Improve Your Higher-Order English Vocabulary: Daniel Gauss
This blog will give you a chance to improve your vocabulary. New words will be added periodically. There are many, many useful words on this blog!!! Daniel Gauss is an Ivy-educated teacher/tutor. You can reach him at: djg51qu@gmail.com Feel free to add him at https://www.facebook.com/dgauss3 or through Google+. Good luck!
to be convivial - being very sociable, enjoying the company of others, being friendly and kind to others
to be dilatory - to cause a delay in something, to waste time
to be winsome - attractive or appealing, primarily because one seems innocent
to be desultory - not having a plan for something, not addressing a problem in a rational, systematic way
to be fatuous - silly, foolish, kind of stupid
Choose the best word to fill in the blank. Answers are below:
Instead of addressing the coronavirus with a bold and visionary plan, President Trump was completely ________________ and thus showed no real leadership.
Although Bob was in his 40s he had a ______________ appearance that made him look sweet, innocent and gentle.
Joe needed to get that financial report as soon as possible, but Jack was using various ________________ methods to buy more time to finish it.
When Trump was asked a serious question about how Americans could best protect themselves on an individual level from the corona virus, be provided a completely ________________ answer by saying
they could inject themselves with detergent.
Dave was generally liked by his colleagues because of his ______________ personality. He was kind and friendly and loved hosting parties and gatherings.
a fiasco - a disaster, something that goes very badly
to demote or to be demoted - this is the opposite of to promote or to be promoted. For instance, when I was younger, it was possible for students to be demoted to lower grades if they were not doing well in their particular classes. If someone has a supervisory position but does not perform satisfactorily, he/she might be demoted.
a probe - an investigation. To probe can mean to investigate. A doctor will sometimes do a medical probe on a patient...a device with a little camera might be inserted into the patient, through the patient's mouth or whatnot, and this will allow the doctor to see inside the patient.
a shakeup - a sudden change to an organization due to poor performance. Usually some people are demoted, some are promoted, some might be fired and some newly hired. A CEO might say that he needs to shakeup his organization because people have become too corrupt or lazy.
to hoard - to collect some type of thing or differing things and store those things even though you do not need them or might not ever need them. Animals, for instance, tend to hoard food in case the weather turns bad.
answers to the exercises are way at the bottom of this message
Because the huge amount of snow that fell during the recent blizzard was not plowed from the streets promptly, the newspapers demanded a __________________ at the Department of Sanitation. Several high-ranking officials were later fired. to plow - to push the snow, using a type of vehicle with a huge shovel on the front of it, toward the side of the road. promptly - in a timely manner. If you are a prompt person, you are generally on time. The Department of Sanitation is basically the department that has to pick up garbage and plow snow.
It was discovered that when the city government began its program of distributing free food in poor neighborhoods, some residents would take food they really didn't need and _______________ it, while others who truly needed the food could not gain access to it once the city ran out of supplies.
Once it was learned that Governor Jim McGreavy of New Jersey was giving high-ranking government positions to handsome men who were not qualified for the positions, a newspaper launched (initiated or started) a _________________. They discovered that McGreavy was secretly gay and was giving out important jobs to various lovers. McGreavy resigned from office and is now studying to become a Protestant minister.
When David Patterson became Governor of New York State, after Governor Spitzer was caught secretly visiting prostitutes (women who sell their bodies for sex), many people had high hopes for him. However, his term as Governor was a complete and total _________________. The government became more corrupt and ineffective and taxes and MTA fares rose greatly.
Because Bob had been such an excellent journalist, he was promoted to the position of editor. However, the skills required for being an editor were different from the skills required for being a journalist and he was shortly ________________ back to journalist, where he was quite happy again.
a sycophant – a butt kisser, someone who sucks up to authority figures
rudimentary – basic
quiescent – passive, refusing to act
pragmatic – practical
pessimism – a belief that life is evil, the world is evil
ornate – really fancy
oblivion – a state of being forgotten
to nullify – to wipe out, to extinguish
a misanthrope – one who hates humanity
lassitude – laziness, languor
judicious – showing sound judgment
intrepid – without fear
laconic – not wordy
heresy– a belief contrary to the opinion of authorities
gratuitous – random, not necessary
frugality – the quality of not spending alot; economical
fickle – changeable, not predictable
to exonerate – to find innocent
1. The ancient Greek philosopher Heraclitus wanted to convey how ___________ time and our lives are by saying, “Time is a river and you cannot step into the same river twice.”
