legacy

/ˈlɛgəsi/

Answer 17

n. sth. handed down from the past; a bequest
- The legacy of the corrupt administration was chaos, bankruptcy, and despair.
- A shoebox full of baseball cards was the dead man’s only legacy.
- To be a legacy at a college sorority is to be the daughter of a former sorority member.

Question 18

lethargy

/ˈlɛθərdʒi/

Answer 18

n. sluggishness; laziness; drowsiness; indifference
- After a busy week of sports, homework, and work, the student relished the lethargy of Saturday morning.
- The lethargy of the staff caused what should have been a quick errand to expand into a full day’s work.

Question 19

lethargic

/ləˈθɑrdʒɪk/

Answer 19

adj. to be filled with lethargy

- The lethargic teenagers took all summer to pain the Hendersons’ garage.

Question 20

levity

/ˈlɛvɪti/

Answer 20

n. lightness; frivolity; unseriousness
To levitate sth. is to make it so light that it floats up into the air. Levity comes from the same root and has to do with a different kind of lightness.
- The speaker’s levity was not appreciated by the convention of funeral directors, who felt that a convention of funeral directors was no place to tell jokes.
- The judge’s attempt to inject some levity into the dreary court proceedings (by setting off a few firecrackers in the jury box) was entirely successful.