Unit9

Question 1

adherent

Answer 1

(1) Someone who follows a leader, a party, or a profession. (2) One who believes in a particular philosophy or religion.

eg. The general’s adherents heavily outnumbered his opponents and managed to shout them down repeatedly.

Question 2

cohere

Answer 2

To hold together firmly as parts of the same mass.

eg. His novels never really cohere; the chapters always seem like separate short stories.

Question 3

incoherent

Answer 3

(1) Unclear or difficult to understand. (2) Loosely organized or inconsistent.

eg. The police had found him in an abandoned warehouse, and they reported that he was dirty, hungry, and incoherent.

Question 4

inherent

Answer 4

Part of something by nature or habit.

eg. A guiding belief behind our Constitution is that individuals have certain inherent rights that can’t be taken away.

Question 5

centrifugal

Answer 5

Moving outward from a center or central focus.

eg. Their favorite carnival ride was the Round-up, in which centrifugal force flattened them against the outer wall of a rapidly spinning cage.

Question 6

refuge

Answer 6

Shelter or protection from danger or distress, or a place that provides shelter or protection.

eg. Caught in a storm by surprise, they took refuge in an abandoned barn.

Question 7

fugue

Answer 7

A musical form in which a theme is echoed and imitated by voices or instruments that enter one after another and interweave as the piece proceeds.

eg. For his debut on the church’s new organ, the organist chose a fugue by J. S. Bach.

Question 8

subterfuge

Answer 8

(1) A trick designed to help conceal, escape, or evade. (2) A deceptive trick.

eg. The conservatives’ subterfuge of funding a liberal third-party candidate in order to take votes away from the main liberal candidate almost worked that year.

Question 9

cosmos

Answer 9

(1) The universe, especially when it is viewed as orderly and systematic. (2) Any orderly system that is complete in itself.

eg. The astronomer, the biologist, and the philosopher all try in their own ways to make sense of the cosmos.

Question 10

cosmology

Answer 10

(1) A theory that describes the nature of the universe. (2) A branch of astronomy that deals with the origin and structure of the universe.

eg. New Age teachers propose a cosmology quite unlike the traditional Jewish, Christian, or Islamic ways of viewing the universe.

Question 11

microcosm

Answer 11

Something (such as a place or an event) that is seen as a small version of something much larger.

eg. The large hippie communes of the 1960s and ’70s were microcosms of socialist systems, with most of socialism’s advantages and disadvantages.

Question 12

cosmopolitan

Answer 12

(1) Having international sophistication and experience. (2) Made up of persons, elements, or influences from many different parts of the world.

eg. New York, like most cosmopolitan cities, offers a wonderful array of restaurants featuring foods from around the world.

Question 13

conscientious

Answer 13

(1) Governed by morality; scrupulous. (2) Resulting from painstaking or exact attention.

eg. New employees should be especially conscientious about turning in all their assignments on time.

Question 14

nescience

Answer 14

Lack of knowledge or awareness: ignorance.

eg. About once every class period, my political-science professor would angrily denounce the nescience of the American public.

Question 15

prescient

Answer 15

Having or showing advance knowledge of what is going to happen.

eg. For years she had read the Wall Street Journal every morning, looking for prescient warnings about crashes, crises, and catastrophes on the horizon.

Question 16

unconscionable

Answer 16

(1) Not guided by any moral sense; unscrupulous. (2) Shockingly excessive, unreasonable, or unfair.

eg. When the facts about how the cigarette industry had lied about its practices for decades finally came out, most Americans found the behavior unconscionable.

Question 17

juncture

Answer 17

(1) An important point in a process or activity. (2) A place where things join: junction.

eg. The architect claims his design for the new Islamic Museum represents a juncture of Muslim and Western culture.

Question 18

adjunct

Answer 18

Something joined or added to another thing of which it is not a part.

eg. All technical-school students learn that classroom instruction can be a valuable adjunct to hands-on training.

Question 19

disjunction

Answer 19

A break, separation, or sharp difference between two things.

eg. By now she realized there was a serious disjunction between the accounts of his personal life that his two best friends were giving her.

Question 20

conjunct

Answer 20

Bound together; joined, united.

eg. Politics and religion were conjunct in 18th-century England, and the American colonists were intent on separating the two.

