Advanced Vocabulary 1 (2013-07)

Question 1

disquisition

Answer 1

n. A lengthy, formal discourse that analyses or explains some topic; a dissertation or treatise.

“No article on matters educational is complete without a disquisition on standards.”

Question 2

correlativity

Answer 2

n. A reciprocal relation between two or more things

“So long as we assume an exclusive association between terrorism as a tactic and Muslims as a faith community, we create for ourselves a false impression of causality, rather than correlativity.”

Question 3

ilk

Answer 3

n. Kind; class; sort; type; – sometimes used to indicate disapproval when applied to people.

“The problem with Bill Kristol and his ilk is their reverence of this very limited option as the ‘go to option.’”

Question 4

raison d’être

Answer 4

n. Reason or excuse for being; rational cause or ground for existence.

“This is the raison d’être of Tantrism, that mystical system of union with the gods through sexual techniques.”

Question 5

collude

Answer 5

v. To act together secretly to achieve a fraudulent, illegal, or deceitful purpose; conspire.

“In fact, the most dangerous pitfall you face when playing poker online is running into a table full of players that collude against you.”

Question 6

plaudits

Answer 6

n. Enthusiastic approval

“The authors, both pollsters, will either win plaudits in future years or be forgotten like many hyperbolic, wrong-headed forecasters through the eons.”

Question 7

technocrat

Answer 7

n. A technical specialist exercising governmental or managerial authority.

“The word technocrat can also refer to an advocate of a form of government in which experts preside.”

Question 8

garrulous

Answer 8

adj. Given to excessive and often trivial or rambling talk; tiresomely talkative.

“Of course we haven’t encouraged your talking much up to this time, and you don’t strike me as a very rapid fire speaker, not exactly what is called garrulous, you know.”

Question 9

saboteur

Answer 9

n. One who commits sabotage.

“If an American spy or saboteur is captured, he clearly gets worse treatment (and perhaps executed), although beatings are still not permitted.”

Question 10

histrionics

Answer 10

n. Exaggerated, overemotional behaviour, especially when calculated to elicit a response; melodramatics.

“Her histrionics were a little bag of tricks to get her through, but underneath, she was lonely and terrified.”

Question 11

prevarication

Answer 11

n. A statement that deviates from or perverts the truth

“You see, friends, this is the kind of prevarication I fear from an Obama administration.”

Question 12

reticence

Answer 12

n. The trait of being uncommunicative; not volunteering anything more than necessary

“The main reason for my reticence is that the legal and tax reviews of the entire transaction required by the basic agreement have not yet been completed.”

Question 13

recumbent

Answer 13

adj. Lying down, especially in a position of comfort or rest; reclining.

“A sphinx is a mythological creature that is depicted as a recumbent feline with a human head.”

Question 14

quotidian

Answer 14

adj. Occurring or returning daily.
n. Anything returning daily; especially (Med.), an intermittent fever or ague which returns every day.

“Life in Afghanistan had been so bleak that quotidian things like girls attending school, women leaving their homes, people dancing, and children flying kites were hailed as extraordinary events.”

Question 15

prow

Answer 15

n. The fore part of a ship; the bow; the beak.

“Standing on the prow was a tall man, of a dark complexion, who saw with dilating eyes that they were approaching a dark mass of land in the shape of a cone, which rose from the midst of the waves like the hat of a Catalan.”

Question 16

beguile

Answer 16

v. To take away from by or as if by guile; cheat: a disease that has beguiled me of strength.
v. To distract the attention of; divert: “to beguile you from the grief of a loss so overwhelming” ( Abraham Lincoln).

“So simple that a child can love it, yet sophisticated enough to beguile adults, this is a masterpiece whose beauty cannot be fully appreciated in photographs or in a thousand words of praise.”

Question 17

transhistorical

Answer 17

n. Outside the bounds of history; universal; permanent.

“Literature, as we all know, is the human pageant distilled; but it’s equally the transhistorical record of a sad and furious primate, a mirror held up to our species ‘ugliness.”

Question 18

incipient

Answer 18

adj. Beginning to exist or appear: detecting incipient tumors; an incipient personnel problem.

“And it is essential to discover the existence of the disease at its beginning, what is called the incipient stage, in order to have the best chance of recovery.”

Question 19

ruefully

Answer 19

adv. Causing, feeling, or expressing regret or sorrow.

“Better to hide out in the bathroom, she recalled ruefully, than risk the public humiliation of eating solo.”

Question 20

putative

Answer 20

adj. Commonly thought or deemed; supposed; reputed.

“I think the major problem with Europe today is a lack of democracy, even in putative democratic countries.”

Question 21

excision

Answer 21

n. The deletion of some text during editing.
n. surgery The removal of a tumor, etc., by cutting.
n. genetics The removal of a gene from a section of genetic material.
n. topology The fact that, under certain hypotheses, the homology of a space relative to a subspace is unchanged by the identification of a subspace of the latter to a point.

