Vocab 4/7/14 Flashcards
Feckless
1. Ineffective; incompetent; futile: feckless attempts to repair the plumbing.
Sent: The history buffs among them might think of the populist Greenback Party’s feckless protests against the gold standard in the 19th century or the five presidential campaigns of the Socialist Eugene V. Debs — the last of which, in 1920, he ran from prison.
2. Having no sense of responsibility; indifferent; lazy.
The Feckless Fed. -Krugman Article.
They are middle aged now, with their fortunes and family lives long since determined, but feckless youth still looms large in their memories.
Limpid
1. Clear, transparent, or pellucid: as water, crystal, or air: we could see to the very bottom of the limpid pond.
-In Georg Harald Slott-Moller’s “Summer Day” (1888), one of the show’s biggest and most vivid paintings, two woman in sunbonnets lift their voluminous skirts over the limpid, ankle-deep seawater they’re delightedly wading in.
2. Free from obscurity; lucid; clear: a limpid style; limpid prose.
t had a lush, limpid melody, which rose and tumbled over Mr. Osborne and Mr. Jenkins’ fingerpicked guitars.
-He expresses the staggering beauty of the upper cantos with calm and limpid language, as in this description of divine light:
3. Completely Calm; without distress or worry: a limpid, emotionless existence.
- The limpid soprano Lindsay Kesselman, as Beatrice, shone in her few appearances.
- Here and throughout the program, Mr. Pace demonstrated a limpid touch, immaculate control and expressive phrasing, his approach well matched by the beautiful sound and elegant musicianship of Mr. Kavakos.
Scour
1. To remove dirt, grease, etc. from or to cleanse or polish by hard scrubbing, as with rough, abrasive material.
Sent: “He scoured and mended it as best he could; yet he realized that it had one important defect, which was that the headpiece was not a complete helmet” (Don Quixote)
2. to clear or dig out (a channel, drain, etc.) as by the force of water, by removing debris, etc.
3. to purge thoroughly, as an animal.
4. to clear or rid of what is undesirable: to scour the nation of spies.
Also Verb without obj: to become…
2nd use: To range over, as in search; they scoured the countryside for the lost child.
Sent: Aircrafts spot objects as they scour the southern Indian Ocean in the search for debris of the missing Malaysian airliner.
-Investors scour for bargins.
2. To run or pass over quickly or along.
Ungainly
1) Not graceful; awkward; clumsy; unwieldy: an ungainly child; an ungainly prose style.
Sent: If it hadn’t been for the appearance at that moment of the innkeeper, a man who, being very fat, was very peacable, and who on seeing such an ungainly figure, with such ill-matched equipment as the long stirrups, the lance, the leather shield…(Don Quixote)
Sent: On Tuesday evening, Gwyneth Paltrow introduced the world to a new, ungainly phrase: “conscious uncoupling.” Ms. Paltrow unleashed the term when she announced her separation from her husband, Chris Martin, on her website, Goop. The post — headlined, what else, “Conscious Uncoupling” — crashed her website, but it didn’t take long for the news of a celebrity divorce to be quickly eclipsed by that substitute term for the D word, one virtually no one had ever heard before.
Sent: Still, the question of who will actually be running the show looms over the deal. Mr. Tavares will be responsible for the day-to-day operation of the company, but he will have a rather ungainly three-headed supervisor looking over his shoulder.
2. ADV: In an awkward manner.
Caper
1. To leap or skip about in a sprightly manner; prance; frisk; gambol
-He makes the most mundane language caper and dance, revealing how absurd attempts at communication can be..
Noun: 1. a playful leap or skip
2. a prank or trick; harebrained escape
3. a frivolous, carefree, episode of activity
- The inkeeper wasn’t amused by his guest’s capers, and decided to put an end to them by giving him his wretched order of chivalry before any further calamities occured
- Basically it’s a caper movie: some improbable task has to be pulled off by a combination of ingenuity, training, deception and luck.
