The Gifts Of Imperfection Flashcards
1
Q
inextricable
A
adjective
- impossible to disentangle or separate
• the past and the present are inextricable. - impossible to escape from
• an inextricable situation.
2
Q
excavate
A
I. verb — [with obj.]
- make (a hole or channel) by digging.
• the cheapest way of doing this was to excavate a long trench. - dig out material from (the ground).
• the ground was largely excavated by hand. - extract (material) from the ground by digging
• a large amount of gravel would be excavated to form the channel. - remove earth carefully from (an area) in order to find buried remains
• the site was excavated in 1975. - reveal or extract (buried remains) while excavating an area
• clothing and weapons were excavated from the burial site.
3
Q
squeamish
A
adjective
- easily made to feel sick or disgusted
• I’ve always been squeamish about bugs. - having fastidious moral views; scrupulous
• she was not squeamish about using her social influence in support of her son.
4
Q
scrupulous
A
adjective
- (of a person or process) careful, thorough, and extremely attentive to details
• the research has been carried out with scrupulous attention to detail. - very concerned to avoid doing wrong
• she’s too scrupulous to have an affair with a married man.
5
Q
mercenary
A
I. adjective
primarily concerned with making money at the expense of ethics
• she’s nothing but a mercenary little gold-digger.
II. noun
- a professional soldier hired to serve in a foreign army.
• he had planned to seize power with the aid of a group of mercenaries. - a person primarily motivated by personal gain
• cricket’s most infamous mercenary.
6
Q
commotion
A
noun
- a state of confused and noisy disturbance
• she was distracted by a commotion across the street
• [ mass noun] they set off firecrackers to make a lot of commotion. - [ mass noun] — civil insurrection
• damage caused by civil commotion.
7
Q
sustenance
A
I. noun — [ mass noun]
- food and drink regarded as a source of strength; nourishment
• poor rural economies turned to potatoes for sustenance. - the maintaining of someone or something in life or existence
• he kept two or three cows for the sustenance of his family
• the sustenance of parliamentary democracy.
8
Q
vehement
A
adjective
showing strong feeling; forceful, passionate, or intense
• her voice was low but vehement
• vehement criticism.
9
Q
infidelity
A
noun — [ mass noun]
- the action or state of being unfaithful to a spouse or other sexual partner
• her infidelity continued after her marriage
• [ count noun] I ought not to have tolerated his infidelities. - disbelief in a particular religion, especially Christianity.
10
Q
insidious
A
adjective
proceeding in a gradual, subtle way, but with very harmful effects
• sexual harassment is a serious and insidious problem.
11
Q
debilitating
A
adjective
- (of a disease or condition) making someone very weak and infirm
• debilitating back pain. - tending to weaken something
• the debilitating effects of underinvestment.
12
Q
audacity
A
noun — [ mass noun]
- a willingness to take bold risks
• he whistled at the sheer audacity of the plan. - rude or disrespectful behaviour; impudence
• she had the audacity to suggest I’d been carrying on with him.
13
Q
inexplicable
A
adjective
unable to be explained or accounted for
• for some inexplicable reason her mind went completely blank.
14
Q
culmination
A
noun — [usu. in sing.]
- the highest or climactic point of something, especially as attained after a long time
• the deal marked the culmination of years of negotiation. - ‹archaic› [Astrology] the reaching of the meridian by a celestial body.
15
Q
reverie
A
noun
- a state of being pleasantly lost in one’s thoughts; a daydream
• a knock on the door broke her reverie • [ mass noun] I slipped into reverie. - [Music] an instrumental piece suggesting a dreamy or musing state.
• his own compositions can move from impressionist reveries to an orchestral chordal approach. - ‹archaic› a fanciful or impractical idea or theory.
• he defended and explained all the reveries of astrology.