“That’s one nasty infection you have there buddy, complete excision is going to be needed.”

Question 22

scourge

Answer 22

n. A source of widespread dreadful affliction and devastation such as that caused by pestilence or war.
n. A means of inflicting severe suffering, vengeance, or punishment.
n. A whip used to inflict punishment.
v. To afflict with severe or widespread suffering and devastation; ravage.
v. To chastise severely; excoriate.
v. To flog.

“Are you, then, really in earnest about this admiration and fulsome praise of a man whom you abhorred formerly – to whom at Frankfort you vowed everlasting hatred – whom, in your wrath, you called the scourge that was torturing us, that we might be aroused from our stupor?”

Question 23

suppuration

Answer 23

n. medicine Decay in tissue producing pus, or the pus itself.

“The analogy between this phenomenon and what happens when a man has a splinter that causes inflammation and suppuration is extraordinary.”

Question 24

suppuration

Answer 24

n. medicine Decay in tissue producing pus, or the pus itself.

“The analogy between this phenomenon and what happens when a man has a splinter that causes inflammation and suppuration is extraordinary.”

Question 25

perfunctory

Answer 25

adj. Done routinely and with little interest or care: The operator answered the phone with a perfunctory greeting.
adj. Acting with indifference; showing little interest or care.

“He was a temptation beyond imagining, but she didn’t think she could bear it if he was going to be ‘perfunctory’ with her once more.”

Question 26

viscera

Answer 26

n. The soft internal organs of the body, especially those contained within the abdominal and thoracic cavities.
n. The intestines.

“You can’t reply “Well, my viscera is just shitting all over this.”

Question 27

inveterate

Answer 27

adj. Firmly and long established; deep-rooted: inveterate preferences.
adj. Persisting in an ingrained habit; habitual: an inveterate liar.

“Only the most inveterate racists would hold that all black women lie about rape, and I hardly think the media are that kind of inveterate racists.”

Question 28

jaunty

Answer 28

adj. Having a buoyant or self-confident air; brisk.
adj. Crisp and dapper in appearance; natty.

“He tries TOO hard to look GQ - laughable how he ALWAYS throws his suit jacket over a shoulder for just that “jaunty” look when in fact he grew up as a gangbanger, it’s so unnatural.”

Question 29

blithe

Answer 29

adj. lacking or showing a lack of due concern
adj. carefree and happy and lighthearted

“In 2000, he was in blithe denial about global warming, although by 2001, he was ready to admit that there might be something to it after all.”

Question 30

treacly

Answer 30

adj. Cloyingly sweet or sentimental.

“It wasn’t your typical “chick flick” with treacly romance and hackneyed courtship…from what I could gather in between make-out sessions.”

Question 31

chagrin

Answer 31

n. A keen feeling of mental unease, as of annoyance or embarrassment, caused by failure, disappointment, or a disconcerting event: To her chagrin, the party ended just as she arrived.

“My fields are family medicine and psychiatry, and to my chagrin, rarely do these two specialties communicate.”

Question 32

pusillanimous

Answer 32

adj. Lacking courage; cowardly.

“We have been laborious, contented, and prosperous; and if we have been reabsorbed by the mother country, in accordance with what I cannot but call the pusillanimous conduct of certain of our elder”

Question 33

excoriate

Answer 33

v. To tear or wear off the skin of; abrade. See Synonyms at chafe.
v. To censure strongly; denounce: an editorial that excoriated the administration for its inaction.

“It is completely illogical to assume that being ashamed and having your school “excoriate” you will be motivational in any way.”

Question 34

parvenu

Answer 34

n. A person who has suddenly risen to a higher social and economic class and has not yet gained social acceptance by others in that class.

“You would have sworn he had been a ‘parvenu’ of yesterday, yet he had been all his life in good society.”

Question 35

incumbent

Answer 35

adj. Imposed as an obligation or duty; obligatory: felt it was incumbent on us all to help.
adj. Lying, leaning, or resting on something else: incumbent rock strata.
adj. Currently holding a specified office: the incumbent mayor.
n. A person who holds an office or ecclesiastical benefice: The incumbent was reelected to another term.

Question 36

incontinence

Answer 36

n. dated: Lack of self-restraint, an inability to control oneself; unchastity.
n. medicine:?The inability of any of the physical organs to restrain discharges of their contents; involuntary discharge or evacuation (of urine or feces).

“Prudence – but not the acuteness which is sometimes confused with prudence – is incompatible with incontinence, which is least curable when the outcome of weakness.”

Question 37

ineluctable

Answer 37

adj. impossible to avoid or evade

“Then I am going to confront the Chandler family with the ineluctable facts, instead of raging at them with empty emotions.”

Question 38

dissimulation

Answer 38

n. The act of concealing the truth; hypocrisy or deception.
n. Hiding one’s feelings or purposes.

“My immediate reaction is that his article feels kind of like an ambush, can it be called dissimulation or subterfuge.”