Vocab 3/31/14 Flashcards
Shamble
Verb: To walk awkwardly; to shuffle
Sent: But then they danced down the streets like dingledodies, and I shambled after as I’ve been doing all my life after people who interest me, because the only people for me are the made ones…
Spangle
verb (used with object): 1) To decorate with spangles
2) To sprinkle or stud with small, bright pieces, objects, spots, etc.
It’s this deep, lush green, spangled with explosions of red, yellow and purple from the flowers, birds and insects
Noun:
Cant
Verb (w/obj): 1) To talk hypocritically
2) to speak in the whining singsong tone of a beggar; beg.
Noun: 1) insincere, especially conventional expressions of enthusiasm forhigh ideals, goodness, or piety.
- the private language of the underworld.
- the phraseology peculiar to a particular class, party, profession,etc.: the cant of the fashion industry.
- whining or singsong speech, especially of beggars.
Sent: I’m also angry about the talk of artists inevitably dying of drug overdoses. Some of this talk may be cant. Fifty years ago the same was said about jazz musicians—they lived out at the edge, baring their souls as well as their craft every time they played, and it took the life out of them, so they had to turn to heroin.
M: His glad-handing unearthed his cantness.
N: Also, a slanting or tilted position
2) a sudden movement that tilts or overturns a thing
V: To bevel, put an angle on something
2) To put in an oblique position; tilt; tip
w/out obj: to take or have an inclined position
Tamp
verb (used with object)
1. to force in or down by repeated, rather light, strokes: He tampedthe tobacco in his pipe.
Shakily I tamp my pipe and fumble through the pockets of my shirt. (Des. Solitaire)
Trying to tamp down the criticism, the Clinton campaign urged prominent African-American supporters to speak out on their behalf and remind the public of the long Clinton record of working for minority rights and benefits. (NYtimes)
- (in blasting) to fill (a drilled hole) with earth or the like afterthe charge has been inserted.
Spall
W/obj: To break into smaller pieces, as ore; split or chip
“Once that moisture gets trapped in between those two materials, essentially it freezes over time and it just starts to spall and pop and crack that front face right off.”
W/out obj: to break or split off in chips or bits
And rode it all the way while boulders clashed in the foam beneath him and slabs of sandstone shook free of their ancient fastenings, spalled from the cliffs and crashed with a sound like thunder into the heave and roar of the flood.
noun: a chip or splinter, as of stone or ore.
Schlock
Adj: also, Schlocky. Cheap; trashy; a schlock store
Sent: And in the wake of the crisis, the fault lines in the economics profession have yawned wider than ever. Lucas says the Obama administration’s stimulus plans are “schlock economics,” and his Chicago colleague John Cochrane says they’re based on discredited “fairy tales.”
Noun: Something of cheap or inferior quality; junk.
Jingle bell schlock.
Somehow, well-crafted niche products have surrendered to algorithmic schlock.
Reel
Instead, when she returned to Brigham’s office on the day of the surgery, she had to climb into the back of her mother’s car while reeling in pain: she had been given medication to dilate her cervix.
verb (used with object)
6. to wind on a reel, as thread, yarn, etc.
7. to unwind (silk filaments) from a cocoon.
8. to pull or draw by winding a line on a reel: to reel a fish in.
Verb phrases
9. reel off, to say, write, or produce quickly and easily: The oldsailor reeled off one story after another.
Idioms
10. off the reel: without pause; continuously; without delay or hesitation; immediately.
- verb (used without object)
- to sway or rock under a blow, shock, etc.: The boxer reeled and fell.
- to waver or fall back: The troops reeled and then ran.
- to sway about in standing or walking, as from dizziness,intoxication, etc.; stagger.
- to turn round and round; whirl.
The sports marketing extravaganza known as Super Bowl XLVIII, to be played in East Rutherford, N.J., on Sunday, seemed to arrive at the worst possible moment for Governor Christie, as he reeled from an embarrassing investigation into lane closings at the George Washington Bridge and political intimidation.
- to have a sensation of whirling: His brain reeled.
verb (used with object)
6. to cause to reel.
Ingenue
- the part of an artless, innocent, unworldly girl or young woman,especially as represented on the stage.
- an actress who plays such a part or specializes in playing suchparts.
In the 2002 documentary “Searching for Debra Winger,” Rosanna Arquette highlighted the fact that actresses who have outlived their ingénue years are in effect erased.
‘I HAVE ALWAYS HAD A PROBLEM WITH MY weight,” Kathy Bates says matter-of-factly. “I’m not a stunning woman. I never was an ingenue; I’ve always just been a character actor. When I was younger it was a real problem, because I was never pretty enough for the roles that other young women were being cast in.
