Words 8/15/13

Question 1

Pockmark

Answer 1

Scars or pits (small pox) ex: a table full of pockmarks verb: gopher holes pockmarking the field.

Question 2

Tithe

Answer 2

any tax or levy.

Question 3

Hawkish

Answer 3

M: Think about a hawk’s eyes.

resembling a hawk

2) advocating war or belligerently threatening diplomatic policy

S: Draghi’s relatively hawkish comments confounded some market expectations that the ECB was close to expanding its asset buys

S: that accompanied the effort could hurt his standing with a public already skeptical of his hawkish vision for Japan’s national security.

Question 4

Endue

Answer 4

1) To put on as a garment; to clothe. also fig.
b) to put on; assume: Hamlet endued the character of a madman.
2) To invest with a power or quality, spiritual gift, etc. (To be endued with)

Question 5

Debar

Answer 5

1) To exclude from a place or condition. 2) to hinder or prevent; prohibit; to debar an action debarment

Question 6

Aver

Answer 6

1) To assert as a fact; to state positively, affirm.
2) Law to prove or justify a plea. (an averment)

Sent: It seems banal to aver that he loved his wife and children, and there is ample evidence, including the photographs in this book, that he did.

Mneu: “That Averunue is called “Hancock!”

Question 7

Abet

Answer 7

To encourage or assist (a person) to do something wrong, esp. committ a crime. (Freq. followed by in)

Sent: Meanwhile, the gun lobby, timid politicians and the Supreme Court continue to aid and abet rampant gun violence that is nothing less than domestic terrorism, carried out with weapons of mass destruction that are too freely owned and carried.

Mneu: Abe abetting in watergate.

Question 8

Surfeit

Answer 8

An excess of surefeet insoles

excess.

S: But I prized many of the poems in the first half of “I Must Be Living Twice.” There’s a surfeit of life poured into them, often from unexpected angles.

S: On top of the weak price backdrop, Japan’s second quarter GDP contraction and a surfeit of grim economic indicators in China - Japan’s major trading partner

Question 9

Dogged

Answer 9

Persistent in effort; tenacious ex: a dogged worker.

Question 10

defray

Answer 10

to bear or pay all of or part of ex: the grant helped defray the expenses of the trip.

Question 11

Dapple

Answer 11

Verb/noun/adj.

Verb: Trans/intrans. 1) To mark, or become marked with spots.

Dapple speeched with xxx.

Noun: One of many roundish spots or small blotches of colouring by which a surface is diversified.

Sent: Oscar-motivated signs and hype dapple much of the landscape, and there is something reassuring about that.

Mneu: Dappled with Apples.

Question 12

Tipple

Answer 12

to drink intoxicating liquor, esp. habitually or to excess.

Question 13

Dandle

Answer 13

1) To (a child, etc) lightly up and down in the arms or on the knee. Also fig.
b) To move (anything up and down) playfully in the hand.
2) To pet, fondle, pamper.

Sent: No nation was ever dandled into greatness.

Sent: Another had been through an oral exam for his doctorate at which one faculty member not only picked his ear wax, but held it up to dandle lovingly in the light.

Mneu: Petting a Dandelion.

Question 14

Beset

Answer 14

1) To set about; surround.

Sent: A gold bracelet beset with jewels.

2) To set upon or assail (a person) on all sides.
c) to occupy (a road, gate, or passage) esp. so as to prevent any one from passing.
3) fig. To encompass, surround, assail, possess detrimentally:
a. Said of temptations, dangers, difficulties, obstacles, evil influences.

Sent: The hopelessness which gradually besets all people in a town like London.

b) of the difficulties, perils, obstacles which beset an action, work, or course.
4) gen. To close round; to surround, hem in.

Sent: The mountains which beset it round.

Sent: Beset by uncertainty; a nation’s fears for peae and prosperity

Sent: In Navajo territory, parched by years of drought and beset by poverty, one feral horse consumes 5 gallons of water and 18 pounds of forage a day.

Sent: Nonetheless, at its heart, Worsley’s is a generous novel, concerned with the vulnerability of human life (female life in particular) and the cost of freedom to characters so thoroughly beset by cruelty and limitation.

Question 15

Wisp

Answer 15

M: Lisp (small amount of air)/wisp

a handful/ small bundle of hay

2) any thin tuft, lock, mass-wisps of hair

3) a thin streak, puff

4) a person or thing that is small, delicate, or barely discernible: a mere wisp of lad; a wisp of frown.

S: Trump’s 26-year-old publicist and a former Ralph Lauren model, sat opposite us; next to her, Corey Lewandowski, Trump’s wiry wisp of a buzz-cut campaign manager, was buried deep in his iPhone.

S: Their softness seemed to soothe her and to trigger the faintest wisp of melancholy.