4. Slang–a criminal or illegal act, as burglary.
- On the surface, there is a lot more comedy. The main plot spins around an elaborate, Tintin-esque caper involving a stolen painting and a clan of vengeful Zubrowkan nobles.
- the people who were designated from the outset by Governor Christie as the villains of the bridge caper.
Scourge
1) to whip with a scourge; to lash.
2). To punish, chastise; or criticize severly.
Noun 1) a whip or lash, for the infliction of punishment or torture
2) A person or thing that applies severe punishment or criticism
3) A cause of affliction or calamity: Disease and famine are scourges ofhumanity.
- The scourge of drug abuse has battered states across the country, with deaths from overdoses now outstripping those from traffic crashes.
- he stunning finishes have left the racing world baffled even as the sport’s record books are rewritten. Few suspect that doping, the scourge of many broken records, played a role here.
- Dr. Dora of the health agency said he hoped the stark mortality figures released on Tuesday would prompt people and governments alike to confront the scourge of filthy air with greater urgency.
Beleaguer
W/Obj: To surround with military forces
2) To surround or beset, as with troubles.
- But the controls proved unsustainable, as Mr. McCracken had warned in 1969, when he said they were “far less effective than many are now inclined to assume.” They were abandoned by 1974. “Stagflation,” a crippling combination of sluggish growth and high inflation, would continue to beleaguer the American economy until the early 1980s.
- “Under the School Agreement program, Microsoft has successfully created a very competitive pricing-value model, keeping in mind the financial constraints that beleaguer most educational institutions,” Mr. Kumar said.
- In their haste to rescue doctors and spite the Democratic-leaning trial lawyers, legislators need to make sure that any limits they set do not beleaguer a patient who has suffered truly grievous harm from negligent care.
Decamp
1) to depart quickly, secretly, unceremoniously. ex: The band of thieves decamped in the night
2) To depart from a camp; pack up equipment and leave a camping ground
Sent: Ms. Swanson Beard is the more eclectic of the two, cultivating the chicly dissolute air of a lady who brunches at Sarabeth’s on the Upper East Side but may at any instant decamp for Coachella.
Panoptic
1) Permitting the view of all parts or elements
2) Considering all parts or elements; all inclusive ex: a panoptic criticism of modern poetry. ex: a panoptic view of illness.
Mneu: Little city in a pan with optical lense around it.
See: Fulsome
Cavil
M: Hitting with an Anvil, so small.
to raise irritating and trivial objections; find fault with unnecessarily (usually followed by at or about)
W/obj: to oppose by inconsequential, frivolous, or sham objections N: a trivial or annoying objection. ex: the judge waved off that cavil.
- S: Critics of such a tax cavil that it will harm our capital markets.
- S: Schmidt can cavil with the best of them, but he has a code. He’s capable of a sobering empathy, has a withering understanding of the recent
Craggy
full of crags (steap rugged rock; rough broken, projecting part of rock) 2) rugged; harsh; rough
Imprecation
1) cursing. a curse; malediction slander ex: hurling imprecation at folk music snobs.
Array
1) to place in proper or desired order ex: napoleon arrayed his troops for battle 2) to clothe with garments, esp. of ornamental kind; dress up; deck out ex: she arrayed herself in diamonds and furs Noun 3) order and arrangement. 4) a large impressive grouping or organization of things ex: he couldn’t dismiss the array of facts.
Denizen
an inhabitant/ resident 2) peson who regularly frequents a place; habitue ex: denizens of a local bar
Truculent
M: Truck running over someone
1) fierce, cruel, brutal
2) vitriolic, scathing. ex: his truculent criticism of her work
S: entrenched political machinery, powerful unions, decades of promises of rich pensions without any money to pay them, truculent tax payers, record numbers of retirees and discredited numbers.
3) belligerent.
S: Kremlin ceremony came as he continues to come under criticism abroad for stifling opposition and promoting a culture of truculent patriotism.
