New Words 8 Flashcards
Avant-garde
Of, relating to, or being part of an innovative group, especially one in the arts:
avant-garde painters; an avant-garde theater piece.
Askance
Sideways; obliquely; with a side glance; with disdain, envy, or suspicion.
Let me get a– let me get a break and get Senator Warner to comment, because I noticed he – he looked kind of askance at some of the things you were saying.
Assay
trial, attempt, essay.
Assevervation
- *The act of asseverating; positive affirmation or assertion; solemn declaration.
n. That which is asseverated; an emphatic assertion.**
With this solemn asseveration, which is not lightly made, but which is the result of sixty years ‘experience, I leave you.
Arcadian
Ideally or Rustic
And often she found herself dreaming of the arcadian days of her people, when they had not lived in cities nor been vexed with labor unions and employers ‘associations.
Bald
** Undisguised; blunt: a bald statement of policy**
Balkanize
**Divide a territory into small, hostile states **
The money would go to the Taliban, who in turn would storm in on horse-hoofs and balkanize India.
Ballast
Something that gives stability, especially in character.
transitive v.
To stabilize or provide with ballast.
Belletristic
Written or appreciated for aesthetic value rather than content
The belletristic form to which The Spectator belongs is integral to implementing this future for philosophy.
Besmirch
To stain; sully: a reputation that was besmirched by slander. To make dirty; soil.
Besotted
Made sottish, senseless, or infatuated; characterized by drunken stupidity, or by infatuation; stupefied.
Blather
To talk nonsensically.
Cavalier
Not caring enough about something important,
High-spirited. Supercilious; haughty; disdainful; curt; brusque.
Celerity
** Rapidity of motion; quickness; swiftness.**
I recall the celerity with which he used to kick them off at sundown.
Censorious
Tending the censure; highly critical
**Chicanery **
Deception by use of trickery, quibbling, or subterfuge, sophistry.
A slick performance by a lawyer.
Coltish
Lively and playful; frisky
Complaisant
Exhibiting a desire or willingness to please; cheerfully obliging
Concatenate
To link together; to unite in a series or chain, as things depending on one another.
Confabulation
A casual conversation;
Consanguineous
Of the same lineage or origin; having a common ancestor
Fungible
Able to be substituted for something of equal value or utility; interchangeable, exchangeable, replaceable.
Contrapuntal
**Of or relating to counterpoint; **
music of, relating to, or incorporating counterpoint
Contretemp
** An unforeseen, inopportune, or embarrassing event; a hitch**
While the Clinton contretemps is absolutely fascinating – particularly to veteran Clinton watchers like us – it ultimately will have little effect on the race.
Conversance
** The state of being conversant; familiarity.**
These are tough, Irish and Italian working-class towns, and anybody who claimed any kind of conversance with Emerson was an alien immediately.
Convivial
Merry; festive: a convivial atmosphere at the reunion.
Fond of feasting, drinking, and good company; sociable.
He was not what might be called convivial, though fond of good company - very little wine affecting him - so that a certain self-control became second nature to him.
Cosset
**To pamper; indulge; to treay as a pet; **
Cosmopolitan
So sophisticated as to be at home in all parts of the world or conversant with many spheres of interest:
a cosmopolitan traveler.
Having no fixed residence; at home in any place; free from local attachments or prejudices; not provincial; liberal.
Desuetude
The cessation of use; disuse; discontinuance of practice, custom, or fashion.
Toasts have also fallen into “desuetude” at private dinners.
Depredate
**To ransack plunder; to engage in plunder; **
My dictionary gives the meaning of “depredate” as “to plunder or lay waste to”, something Vikings would do, but not snails.
Costive
Figuratively, slow in action, especially slow in giving forth ideas or opinions…uncommunicative, close unproductive
There is really no way of reading these often rather costive and puzzling early books without wondering on every page what, in them, is leading towards the immense achievements of those two big last novels.
Dispensation
The following day, Deb got special dispensation from the principal and took Gunner to school with her.
An exemption or release from an obligation or rule, granted by or as if by an authority.
Divagate
To wander about, as from place to place or from subject to subject; stray; digress.
Allow me to briefly divagate here on the nonexistence of abortion as an option in Knocked Up.
Dotage
Decline in judgment and other cognitive functions, associated with aging; senility; drivel
If you forget all the delightful things she comes out with – and sadly Mums do – all you have to do, when you are in your dotage, is browse through your blog.
Doyenne
A woman who is the eldest or senior member of a group.
Dramaturgy
The science which treats of the rules of dramatic composition and representation; the dramatic art.
Theatrical representation; histrionism.
The dramaturgy in writer-director Rashaad Ernesto Green’s film can get heavy-handed.
Effete
- *Marked by self-indulgence, triviality, or decadence: sterile; **
- an effete group of self-professed intellectuals*
Efface
expunge, erase, delete, rub out, dislimn, dele, To cause to disappear as if by rubbing out or striking out.
To make oneself inobtrusive as if due to modesty or diffidence.
**Eremitic **
**characteristic of a hermit; living in solitude; **
Khodorkovsky was also forced into lead an eremitic existence after committing the relatively venial sin of drinking tea in an unauthorized place
Ersatz
Made in imitation; artificial, especially of an inferior quality.
ersatz coffee made mostly of chicory.
Excogitate
**to cogitate; To think over something carefully; to consider fully; **To think out; contrive; devise.
It’s no criticism of your work product, and no one can excogitate the perfect bill.
Fawning
The act of caressing or flattering servilely; mean obsequiousness; attempting to win favor by flattery
But I guess Bill Clinton’s psychotic need for publicity, approval, and fawning is a little more important than the safety of Americans abroad ….. who are now in MORE danger as a result of this stupid publicity stunt.
Factotum
**An employee or assistant who serves in a wide range of capacities. A jack of all trades; **
He was greatly liked, and the late Sir George Barlow, a landed proprietor of the neighbourhood, made him a kind of factotum on his estate.
Fecund(2)
- *Capable of producing offspring or vegetation; fruitful.**
Marked by intellectual productivity.
Fictive
**Of, relating to, or able to engage in imaginative investion; not genuine, sham, feigned. **
Fissile
possible to be split;
Floe
A segment that has separated from an ice mass
Fractured
split into groups which disagree
Fraught
- *adj. filled with or attended with
adj. marked by distress** - an incident fraught with danger;*
- an evening fraught with high drama.*
Gallivant
- *v. To roam about for pleasure without any definite plan.
v. To flirt, to romance.**
Helen writes from Athens, a propos the prospect of looking after her father for a couple of days next summer while I gallivant about: No prob at all.
** Garlanded**
to put a wreath or festoon on somone;
Hortatory
Marked by exhortation or strong urging: a hortatory speech.
These resolutions pass because they are purely hortatory, but a resolution with real teeth authorizing a commission will be a much heavier lift.
Homily
- *n. A tedious moralizing lecture or admonition.
n. An inspirational saying or platitude.**
Hale
Sound, entire, healthy; robust, not impaired.To drag, pull, especially forcibly.
Hermeneutic
That explains, interprets, illustrates or elucidates
It is a so-called hermeneutic insight and every new such insight is supported by our past observational experience.
Importunate
Of a demand: persistent or pressing, often annoyingly so.; to importune;beseeching in an annoying way;
The word “importunate” has the signification of a wearisome repetition of a request, a constant asking, impossible to satisfy.
