Unit20

Question 1

nominal

Answer 1

(1) Existing in name or form only and not in reality.
(2) So small as to be unimportant; insignificant.

eg. The actor himself was the nominal author, but 90 percent of the prose was the work of his ghostwriter.

Question 2

nomenclature

Answer 2

(1) A name or designation, or the act of naming.
(2) A system of terms or symbols used in biology, where New Latin names are given to kinds and groups of animals and plants.

eg. Naming newly discovered plants or animals requires close study of the system of nomenclature.

Question 3

ignominious

Answer 3

(1) Marked with shame or disgrace; dishonorable.
(2) Humiliating or degrading.

eg. If Attila the Hun was truly murdered by his bride on their wedding night, it was a most ignominious death for a warrior.

Question 4

misnomer

Answer 4

A wrong name, or the use of a wrong name.

eg. Calling the native peoples of the western hemisphere “Indians” was one of the great misnomers in recorded history.

Question 5

patrician

Answer 5

A person of high birth or of good breeding and cultivation; an aristocrat.

eg. They passed themselves off as patricians, and no one looked too closely at where their money came from.

Question 6

patriarchy

Answer 6

(1) A family, group, or government controlled by a man or a group of men.
(2) A social system in which family members are related to each other through their fathers.

eg. She spent the 1980s raging against the patriarchy, which she claimed had destroyed the lives of millions of women.

Question 7

expatriate

Answer 7

A person who has moved to a foreign land.

eg. As he got to know his fellow expatriates in Morocco, he found himself wondering what had led each of them to leave America.

Question 8

paternalistic

Answer 8

Tending to supply the needs of or regulate the activities of those under one’s control.

eg. Some still accuse the university of being too paternalistic in regulating student living arrangements.

Question 9

legate

Answer 9

An official representative, such as an ambassador.

eg. All the important European powers sent legates of some kind to the peace conference.

Question 10

legacy

Answer 10

(1) Something left to a person in a will.
(2) Something handed down by an ancestor or predecessor or received from the past.

eg. The Stradivarius family of violin makers left a priceless legacy of remarkable instruments.

Question 11

delegation

Answer 11

A group of people chosen to represent the interests or opinions of others.

eg. Each American colony sent a delegation to the Second Continental Congress, and in its second year all 56 delegates approved Jefferson’s Declaration of Independence.

Question 12

relegate

Answer 12

(1) To remove or assign to a less important place.
(2) To refer or hand over for decision or for carrying out.

eg. First-year students were relegated to the back of the line so that all the upper classes could eat first.

Question 13

aggregate

Answer 13

A collection or sum of units or parts.

eg. His lawyers realize that the aggregate of incriminating details is now pointing toward a conviction.

Question 14

congregation

Answer 14

(1) A gathering of people, especially for worship or religious instruction.
(2) The membership of a church or temple.

eg. That Sunday the congregation was especially large, and the minister delivered one of his best sermons.

Question 15

egregious

Answer 15

Standing out, especially in a bad way; flagrant.

eg. Many of the term papers contained egregious grammatical errors.

Question 16

segregate

Answer 16

(1) To separate from others or from the general mass; isolate.
(2) To separate along racial lines.

eg. Some schools are experimenting with gender segregation, claiming that both sexes learn better in classrooms from which the other sex is absent.

Question 17

affluence

Answer 17

An abundance of wealth.

eg. The affluence of the city’s northern suburbs is indicated by the huge houses there.

Question 18

effluent

Answer 18

Polluting waste material discharged into the environment.

eg. The effluent from the mill had long ago turned this once-beautiful stream into a foul-smelling open-air sewer.

Question 19

confluence

Answer 19

(1) A coming or flowing together at one point.
(2) A place of meeting, especially of two streams.

eg. The confluence of several large economic forces led to the “perfect storm” that shook the world economy in 2008.

Question 20

prehensile

Answer 20

Adapted for grasping, especially by wrapping around.

eg. The squid has eight short “arms” but also two long prehensile tentacles that it uses for catching its prey.

Question 21

mellifluous

Answer 21

Flowing like honey; sweetened as if with honey.

eg. His rich, mellifluous voice is familiar to us from countless voice-overs for commercials, station breaks, and documentaries.

