Gre Vocab Advanced Mission From Hell

Front 1

Retrench (verb)

Back 1

Cut down, economize, curtail expenses

"Consumers are retrenching by putting record amounts into building societies, taking out fewer mortgages and borrowing less against their houses, a raft of data showed today."

Front 2

Efface (verb)

Back 2

Rub out, obliterate, expunge, withdraw oneself modestly.

"Like it or not Goody's death was a news event," Lucy Mangan told me. "You might not approve of the means of her fame, but you can't efface it."

Front 3

Cupidity (noun)

Back 3

eager or excessive desire, esp. to possess something; greed; avarice.

"I am constantly stunned at the cupidity and greed of the people that frequent these sites."

Front 4

Aureole (noun)

Back 4

a radiance surrounding the head or the whole figure in the representation of a sacred personage, any encircling ring of light or color; halo

"Her long blonde hair, unfashionably unsleek, surrounds her face in an aureole so bright and weird that Ray hardly needed to superimpose his famous rayograph technique to reach surreality."

Front 5

Obsequy (noun)

Back 5

a funeral rite or ceremony

"In Barcelona he photographed the tomb of a glowering industrialist: the sculpted man squats above his own remains, unaware of a skeleton rearing behind him. The image is Brandt's obsequy for capitalism, greedy beyond the grave."

Front 6

Perquisite (noun)

Back 6

an incidental payment, benefit, privilege, or advantage over and above regular income, salary, or wages

"Like the waste constituted by political and diplomatic dinners, cars, houses, dress and the general shower of perquisites, the opera house is something which people with power expect, the petit cadeau of French tarts."

Front 7

Supernumerary (noun)

Back 7

being in excess of the usual, proper, or prescribed number; additional; extra.

"The Baker, apropos of nothing, mentioned showing someone the door after a supernumerary teacake had dripped butter unattractively onto his swelling abdomen."

Front 8

Miasma (noun)

Back 8

noxious exhalations from putrescent organic matter; poisonous effluvia or germs polluting the atmosphere, or a dangerous, foreboding, or deathlike influence or atmosphere.

"Mention of the Parthenon marbles hung like some invisible miasma over the debate"

Front 9

Factotum (noun)

Back 9

a person, as a handyman or servant, employed to do all kinds of work around the house, or any employee or official having many different responsibilities

"The film is an old-school prison epic about an illiterate Arab kid recruited as a general factotum by the Corsican mob."

Front 10

Incubus

Back 10

an imaginary demon or evil spirit supposed to descend upon sleeping persons, esp. one fabled to have sexual intercourse with women during their sleep, a nightmare, or something that weighs upon or oppresses one like a nightmare.

"The public is weary of the war, armies are stretched and frustrated, and the political class, in government and opposition alike, wants to rid itself of the incubus of Iraq"

Front 11

Puissant (adj)

Back 11

powerful; mighty; potent.

Yet underneath this puissant exterior, you can tell she is also a rather kind and sensitive person, unsure of herself in surprising ways.

Front 12

Attrition (noun)

Back 12

a reduction or decrease in numbers, size, or strength, or a wearing away by friction

The US military has stopped battalion commanders from dismissing new recruits for drug abuse, alcohol, poor fitness and pregnancy in an attempt to halt the rising attrition rate in an army under growing strain as a result of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Front 13

Pharisaical

Back 13

practicing or advocating strict observance of external forms and ceremonies of religion or conduct without regard to the spirit; self-righteous; hypocritical.

Certainly there is racism on the fringes of the Tory party, and perhaps a guilty conscience among some Tories which made them walk into an obvious political trap. But a Pharisaical display of anti-racist scruples by the Labour party is as unappealing as anything on the Tory side.

Front 14

Roué

Back 14

profligate, libertine, lecher, cad, bounder, rakehell.

Front 15

Devolve (verb)

Back 15

to transfer or delegate (a duty, responsibility, etc.) to or upon another; pass on.

Alan Milburn, the former health secretary, today criticised the government for not doing enough to devolve power into the hands of ordinary people.

Front 16

Vertiginous

Back 16

whirling; spinning; vertiginous currents of air.
affected with vertigo; dizzy, liable or threatening to cause vertigo: a vertiginous climb, apt to change quickly; unstable: a vertiginous economy.

Front 17

Condign

Back 17

People have been encouraged to believe that we are governed by a uniquely corrupt political class that requires condign punishment.