Beyond the Hit Parade 2 Flashcards by Aya Avishai

Abjure

To renounce or reject solemnly; to recant; to avoid

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Adumbrate

To foreshadow vaguely or intimate; to suggest or outline sketchily; to obscure or overshadow

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Anathema

A solemn or ecclesiastical (religious) curse; accursed or thoroughly loathed person or thing

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Anodyne

Soothing; something that assuages or allays pain or comforts

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Apogee

Farthest or highest point; culmination; zenith

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Apotheosis

Dedication; glorification to godliness; an exalted example; a model of excellence or perfection

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Asperity

Severity, rigor; roughness, harshness; acrimony, irritability

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Asseverate

To aver, allege, or assert

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Assiduous

Diligent, hard-working, sedulous

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Augury

Omen, portent

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Bellicose

Belligerent, pugnacious, warlike

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Calumniate

To slander, to make a false accusation; calumny means slander, aspersion

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Captious

Disposed to point out trivial faults; calculated to confuse or entrap in argument

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Cavil

To find fault without good reason

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Celerity

Speed, alacrity; think accelerate

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Chimera

An illusion; originally, an imaginary fire-breathing she-monster

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Contumacious

Insubordinate, rebellious; contumely means insult, scorn, aspersion

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Debacle

Rout, fiasco, complete failure

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Denouement

An outcome or solution; the unraveling of a plot

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Descry

To discriminate or discern

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Desuetude

Disuse

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Desultory

Random; aimless; marked by a lack of plan or purpose

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Diaphanous

Transparent, gauzy

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Diffident

Reserved, shy, unassuming; lacking in self-confidence

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Dirge

A song of grief or lamentation

Encomium

Glowing and enthusiastic praise; panegyric, tribute, eulogy

Eschew

To shun or avoid

Excoriate

To censure scathingly, to upbraid

Execrate

To denounce, to feel loathing for, to curse, to declare to be evil

Exegesis

Critical examination, explication

Expiate

To atone or make amends for

Extirpate

To destroy, to exterminate, to cut out, to exscind

Fatuous

Silly, inanely foolish

Fractious

Quarrelsome, rebellious, unruly, refractory, irritable

Gainsay

To deny, to dispute, to contradict, to oppose

Heterodox

Unorthodox, heretical, iconoclastic

Imbroglio

Difficult or embarrassing situation

Indefatigable

Not easily exhaustible; tireless, dogged

Ineluctable

Certain, inevitable

Inimitable

One of a kind, peerless

Insouciant

Unconcerned, carefree, heedless

Inveterate

Deep rooted, ingrained, habitual

Jejune

Vapid, uninteresting, negatory; childish, immature, puerile

Lubricious

Lewd, wanton, greasy, slippery

Mendicant

A beggar, supplicant

Meretricious

Cheap, gaudy, tawdry, flashy, showy; attracting by false show

Minatory

Menacing, threatening (reminds you of the Minotaur, a threatening creature indeed)

Nadir

Low point, perigee

Nonplussed

Baffled, bewildered, at a loss for what to do or think

Obstreperous

Noisily and stubbornly defiant, aggressively boisterous

Ossified

Tending to become more rigid, conventional, sterile, and reactionary with age; literally, turned into bone

Palliate

To make something seem less serious, to gloss over, to make less severe or intense

Panegyric

Formal praise, eulogy, encomium; panegyrical means expressing elaborate praise

Parsimonious

Cheap, miserly

Pellucid

Transparent, easy to understand, limpid

Peroration

The concluding part of a speech; flowery, rhetorical speech

Plangent

Pounding, thundering, resounding

Prolix

Long-winded, verbose; prolixity means verbosity

Propitiate

To appease; to conciliate; propitious means auspicious, favorable

Puerile

Childish, immature, jejune, nugatory

Puissance

Power, strength; puissant means powerful, strong

Pusillanimous

Cowardly, craven

Remonstrate

To protest, to object

Sagacious

Having sound judgment; perceptive, wise; like a sage

Salacious

Lustful, lascivious, bawdy

Salutary

Remedial, wholesome, causing improvement

Sanguine

Cheerful, confident, optimistic

Saturnine

Gloomy, dark, sullen, morose

Sententious

Aphoristic or moralistic; epigrammatic; tending to moralize excessively

Stentorian

Extremely loud and powerful

Stygian

Gloomy, dark

Sycophant

Toady, servile, self-seeking flatter; parasite

Tendentious

Biased; showing marked tendencies

Timorous

Timid, fearful, diffident

Tyro

Novice, greenhorn, rank amateur

Vitiate

To corrupt, to debase, to spoil, to make ineffective

Voluble

Fluent, verbal, having easy use of spoken language