Credit for that went to a 26-year-old political ingénue who wore a sleeveless white Dior cocktail dress that night that served as a magnet for the assembled photographers: Audrey Gelman. She had joined the campaign as Mr. Stringer’s spokeswoman, just weeks before.
Redacted
In the files that she shared with me, the names of the patients who had relayed their experiences to her had been redacted, making the stories difficult to verify. But the names of some physicians had not been redacted.
verb (used with object)
- to put into suitable literary form; revise; edit.
- to draw up or frame (a statement, proclamation, etc.).
- The transcripts redact the names of those countries, but diplomatic cables released by WikiLeaks indicate they included Indonesia, Turkey and the Dominican Republic.
- On Thursday, at the end of a three-day meeting, the Vatican announced that the cardinals planned to redact “a new constitution with significant new aspects” to regulate the Curia, as the administrative arm of the Vatican is known.
- Then again, the released documents contained redactions that are mystifying at best and at times almost comic. One of the redacted details was the name of the judge, who sat in open court for months.
Waif
1. A piece of property which is found ownerless and which, if unclaimed within a fixed period after due notice given, falls to the lord of the manor; e.g. an article washed up on the seashore, an animal that has strayed. Often waif and stray or †straif
2. b. esp. A person who is without home or friends; one who lives uncared-for or without guidance; an outcast from society; an unowned or neglected child.
a. Stray, wandering, homeless: = waff adj.
b. Poor or inferior in quality; = waff adj.
Comb., as waif-like adj.; waif-wise adv.
- Unrealistic images of waif-like models appear on magazine covers, billboards and TV commercials, bombarding young girls with the idea of a “perfect” look that, realistically, they cannot aspire to achieve without cosmetic surgery or Photoshop.
- The skirts had high-rise hemlines on models who, by today’s waif standards, looked positively beefy. They strode out, in their fetish laced ankle boots, owning the world.
3. Something borne or driven by the wind; a puff (of smoke), a streak (of cloud).
Expunge (V)
1) Trans: To strike out, blot out, erase, omit (a name or word from a list, a phrase, or passage from a book)
Sent: Word guardians have been up in arms this week over claims in a new book about the Oxford English Dictionary, which asserts that one of its former editors, Robert Burchfield, surreptitiously expunged hundreds of words with foreign origins.
“The Vanity Fair column that caused the rupture with my friend and mentor Pauline Kael is too awful an episode for me to fold into the collection unless I never intended to open the book; that I was never able to make peace with Pauline is a source of pitchforked remorse, if I could expunge the article I would,” he writes.
2. fig. To wipe out, efface, annihilate, annul, destroy, put an end to.
In too many cases, the reports are out of date and incomplete, causing job seekers who may have been arrested but never charged — or who have had their cases expunged or even dismissed — to be unfairly locked out of the job market.
- European Union officials, she added, have tried to bring change through aid and advice, “but they cannot come here and govern” to expunge the corruption that “is poisoning everything.”
- In 1987, all three agencies agreed to expunge the files in exchange for Mr. Kimball’s agreeing to drop his suit.
“Alceste” can be as moving as that other tribute to conjugal love, Beethoven’s “Fidelio,” but you would never know it from Olivier Py’s ice-cold production at the Garnier, which shows a single-minded determination to expunge the opera of any trace of emotion.
b. Hence, to get rid of, remove.
Macabre (adj)
1) Characterized by or suggetive of the gruesomeness of the Dance Macabre; grim; horrific; repulsive
Dance macabre-dance of death (fig)
Sent: Macabre clues advance inquiry in Bali attacks.
A Cult Figure Conjures the Macabre
The problem is, the older I get, the harder it is to confess to the adolescent obsession that has turned me into a full-grown tourist of the macabre.
A World of Macabre Misfits
OR SALVADOR VICTIMS, MACABRE FATE
Tumid (adj)
1. Swollen; characterized by swelling.
Others said, Baltimore is tumid with treason, and only awaits the opportunity to strike a fatal blow to the Government, and go with all its heart into the cause of secession.
2. a. fig. esp. of language or literary style: ‘Swelling’, inflated, turgid, bombastic.
The Richmond Press has constantly teemed with tumid eulogies of the unearthly valor of the rest of the rebel army, beginning with the complete exhaustion of the English language in glorification (compared with which Ossian was prosy) of the achievement of the capture of ninety men at Fort Sumter by six thousand South Carolinians.
“The tumid and blustering note in which the Soviet Government replies to the British charges is in our opinion an added offense,” says The London Times.
