8/17/13

Question 1

Gam

Answer 1

1. intr. Naut. Of whales: to gather together to form a gam; to school.
2. intr. Chiefly Naut. colloq. and U.S. regional (New England). To take part in any social gathering; to talk informally, chat, gossip; (also)
3. trans. To perform oral sex on (a person, originally esp. a man).

Sent: It was the second full day of the TED ideas conference, and in the lobby outside the theatre doors more than a thousand men and women milled and gammed about and ate lunch.

Question 2

Mill

Answer 2

verb (used with object)

11. to grind, work, treat, or shape in or with a mill.
12. Coining.
    a. to make a raised edge on (a coin or the like).
    b. to make narrow, radial grooves on the raised edge of (a coin or the like).
13. to beat or stir, as to a froth: to mill chocolate.
14. Slang. to beat or strike; fight; overcome.

verb (used without object)
15. to move around aimlessly, slowly, or confusedly, as a herd of cattle (often followed by about or around ).
16.Slang. to fight or box.
Idioms
17.through the mill, Informal. undergoing or having undergone severe difficulties, trials, etc., especially with an effect on one’s health, personality, or character: He’s really been through the mill since his wife’s death.

Question 3

Evanescent

Answer 3

1. That is on the point of vanishing or becoming imperceptible. In Mathematics, said of a diminishing quantity: That is at the instant of becoming zero; infinitesimal. Hence transf. of things: Imperceptibly minute, too small to perceive.
2. a. That quickly vanishes or passes away; having no permanence. Said of appearances, conditions, impressions, etc.

Sent: Gross ruminates on the loneliness of the road, the evanescent friendships that occasionally blossom into something deeper, the pleasures of wandering through cities without a map.

Question 4

Gambit

Answer 4

noun

1. Chess. an opening in which a player seeks to obtain some advantage by sacrificing a pawn or piece.
2. any maneuver by which one seeks to gain an advantage.
3. a remark made to open or redirect a conversation.

Sent: Mr. Nasrallah’s brazen openness about Hezbollah’s support for Syrian forces seems more a nervous gambit than a reflection of resolve.

Question 5

Faena

Answer 5

noun
1) the final third of a bullfight in which the matador uses a muleta and the sword in making the final series of passes preparatory to the kill.

The ox was black, sleek, muscular; when it plodded into thte spotlight, under the guidance of a wrangler, the stage crew and other rehearsing performers shifted tensely, as if each motion might mark the start of a faena.

Question 6

Broker

Answer 6

1. trans. To act as a broker for; to arrange as a broker; to negotiate.

Zoref’s face was already being broadcast live to screens throughout the Long Beach complex; to Palm Springs, California, where TED staffers were holding a ticketed shadow event; and to more than a hundred and sixty other conferences around the world, whose organizers and translators had brokered a live feed of the Long Beach stage.

Question 7

Elide

Answer 7

1. To strike out, suppress, pass over in silence; omit; ignore.
2. Grammar. To omit (a vowel, or syllable) in pronunciation.
3. Law. to annul or quash.

Sent: I was thinking about the rather highhanded, Marie Antoinette-ish way in which she dismissed the need for extended maternity leave, as if it hadn’t occurred to her that building an en suite nursery for her newborn next to her office basically elided the need for it, since the baby could remain within a few feet of her all day long.

Sent: “So for all religions to be one religion, you need to elide all the elements that were central to religion in the past: the hajj to Mecca, Jesus dying on the cross, whatever it might be. You’ve got to turn these first principles into last principles.”

Question 8

Balmy

Answer 8

1) Mild and refreshing; soft; soothing (balmy weather)
2) aromatic, fragrant
3) producing balm
4) informal–crazy; foolish

Sent: This 40-minute documentary from Atlantic Productions follows a young male king penguin — on a sub-Antarctic island with the misleadingly balmy name of South Georgia — from bachelorhood to domesticity.

Mneu: Think Palmy trees.

Question 10

Bestrew

Answer 10

strew or scatter about

Mneu: Silly string bestrewn about.

Question 11

Effigy

Answer 11

1) a representation or image, especially sculptured, as on a monument
2) a crude representation or someone disliked, used for purposes of ridicule. Phrase: In effigy. –a leader hanged in effigy by the mob.

Mneu: Effigy tower with Mao poster being dropped.

Question 12

Pinwheeling

Answer 12

act of turning a ship by having engines goings forward while others are in reverse

Question 13

aleatory

Answer 13

of or pertaining to accidental causes; of luck or chance; unpredictable. ex: The effect is both aleatory - the prose scrolling through these unstructured washes of memory - and fundamentally credible: this is exactly how a… 2) of law–aleatory contract

Question 14

Carom

Answer 14

M: Cars caromming

a shot in which cure ball hits two balls in succession.

2)any strike or rebound. ex: his carom off the end boards sneaked in behind Steve Mason

• S: But when it came to the major challenges facing the church in the real world, Benedict often appeared to carom from once crisis to the next.
• S: Greens are so topsy-turvy that well-placed shots can carom off at odd angles, as Rickie Fowler found out when his approach shot during a practice round early…

Question 15

Coquetry

Answer 15

1) the behavior of flirting (a coquette)

2) daliance, trifling

Question 16

Livery

Answer 16

uniform worn by someone of rank or by a servant.