F's Flashcards
Facilitate
Make easier, help the progress of.
A god meeting facilitator lets everyone be heard while still keeping the meeting focused.
As a midwife, my goal is simply to facilitate a natural process.
Faction
A group (especially an exclusive group with strong beliefs, self-interest, bias, etc.) within a larger organization. This word is usually meant in a negative way (once people have joined factions, they are no longer willing to hear the issues and debate or compromise).
The opposition movement was once large enough to have a chance at succeeding, but it has since broken into numerous, squabbling factions, each too small to have much impact.
Faculty
An ability, often a mental ability. Most often used in the plural, as in A stroke can often deprive a person of important mental faculties. (Faculty can also mean the teachers or professors of an institution of learning.)
Fading
Declining.
In the face of fading public support for national health care, the senator withdrew his support for the bill.
Fashion
Manner or way.
The watchmaker works in a meticulous fashion, paying incredible attention to detail.
Fathom
Understand deeply.
I cannot even remotely fathom how you interpreted an invitation to sleep on my couch as permission to take my car on a six-hour joyride!
Finding
“The finding” (or “the findings”) refers to a discovery, report, result of an experiment, etc.
When the attorneys received the results of the DNA report, they were shocked by the finding that John Doe could not have committed the crime.
Fishy
Suspicious, unlikely, questionable, as in a fishy story. This expression probably arose because fish smell very bad when they start to spoil.
Fledgling
New or inexperience. A fledgling is also a young bird that cannot fly yet.
The Society of Engineers is available for career day presentations in elementary schools, where we hope to encourage fledgling talents in the applied sciences.
Fleeting
Passing quickly, transitory.
I had assumed our summer romance would be fleeting, so I was very surprised when you proposed marriage!
Foreshadow
Indicate or suggest beforehand.
In the movie, the children’s ghost story around the campfire foreshadowed the horrible things that would happen to them years later as teenagers at a motel in the middle of the woods.
Forestall
Delay, hinder, prevent by taking action beforehand.
Our research has been forestalled by a lack of funding; we’re all just biding out time while we wait for the university to approve our grant proposal.