Question 21

bipartite

Answer 21

(1) Being in two parts. (2) Shared by two.

eg. The report is a bipartite document, and all the important findings are in the second section.

Question 22

impartial

Answer 22

Fair and not biased; treating or affecting all equally.

eg. Representatives of labor and management agreed to have the matter decided by an impartial third party.

Question 23

participle

Answer 23

A word that is formed from a verb but used like an adjective.

eg. In the phrase “the crying child,”“crying” is a present participle; in “satisfaction guaranteed,” “guaranteed” is a past participle.

Question 24

partisan

Answer 24

(1) A person who is strongly devoted to a particular cause or group. (2) A guerrilla fighter.

eg. Throughout his career on the Supreme Court, he had been a forthright partisan of the cause of free speech.

Question 25

mission

Answer 25

(1) A task that someone is given to do, especially a military task. (2) A task that someone considers an important duty.

eg. She considers it her mission to prevent unwanted puppies and kittens from being born.

Question 26

missionary

Answer 26

A person undertaking a mission, and especially a religious missionary.

eg. North American missionaries have been working in Central America for decades, and you can find their churches in even the most remote jungle regions.

Question 27

emissary

Answer 27

Someone sent out to represent another; an agent.

eg. Now in his 70s, he had served over many years as a presidential emissary to many troubled regions of the world .

Question 28

transmission

Answer 28

(1) The act or process of sending something from one point to another, especially sending electrical signals to a radio, television, computer, etc. (2) The gears by which the power is passed from the engine to the axle in a motor vehicle.

eg. Even in the Middle Ages, transmission of news of a ruler’s death across the Asian continent could be accomplished by sun reflectors within 24 hours.

Question 29

compel

Answer 29

(1) To force (someone) to do something. (2) To make (something) happen.

eg. After returning from the lecture, they felt compelled to contribute to one of the refugee relief agencies.

Question 30

expel

Answer 30

(1) To drive or force out. (2) To force to leave, usually by official action.

eg. For repeatedly ignoring important agreements over several years, the two countries were eventually expelled from the trade organization.

Question 31

impel

Answer 31

To urge or drive forward by strong moral force.

eg. As the meeting wore on without any real progress being made, she felt impelled to stand and speak.

Question 32

repel

Answer 32

(1) To keep (something) out or away. (2) To drive back.

eg. Her son, knowing how she was repelled by rats and snakes, had started keeping them in his bedroom.

Question 33

arachnid

Answer 33

A member of the class Arachnida, which principally includes animals with four pairs of legs and no antennae, such as spiders, scorpions, mites, and ticks.

eg. His interest in arachnids began when, as a child, he would watch spiders build their gorgeous webs in the corners of the porch.

Question 34

calliope

Answer 34

A musical instrument similar to an organ in which whistles are sounded by steam or compressed air.

eg. The town’s old calliope, with its unmistakable sound, summoned them to the fair every summer.

Question 35

dryad

Answer 35

A wood nymph.

eg. The ancient Greeks’ love of trees can be seen in their belief that every tree contained a dryad, which died when the tree was cut.

Question 36

fauna

Answer 36

Animal life, especially the animals that live naturally in a given area or environment.

eg. The larger fauna of the county include coyotes, black bear, deer, moose, wild turkey, hawks, and vultures.

Question 37

flora

Answer 37

Plant life, especially the flowering plants that live naturally in a specific area or environment.

eg. Scientists are busily identifying the flora of the Amazon rain forest before the rapid expansion of commercial interests consumes it.

Question 38

herculean

Answer 38

(1) Extremely strong. (2) Extremely extensive, intense, or difficult.

eg. Accomplishing all the things he promised during the presidential campaign will be a herculean task.

Question 39

Pandora’s box

Answer 39

A source of many troubles.

eg. In a thundering speech, he predicted that, if the bill was passed, the new policy would open a Pandora’s box of economic problems.

Question 40

Scylla and Charybdis

Answer 40

Two equally dangerous alternatives.

eg. Doctors and patients who need to calculate the ideal dosage of the medication, knowing how it can trigger a different dangerous condition, often feel caught between Scylla and Charybdis.