2. Knut Hamsun won a Nobel Prize for his novel Hunger, in which he describes a period of time in his youth when he wandered through Oslo homeless, not having eaten for days, wearing a _____________ coat that showed his true state of impoverishment.
3. Now the housing and banking industries know that it was not especially _____________ for them to provide huge amounts of loan money to people who had previously defaulted on loans.
4. The month of August seems to encourage a sense of ______________ in everyone. Nobody wants to do anything other than travel or rest with family members.
5. In Ang Lee’s film Lust/Caution, the Chinese female protagonist, although knowing she can be caught and tortured or killed, still acts in an ____________ manner and pursues a mission she feels can help her people against the Japanese oppressors of her country.
6. It’s ironic. We all seem to spend years studying advanced mathematics, but by the time we reach the age of 40, all we remember are the most _____________ aspects of math!
7. Thomas Jefferson believed in states’ rights. Therefore, he believed that any state could ____________ a federal law that it did not agree with. The Civil War ended this concept.
8. Giocomo Leopardi was an Italian poet who wrote poems that expressed a philosophy of ____________________ - he believed that life was meaningless, filled with sorrow and that all human endeavor was absurd; nevertheless, he believed that universal love and compassion was a necessary response to the evils of the world.
9. In the early 1950s people in the United States learned how ______________ racism was in the South when they read about how the 12 year-old African American child, Emmet Til, had been beaten to death by white men in Mississippi.
10. Spartan youth, unlike Athenian youth, were taught to be ____________ and to let actions speak louder than words.
11. The interior of that restaurant was so ___________, it looked like the interior of the Titanic! I’ve never been to such a glitzy restaurant!
12. They say that, basically, Euripides was a _______________ who avoided human company and who thought humanity was capable of the worst abuses; yet, his plays are highly idealistic and he seemed to believe that we can all overcome the savage tendencies within us.
13. There’s a lot of sexism in literature. Hamlet says, “Frailty, thy name is woman!” while Virgil wrote: “Varia et mutabile femina!” “Random and _________ is woman!” meaning that no woman’s actions can be predicted.
14. I have always liked foreign film more than Hollywood film; Hollywood films seem to have a lot of _________________ violence and sex that foreign films avoid; foreign films are clearly more cerebral and thought-provoking.
15. Americans had become a bit too wasteful. But, with the 2008 economic crisis, they had to learn how to show more _________________ and to live more simply and sensibly.
16. Although Joe Hill, famous American labor leader, had been a person of integrity, he was falsely accused of murder and all attempts to _____________ him failed; he was shot by firing squad in Utah in 1915.
17. It used to be considered __________________ to say that the Bible should be interpreted non-literally and symbolically; now many Christians seem to believe this.
18. Many people admire pacifist leaders like Gandhi and the Dalai Lama, but I wonder whether the type of _____________ approach to evil they take, the “turn-the-other-cheek” approach, might be furthering the cause of evil in the world.
19. When my father, the accountant, learned I wanted to study philosophy, he went ballistic! “You need to study something ____________,” he yelled! “Philosophy! You’ll be a waiter when you graduate from school with philosophy!”
20. After traveling from California by bus for four days, without benefit of a shower, it was impossible not to appear ____________ upon arriving in Boston.
21. Every class seems to have at least one ______________ who will try to benefit from doing whatever he/she can to please the teacher or the administration of the school.
22. DeWitt Clinton was one of the greatest of New York’s Governors, but he has now been consigned to _______________. This was the person who conceived the Erie Canal!
Answers are below:
Answers:
1. transient
2. threadbare
3. judicious
4. lassitude
5. intrepid
6. rudimentary
7. nullify
8. pessimism
9. virulent
10. laconic
11. ornate
12. misanthrope
13. fickle
14. gratuitous
15. frugality
16. exonerate
17. heresy
18. quiescent
19. pragmatic
20. unkempt
21. sycophant
22. oblivion I love this song about a ghost horse....