Question 21

apprehend

Answer 21

(1) Arrest, seize.
(2) Understand.

eg. It was a few minutes before she managed to apprehend the meaning of what she had just seen.

Question 22

comprehend

Answer 22

(1) To grasp the meaning of; understand.
(2) To take in or include.

eg.In the days following the dropping of the atomic bomb on Hiroshima, the public slowly began to comprehend the fact that the nuclear age had arrived.

Question 23

reprehensible

Answer 23

Deserving stern criticism or blame.

eg. Whether or not he ever broke the law, his treatment of his first wife was thoroughly reprehensible.

Question 24

temper

Answer 24

To dilute, qualify, or soften by adding something more agreeable; to moderate.

eg. A wise parent tempers discipline with love.

Question 25

temperance

Answer 25

(1) Moderation in satisfying appetites or passions.
(2) The drinking of little or no alcohol.

eg. Buddhism teaches humankind to follow “the middle way”—that is, temperance in all things.

Question 26

intemperate

Answer 26

Not moderate or mild; excessive, extreme.

eg. Lovers of fine wines and scotches are almost never intemperate drinkers.

Question 27

distemper

Answer 27

(1) A highly contagious viral disease, especially of dogs. (2) A highly contagious and usually fatal viral disease, especially of cats, marked by the destruction of white blood cells.

eg. An epidemic of feline distemper had swept the country, and its cat population had plummeted

Question 28

purge

Answer 28

(1) To clear of guilt or sin.
(2) To free of something unwanted or considered impure.

eg. During the 1930s, Stalin purged the Soviet communist party of thousands of members who he suspected of disloyalty.

Question 29

expurgate

Answer 29

To cleanse of something morally harmful or offensive; to remove objectionable parts from.

eg. In those years, high-school English classes only used expurgated editions of Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales.

Question 30

purgative

Answer 30

(1) Cleansing or purifying, especially from sin.
(2) Causing a significant looseness of the bowels.

eg. I’m afraid my ten-year-old discovered the purgative effect of too many apples after a lazy afternoon in the orchard.

Question 31

purgatory

Answer 31

(1) According to Roman Catholic doctrine, the place where the souls of those who have died in God’s grace must pay for their sins through suffering before ascending to heaven.
(2) A place or state of temporary suffering or misery.

eg. For both of them, filled with anxiety, the long, sleepless night felt like purgatory.

Question 32

millefleur

Answer 32

Having a pattern of small flowers and plants all over.

eg. She was painstakingly embroidering a millefleur pattern on a pillow casing.

Question 33

millenarianism

Answer 33

(1) Belief in the 1,000-year era of holiness foretold in the Book of Revelation.
(2) Belief in an ideal society to come, especially one brought about by revolution.

eg. Millenarianism is one of the future-oriented beliefs common in the New Age movement.

Question 34

millipede

Answer 34

Any of a class of many-footed arthropods that have a cylindrical, segmented body with two pairs of legs on each segment, and, unlike centipedes, no poison fangs.

eg. As they turned over rocks and bricks in their search for the lost bracelet, millipedes of various sizes went scurrying off.

Question 35

millisecond

Answer 35

One thousandth of a second.

eg. A lightning bolt lasts only about 20 milliseconds, though the image may stay in one’s eye for much longer.

Question 36

semitone

Answer 36

The tone at a half step.

eg. The ancient piano in the great music room had been allowed to fall terribly out of tune, with every note at least a semitone flat.

Question 37

semicolon

Answer 37

The punctuation mark ; , used chiefly to separate major sentence elements such as independent clauses.

eg. Some young vandal had done a search-and-replace on Mr. Marsh’s computer file, and in place of every semicolon was the mysterious message “Hendrix RULES!”

Question 38

hemiplegia

Answer 38

Total or partial paralysis of one side of the body that results from disease of or injury to the motor centers of the brain.

eg. She’s starting to regain the use of her right hand, and some of the therapists think her hemiplegia might eventually be reversed.

Question 39

semiconductor

Answer 39

A solid that conducts electricity like a metal at high temperatures and insulates like a nonmetal at low temperatures.

eg. Silicon, which makes up 25% of the earth’s crust, is the most widely used semiconductor, and as such has formed the basis for a revolution in human culture.