After Session 1 Flashcards
INCHOATE
Inchoate means just beginning to form. You can have an inchoate idea, like the earliest flickers of images for your masterpiece, or an inchoate feeling, like your inchoate sense of annoyance toward your sister’s new talking parrot.
(adj.) Incipient, still developing or incomplete
(adj.) Imperfectly formed, incoherent or lacking order
Sentence: “a vague inchoate idea”
BESIEGE
To besiege means to attack with an army, or to pester with many requests. When all your teachers ask you to hand in assignments on the same day, you can end up feeling besieged.
(v) Attack, overwhelm, crowd in on or surround
Sentence: “The Turks besieged Vienna”
AMALGAMATE
To amalgamate is to combine different things to create something new. Institutions — such as banks, schools, or hospitals — often join forces and amalgamate with one other. But other things — like musical genres — get amalgamated as well.
(v) To mix, merge, or combine into a whole
Sentence: “The mistress used to be kept in a minor house or apartment of her own, and now they’ve amalgamated things.”
EFFRONTERY
If you rudely behave as if you have a right to something that you have no right to, you’re committing effrontery. When a couple stroll into a crowded restaurant, demand the best table, and threaten the staff unless they’re seated right away, that’s effrontery.
(n) Insolence, boldness, or presumption
Sentence: “Leaving everybody to wonder where she had learned her effrontery from.”
RAREFY
(v) To make or become thin, less compact, or less dense
(v) To purify, refine, or make more spiritual
Sentence: Galaxies would become ever more distant from one another, and the star stuff that drives all the energetic reactions in the universe would become more rarefied.
DIATRIBE
It’s pretty overwhelming when you ask your friend a seemingly innocuous question, like “Do you like hot dogs?” and she unleashes a diatribe about the evils of eating meat. A diatribe is an angry, critical speech.
(n) Bitter, abusive criticism or denunciation
Sentence: Her mother told her not to worry and launched into a diatribe about the medical technologies of the seventies until Alma interrupted her.
PRECIPITATE
Precipitate usually means “bringing something on” or “making it happen” — and not always in a good way. An unpopular verdict might “precipitate violence,” or one false step at the Grand Canyon could precipitate you down into the gorge.
(v) To throw or fall down headlong
(v) To bring about or cause to happen, especially abruptly or prematurely
(v) To cause (a substance) to separate from a solution;
To condense or cause to condense and fall from the sky as snow, rain, etc.
(adj.) Speeding headlong, rapidly, or dangerously;
Proceeding with undue haste and without necessary forethought
(adj.) Occurring abruptly or unexpectedly
(adj.) Steep or rushing steeply downward
Sentence: It precipitated one of the only books attacking postmodern philosophy ever written largely by biologists.
DISABUSE
Disabuse means to free someone of a belief that is not true. Many teachers of health find that when they teach, they spend as much energy disabusing kids of false beliefs as they do giving them the facts.
(v) To free someone from a misconception or deception
Sentence: I was full of misery at my lie, but I found I could not disabuse him of it—I could conjure no words sufficient.
AVER
To aver is to state something or declare something is true. This verb has a serious tone, so you might aver something on a witness stand or you might aver that you won’t back down to a challenge.
(v) To assert or affirm positively
Sentence: I averred that I was honored by his recollection, no less than by his attendance upon the first performance.
BOLSTER
When you cheer up a friend who’s feeling down, you bolster them. To bolster is to offer support or strengthen.
(v) To support, uphold, hearten, or boost
Sentence: “Well,” he said aloud, to bolster his courage, “there’s no time to waste, so here goes.”
UNDERMINE
To undermine literally means to dig a hole underneath something, making it likely to collapse. But we more often use the word to describe sabotage or the act of weakening someone else’s efforts.
(v) To weaken by washing away the support or foundation underneath
(v) To weaken, injure, or ruin by degrees or a little at the time; to sap
Instead of working together, however, those working on behalf of each group undermined one another.
DELIBERATE
To deliberate means to carefully think or talk something through — it also means slow and measured, the pace of this kind of careful decision making. If you chose deliberately, you make a very conscious, well-thought-through choice.
(v) To think carefully or consider
(adj.) 1. Carefully considered
2. Slowly, unhurriedly decided
3. Done intentionally or with awareness of the consequences
Sentence: With deliberate slowness, his hands slid down the sides of my neck.
ASSUAGE
If you assuage an unpleasant feeling, you make it go away. Assuaging your hunger by eating a bag of marshmallows may cause you other unpleasant feelings.
(v) To make less intense or severe; to ease
(v) To satisfy, appease, or quench
(v) To pacify, sooth, or quiet
Sentence: Hina would quietly give my mom this little victory to assuage her concerns.
LACONIC
Laconic is an adjective that describes a style of speaking or writing that uses only a few words, often to express complex thoughts and ideas. A more laconic way to write that last sentence might be this: laconic means brief.
(adj.) Concise, terse, or extremely sparing with words
Sentence: But I would have been laconic in that company in any case.
LUCID
Something that’s lucid is clear and understandable. Lucid writing is important in journalism, so that readers easily get the point of the article they’re reading.
(adj.) Intelligible or readily understandable
(adj.) Sane or rational
(adj.) Translucent or clear; bright or luminous
Sentence: The air was clear, clean, lucid, lying lightly upon the world that morning.
ENERVATE
To enervate is to weaken, wear down, or even bum out. Although a three-hour lecture on the history of socks might thrill someone, it would enervate most people. So would a too-long soak in a hot tub. With your parents.
(v) To weaken or sap the strength, vigor, or vitality of
Sentence: Lillian spent a full, enervating day on the telephone, notifying a staggering number of relatives on both sides of the family.
MOROSE
A morose person is sullen, gloomy, sad, glum, and depressed — not a happy camper.
(adj.) Sullen, gloomy, or melancholy
Sentence: He tried to shake off the morose shadow that was enveloping him.
EULOGY
At every funeral, there comes a moment when someone speaks about the life of the person who died. The speaker is delivering what is known as a eulogy. A eulogy is a formal speech that praises a person who has died.
(n) A praising speech or tribute, especially honoring someone who has died
(n) High praise
Sentence: The eulogy pronounced on the great zoölogist Agassiz was well deserved.
PLACATE
If you placate someone, you stop them from being angry by giving them something or doing something that pleases them. If your dad is annoyed that you forgot to take out the trash, you might be able to placate him by doing the dishes.
(v) To soothe the anger of, mollify, or appease
Sentence: Piper raised her hands in a placating gesture.
ANTAGONISM
Antagonism means hostility. You might feel antagonism toward your annoying little sister, particularly if she’s always borrowing your stuff without asking.
(n) Hostility, opposition, or active resistance
Sentence: She looked at me with a glitter of antagonism.