I took these 8 vocabulary words from the ending of Aldous Huxley's novel Brave New World.
turpitude - something disgustingly wrong; a severe violation of morality that comes from something ugly about one's nature (the word is often used with the word 'moral' - Conservative archeologists of the past were upset and embarrassed by what they felt to be the moral turpitude in ancient Roman art, where sexuality was depicted openly.)
propitiation - to try to make someone feel more favorable toward you; to please someone so that they do not look unfavorably on you
to be plaintive - being sad, sorrowful, mournful, expressing grief
a strumpet - a slut, a woman who sleeps around, a loose woman, a woman who has sex a lot or even a prostitute (this is an old fashioned word - Huxley wrote this novel in the 1930s).
gingerly - carefully, cautiously
to be coquettish - to be flirtatious (only a woman can be coquettish and only when she is being playful with a guy in order to indicate to him that she likes him and might want to go out with him)
to be ingratiating - deliberately nice or kind in order to get something from someone else
compunction - a feeling that one has done something wrong, the feeling one gets when one's conscience kicks in and makes one feel bad for something (to feel compunction over something - it's mostly used in a non-countable way) 1. Bob and I had hiked for several miles and Bob wasn't used to doing this much walking. The next day I could see he was in some pain because of the ________________ manner in which he sat down to breakfast. I could see his legs were killing him.
2. Joe didn't feel that he had done anything wrong, but out of a need for _________________ he told Becky that he was sorry and that he hoped she would forgive him.
3. Bob, my anthropologist friend, pointed something interesting out to me. He said that human beings are the only animals that sometimes kill and eat their food with a sense of _________________. Some people feel so guilty about eating other creatures that they become vegetarians.
4. So Dave faced a dilemma, did Jackie really like him or was she just being _________________ because he had so much money and she was hoping to be treated to an expensive dinner.
5. After the baby dropped her lollipop on the floor, she looked at me in such a ________________ manner that I had to immediately get another lollipop for her to make her feel better.
6. An ethical relativist would assert that behavior which was considered a form of ______________ in the past, might now be considered morally acceptable or at the very least benign (harmless).
7. There's often a lot of sexual experimentation in US colleges, so a female student who travels abroad to study has to be aware that if she acts the same way in other countries, she may get the reputation of being a ________________.
8. Francis was very confused. His female friend Bridgette kept smiling at him today during lunch and touching his arm as they talked. Was she being ____________________ and signaling a change in their relationship or was this just wishful thinking on his part?
Answers are below.
Answers: 1. gingerly 2. propitiation 3. compunction 4. ingratiating 5. plaintive 6. turpitude 7. strumpet 8. coquettish Please enjoy one of my favorite 70s bands - Mott the Hoople
parochial - narrow minded, having a limited perspective, not open-minded
heedless - not taking enough care while doing something, careless, reckless
libidinous - being motivated by one's sex drive, slang: being 'horny'
duplicity - dishonesty
to parry - to defend oneself from an attack (this word comes from the sport of fencing - to parry a thrust is to stop one's opponent from hitting you with his sword tip by using your sword to deflect his thrust away)
overweening - too confident, too filled with pride, smug, arrogant
conciliatory - trying to make another happy or satisfied instead of making the person angrier; pacifying
to disabuse - to show someone that what he/she believed was inaccurate or false
a martinet - someone who values discipline excessively; someone who is super strict when it comes to leadership
prudish - someone who is too easily offended or embarrassed by sexual discussions or topics
Answers are below the exercise:
1. After the Civil War President Lincoln's policy toward the South was quite _________________. He indicated that he did not want to seek revenge but, instead, he wanted to welcome the South back into the Union and to help develop the South economically. 2. It was Icarus and not Daedalus who had been ________________; Daedalus knew that flying too high or too quickly would bring disaster, but Icarus failed to show this type of humble self-restraint. 3. Some parents have been complaining that the Diary of Anne Frank contains references to an adolescent's curiosity concerning the development of one's own sexual organs. They feel this book should not be read by young students. Other parents feel these parents are being ____________ and that there is no harm in reading the Diary of Anne Frank. 4. Do you think that a person who does not travel much will have a _______________ outlook on the world? Or, can a person be open-minded and intelligent without visiting other countries? 5. When she saw the child fall into the lake, Mary was ______________ of all risk and jumped in to save him. 6. During the Middle Ages there was much corruption in the Catholic Church and you see this in the tales of _________________ priests in Boccaccio's book Il Decameron. 7. A young officer in the military should try to avoid excessive discipline in regard to his squad lest he acquire the reputation for being a _________________. 8. Bob was able to ____________ Mary's criticism that he was not a strong disciplinarian by saying that he felt positive reinforcement was more effective in regard to raising a child than punishment. 9. You seem to believe that the Persian Empire was run by a series of inhuman dictators, but I would like to _____________ you of that misconception by pointing out that Cyrus was loved by his people and admired around the Mediterranean area. 10. Bob was a straight-forward and honest guy and any form of ________________ bothered him deeply.
