General Vocabulary 8 Flashcards
Euphony (n)
Any agreeable (pleasing and harmonious) sounds.
He fell asleep to the music of the wind chimes
Astride (adv)
With one leg on each side.
She sat astride the chair.
Discursive (adj)
Tending (of e.g. speech and writing) to depart from the main point or cover a wide range of subjects.
Sanctimony (n)
The quality of being hypocritically devout.
Sepulchral (adj)
Suited to or suggestive of a grave or burial.
Sepulchral gloom.
Mendacious (adj)
Given to lying, intentionally untrue.
A mendacious child.
Nettled (adj)
Aroused to impatience or anger
Innocuous (adj)
Innocent, lacking intent or capacity to injure.
Craven (adj)
Lacking even the rudiments of courage, abjectly fearful
Stride (n)
A step in walking or running, the distance covered by a step.
Ostensibly (adv)
From appearances alone.
Irrigation often produces bumper crops from ostensibly desert land.
Burgeon (v)
Grow and flourish.
Conspicuous (adj)
Obvious to the eye or mind.
A tower conspicuous at a great distance.
Guy (n)
A cable, wire, or rope that is used to brace something (especially a tent)
Lascivious (v)
Driven by lust, preoccupied with or exhibiting lustful desires.
Harangue (adj)
A loud bombastic declamation expressed with strong emotion.
Lissome (adj)
Gracefully thin and bending and moving with ease.
Fracas (n)
Noisy quarrel.
Bellwether (n)
Someone who assumes leadership of a movement or activity.
Puissant (adj)
Powerful.
Cruciform (adj)
Shaped like a cross.
Facetious (adj)
Treating serious issues with deliberately inappropriate humor; flippant.
Dilettante (adj)
Showing frivolous or superficial interest, amateurish.
Equivocate (v)
Be deliberately ambiguous or unclear in order to mislead or withhold information.
Heathen (adj)
Not acknowledging the God of Christianity and Judaism and Islam.
Bristle (n)
A stiff hair, a stiff fiber (coarse hair or filament).
Subsistence (n)
Minimal (or marginal) resources for subsisting.
Social security provided only a bare subsistence.
Alcove (n)
A small recess opening off a larger room.
Anomalous (adj)
Deviating from the general or common order or type.
Cohere (v)
Come or be in close contact with, stick or hold together and resist separation.
Frescoes (n)
A durable method of painting on a wall by using watercolors on wet plaster.
Altruism (n)
The quality of unselfish concern for the welfare of others.
Inure (v)
Cause to accept or become hardened to, habituate.
Divest (v)
Reduce or dispose of, cease to hold (an investment)
Baneful (adj)
Deadly or sinister.
The Florida eagles have a fierce baleful look.
Inviolable (adj)
Not capable of being violated or infringed.
Inviolable human rights.
Vainglory (n)
Outspoken conceit
Emasculate (adj)
Having unsuitable feminine qualities OR
Remove the testicles of a male animal.
Fortuitous (adj)
Occurring by happy chance.
Profits were enhanced by a fortuitous drop in the cost of raw materials.
Forswear (v)
Formally reject or disavow a formerly held belief, usually under pressure.
Dapper (adj)
Marked by up-to-date in dress and manners.
A dapper young man.
Ascetic (adj)
Practicing great self-denial, pertaining to or characteristic of an ascetic or the practice of rigorous self-discipline.
Repudiate (v)
Refuse to acknowledge, ratify, or recognize as valid.
Allegory (n)
A short moral story (often with animal characters).
Demure (adj)
Affectedly modest or shy especially in a playful or provocative way.
Intrepid (adj)
Invulnerable to fear or intimidation.
Intrepid explorers.
Voluble (adj)
Marked by a ready flow of speech.
Vaunt (n)
Extravagant self-praise.
Demagogue (n)
A political leader who seeks support by appealing to popular passions and prejudices.
Cesspool (n)
A covered cistern, waste water and sewage flow into it.
Elegy (n)
A mournful poem, a lament for the dead.
Genealogy (n)
The study or investigation of ancestry and family history.
Anagram (n)
A word or phrase spelled by rearranging the letters of another word or phrase.
Adduce (v)
Advance evidence for.
Aesthete (n)
One who professes great sensitivity to the beauty of art and nature.
Bemuse (v)
Cause to be confused emotionally.
Profligate (adj)
Unrestrained by convention or morality.
Congreve draws a debauched and profligate aristocratic society.
Indignant (adj)
Angered at something unjust or wrong.
An indignant denial.
Cavern (n)
A large cave or a large chamber in a cave.
Expedient (adj)
Serving to promote your own interest.
Was merciful only when mercy was expedient.
Blithe (adj)
Carefree and happy and lighthearted.
She was loved for her blithe spirit.
Abrogate (v)
Revoke formally
Flotsam (n)
The floating wreckage of a ship.
Upbraid (v)
Express criticism towards.
The president upbraided the general for his irresponsible behavior.
Pernicious (adj)
Working or spreading in a hidden and usually injurious way.
Acerbic (adj)
Harsh or corrosive in tone.
An acerbic tone piercing otherwise flowery prose.
Carte (n)
A list of dishes available at a restaurant.
The carte was in French.
Belabour (v)
Beat soundly, to work at or to absurd length.
Belabor the obvious.
Abrade (v)
Wear away.
Mirthful (adj)
Arousing or provoking laughter.
A mirthful film with a steady stream of pranks and pratfalls.
Sceptre (n)
A ceremonial or emblematic staff, the imperial authority symbolized by a scepter.
Dystopia (n)
A work of fiction describing an imaginary place where life is extremely bad because of deprivation or oppression or terror.
Celerity (n)
A rate that is rapid.
Inimical (adj)
Not friendly.
Itinerant (adj)
Traveling from place to place to work.
Itinerant labor
Cloister (n)
Residence that is a place of religious seclusion (such as a monastery).
Abstruse (adj)
Difficult to penetrate, incomprehensible to one of ordinary understanding or knowledge.
Pallid (adj)
Abnormally deficient in color as suggesting physical or emotional distress.
Cavort (v)
Play boisterously,
The children frolicked in the garden.
Behoove (v)
Be appropriate or necessary,
It behooves us to reflect on this matter.
Canoodle (v)
Fondle or pet affectionately
Capricious (adj)
Determined by chance or impulse or whim rather than by necessity or reason
Epicurean (adj)
Displaying luxury and furnishing gratification to the senses.
Parable (n)
A short moral story (often with animal characters)
Churl (n)
A crude uncouth ill-bred person lacking culture or refinement
Progenitor (n)
An ancestor in the direct line.
Contravene (v)
Deny the truth of, go against, as of rules and laws.
Bedraggled (adj)
Limp and soiled as if dragged in the mud.
The beggar’s bedraggled clothes.
Patrimony (n)
A church endowment, an inheritance coming by right of birth (especially by primogeniture)
Bigot (n)
A prejudiced person who is intolerant of any opinions differing from his own.
Canny (adj)
Showing self-interest and shrewdness in dealing with others.
Ennui (n)
The feeling of being bored by something tedious.
Tirade (n)
A speech of violent denunciation.
Gravitas (n)
Formality in bearing and appearance.
He behaved with great Gravitas.
Tranche (n)
A portion of something (especially money).
Supplicate (v)
Ask humbly (for something).
He supplicated the King for clemency.
Musculature (n)
The muscular system of an organism
Tremulous (adj)
(of the voice) Quivering as from weakness or fear
Rapacious (adj)
Devouring or craving food in great quantities.
Rapacious vultures
Pomade (n)
Hairdressing consisting of a perfumed oil or ointment
