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78 Cards in this Set
- Front
- Back
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Abjure (v) |
to renounce or reject solemnly; to recant; to avoid |
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Adumbrate (v) |
to foreshadow vaguely or intimate; to suggest or outline sketchily; to obscure or overshadow |
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Anathema (n) |
a solemn or ecclesiastical (religious) curse; accursed or thoroughly loathed person or thing |
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Anodyne (adj/n) |
soothing; something that assuages or allays pain or comforts |
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Apogee (n) |
farthest or highest point; culmination; zenith |
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Apostate (n) |
one who abandons long-held religious or political convictions |
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Apotheosis (n) |
deification; glorification to godliness; an exalted example; a model of excellence or perfection |
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Asperity (n) |
severity, rigor; roughness, harshness; acrimony, irritability |
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Asseverate (v) |
to aver, allege, or assert |
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Assiduous (adj) |
diligent, hard-working, sedulous |
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Augury (n) |
omen, portent |
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Bellicose (adj) |
belligerent, pugnacious, warlike |
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Calumniate (v) |
to slander, to make a false accusation; "calumny" means slander, aspersion |
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Captious (adj) |
disposed to point out trivial faults; calculated to confuse or entrap in argument |
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Cavil (v) |
to find fault without good reason |
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Celerity (n) |
speed, alacrity; think "accelerate" |
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Chimera (n) |
an illusion; originally, an imaginary fire-breathing she-monster |
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Contumacious (adj) |
insubordinate, rebellious; "contumely" means insult, scorn, aspersion |
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Debacle (n) |
rout, fiasco, complete failure |
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Denouement (n) |
an outcome or solution; the unraveling of a plot |
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Descry (v) |
to discriminate or discern |
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Desuetude (n) |
disuse |
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Desultory (adj) |
random; aimless; marked by a lack of plan or purpose |
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Diaphanous (adj) |
transparent, gauzy |
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Diffident (adj) |
reserved, shy, unassuming; lacking in self-confidence |
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Dirge (n) |
a song of grief or lamentation |
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Encomium (n) |
glowing and enthusiastic praise; panegyric, tribute, eulogy |
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Eschew (v) |
to shun or avoid |
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Excoriate (v) |
to censure scathingly, to upbraid |
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Execrate (v) |
to denounce, to feel loathing for, to curse, to declare to be evil |
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Exegesis (n) |
critical examination, explication |
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Expiate (v) |
to atone or make amends for |
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Extirpate (v) |
to destroy, to exterminate, to cut out, to exscind |
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Fatuous (adj) |
silly, inanely foolish |
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Fractious (adj) |
quarrelsome, rebellious, unruly, refractory, irritable |
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Gainsay (v) |
to deny, to dispute, to contradict, to oppose |
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Heterodox (adj) |
unorthodox, heretical, iconoclastic |
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Imbroglio (n) |
difficult or embarrassing situation |
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Indefatigable (adj) |
not easily exhaustible; tireless, dogged |
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Ineluctable (adj) |
certain, inevitable |
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Inimitable (adj) |
one of a kind, peerless |
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Insouciant (adj) |
unconcerned, carefree, heedless |
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Inveterate (adj) |
deep rooted, ingrained, habitual |
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Jejune (adj) |
vapid, uninteresting, nugatory; childish, immature, puerile |
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Lubricious (adj) |
lewd, wanton, greasy, slippery |
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Mendicant (n) |
a beggar, supplicant |
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Meretricious (n) |
cheap, gaudy, tawdry, flashy, showy; attracting by false show |
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Minatory (adj) |
menacing, threatening (reminds you of the Minotaur, a threatening creature indeed) |
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Nadir (n) |
low point, perigee |
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Nonplussed (adj) |
baffled, bewildered, at a loss for what to do or think |
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Obstreperous (adj) |
noisily and stubbornly defiant, aggressively boisterous |
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Ossified (adj) |
tending to become more rigid, conventional, sterile, and reactionary with age; literally, turned into bone |
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Palliate (v) |
to make something seem less serious, to gloss over to make less severe or intense |
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Panegyric (n) |
formal praise, eulogy, encomium; "panegyrical" means expressing elaborate praise |
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Parsimonious (adj) |
cheap, miserly |
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Pellucid (adj) |
transparent, easy to understand, limpid |
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Peroration (n) |
the concluding part of a speech; flowerly, rhetorical speech |
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Plangent (adj) |
pounding, thundering, resounding |
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Prolix (adj) |
long-winded, verbose; "prolixity" means verbosity |
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Propitiate (v) |
to appease; to conciliate; "propitious" means auspicious, favorable |
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Puerile (adj) |
childish, immature, jejune, nugatory |
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Puissance (n) |
power, strength; "puissant" means powerful, strong |
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Pusillanimous (adj) |
cowardly, craven |
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Remonstrate (v) |
to protest, to object |
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Sagacious (adj) |
having sound judgment; perceptive, wise; like a sage |
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Salacious (adj) |
lustful, lascivious, bawdy |
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Salutary (adj) |
remedial, wholesome, causing improvement |
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Sanguine (adj) |
cheerful, confident, optimistic |
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Saturnine (adj) |
gloomy, dark, sullen, morose |
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Sententious (adj) |
aphoristic or moralistic; epigrammatic; tending to moralize excessively |
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Stentorian (adj) |
extremely loud and powerful |
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Stygian (adj) |
gloomy, dark |
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Sycophant (n) |
toady, servile, self-seeking flatterer; parasite |
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Tendentious (adj) |
biased; showing marked tendencies |
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Timorous (adj) |
timid, fearful, diffident |
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Tyro (n) |
novice, greenhorn, rank amateur |
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Vitiate (v) |
to corrupt, to debase, to spoil, to make ineffective |
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Voluble (adj) |
fluent, verbal, having easy use of spoken language |