to adumbrate something - to outline something vaguely, to express in a shadowy or not perfectly clear way
to decry something - to verbally attack something, to openly and strongly criticize something
fecund - capable of producing, fertile
indefatigable - unbeatable, refusing to quit or give up
manifold - many, various, a bunch of
Answers are below the exercise:
The female Ocean Sunfish is especially _______________. She carries more eggs than any other vertebrate - and can release hundreds of millions at a time.
Many conservatives are using the recent immigration crisis at our Mexican border as an opportunity to ____________ the immigration policies of the Obama administration. They claim that this administration has welcomed people to engage in illegal immigration.
The reasons Bob gave for the policy failure were ________________ but not one of them was satisfying.
When Richard Nixon ran for the presidency in 1968, he did not even _______________ a plan to end the Vietnam War; he simply lied and said he had a fully articulated plan prepared and ready to go should he be elected.
The West German national soccer team (from 1954 to 1990) had a reputation for being _________________. Over and over again they would come back from behind and tie or win games. They never seemed to stop striving.
onerous - very difficult work or an activity that requires a great struggle (often physical); if something is burdensome, it is onerous to bristle - literally this is when hair or bristles stand up on an animal indicating fear or aggression; to bristle means to become upset and consequently to become more aggressive. A person might bristle at the actions of another person. sullen - this describes a person who is upset or sad and who simply won't talk infamous - famous for negative reasons to indulge oneself - to give yourself some source of pleasure, usually as a type of reward a coup - an achievement that was unexpected and amazing to calibrate - to adjust some type of measuring device so that it can measure something with the utmost accuracy ghastly - terrible, disgusting a palisade - a fence established to provide protection - the fence is usually made of wooden posts with pointed tips at the top Answers are below the exercise: Joe _______________ at Mike's suggestion that he was lazy and not working at full capacity. Joe felt himself to be a hard worker and took pride in this. Al Capone was the most _________________ gangster and criminal in Chicago's history. He bribed police and officials and was a cold-blooded killer. Bob had been ill for several weeks. Frankly, when I saw him he looked __________________; he was as pale as a ghost and seems quite tired and weak. These days many children feel that taking care of elderly parents is an ________________ task but it is often unavoidable. I am not even sure how far I walked yesterday. It's true I wore a special device on my shoe to measure my number of steps, but it turns out that the device wasn't properly ________________________ and did not count any steps. Getting a great writer like Maribel for our magazine was a real ______________. Everybody wanted her and she chose us because she liked our energy and integrity. It was just impossible to communicate with Bill yesterday. Due to the death of his dog he was _______________ all day. I have been working so hard for so long that I think it's time I _________________ myself in a long night of eating chocolate. Jamestown is known as the first sustainable European-type city in North America. Yet, it wasn't really a city. Basically it was a little collection of houses surrounded by a __________________ to ensure safety from potential native American attacks. Answers are below: Answers: bristled infamous ghastly onerous calibrated coup sullen indulged palisade
