Wild Ones 4 Flashcards
unmitigated
not lessened “ ‘Thirty years ago, I was a sincere optimist on the impulses and goodfaith of humanity, and the moral fiber and intelligence of civilized man. Today, I think that speaking generally, Civilized Man is an unmitigated ass’ “ (145) MD mitigate is to make less. unmitigated is the opposite. it is not lessened. it’s absolute
scattershot
denoting something that is broad but random and haphazard in its range: a scattershot collection of stories. “ A scattershot armada of government officials, biologists, and several hundred local volunteer boat owner coasted alongside it every day, trying to turn it around. MD picture a shotgun firing scatter shot. a shotshell is fired from a shotgun, the pellets leave the barrel and begin to spread or scatter. The farther the pellets travel, the greater the spread of shot.
karmic
characteristic of karma “(The degree program is called Exotic Animal Traingin and Management, which all the students call EATM for short. They pronounce it ‘Eat ‘em,’ and I never once heard someone acknowledge the cruel, karmic possibilities of giving that nickname to a program for lion-tamers-in-training.” (158) 1827, in Buddhism, the sum of a person’s actions in one life, which determines his form in the next; from Sanskrit karma “action, work, deed; fate,” related to Sanskrit krnoti, Avestan kerenaoiti “makes,” Old Persian kunautiy “he makes;” from PIE root *kwer- “to make, form” (see terato-). “Latterly adopted by Western popular ‘meditative’ groups” [OED, 1989]. It is related to the second element in Sanskrit. MD. person with good or bad karmakarma fish getting caught by the human.
guileless
free of deceipt “She grew up in Austin, the daughter of a Luteran pastor, and there’s a winning guilelessness about her that sometimes oozes into sentimentality about her work.” (160)
guile
shrewdness as demonstrated by being skilled in deception: he used all his guile and guts to free himself from the muddle he was in.
resuscitate
to bring (someone who is unconscious, not breathing, or close to death) back to a conscious or active state again “Resuscitating the Palos Verdes blue became both a literal test of her abilities and am etaphor for her own resilience.” (165)
pupa
an insect in its inactive immature form between larva and adult, e.g., a chrysalis. “A larva, for example, doesn’t just develop into a butterfly inside the pupa; it first breaks down completely into an amorphous goop, then re-forms.” (165)
amorphous
without a clearly defined shape or form: amorphous blue forms and straight black lines. “A larva, for example, doesn’t just develop into a butterfly inside the pupa; it first breaks down completely into an amorphous goop, then re-forms.” (165)
truculent
eager or quick to argue or fight; aggressively defiant “For decades, he’d been an idealistic and truculent crusader for endangered insects around Southern California, and seems to have left a trail of cheesed-off local governments, corporations, developers, and even other conservationists in his wake.” (166)
cheese
exasperate, frustrate, or bore: that really cheesed off Ricky. “For decades, he’d been an idealistic and truculent crusader for endangered insects around Southern California, and seems to have left a trail of cheesed-off local governments, corporations, developers, and even other conservationists in his wake.” (166)
biophilia
(according to a theory of the biologist E. O. Wilson) an innate and genetically determined affinity of human beings with the natural world. “Even two-day-old babies have been shown to pay closer attention to ‘a dozen spotlights representing the joints and contours of a walking hen’ than to a similar, randomly generated pattern of lights. It all provides evidence for what Harvard entomologist E.O. Wilson has dubbed ‘biophilia’ - his theory that human beings are inherently attuend to other life forms.” (170)
Tokyo
the capital of Japan, located on the northwestern shores of Tokyo Bay, on the southeastern part of the island of Honshu; population 12,758,000 (est. 2007). “Satoshi Tajiri grew up in a town west of Tokyo called Machida. The Machida of his childhood, in the 1960s, was bucolic.” (177)
bucolic
ve relating to the pleasant aspects of the countryside and country life: the church is lovely for its bucolic setting. “Satoshi Tajiri grew up in a town west of Tokyo called Machida. The Machida of his childhood, in the 1960s, was bucolic.” (177)
mane
a growth of long hair on the neck of a horse, lion, or other animal. “To infants, every four legged animal is a ‘doggie.’ But kids gradually cue into subtler variations in size and shape, and features like stripes, manes, and snouts.”
snout
the projecting nose and mouth of an animal.
