Vocabulary #6

abase - verb cause to feel shame; hurt the pride of

“When the boy stood up to the bully, he abased him.”

abdicate - verb give up, such as power, as of monarchs and emperors, or duties and obligations

“When the politician became gravely sick, he abdicated his position to his understudy.”

abomination - noun an action that is vicious or vile; an action that arouses disgust or abhorrence; a person who is loathsome or disgusting; hate coupled with disgust

“Her disgusting dancing is an abomination.”

brusque - adj. marked by rude or peremptory shortness

“Her remark was brusque.”

saboteur - noun someone who commits sabotage or deliberately causes wrecks; a member of a clandestine subversive organization who tries to help a potential invader

“Protagonists of a story normally are the saboteur of the antagonist plans.”

debauchery - noun a wild gathering involving excessive drinking and promiscuity

“The party was a debauchery.”

proliferate - verb cause to grow or increase rapidly; grow rapidly

“Eating healthy can proliferate your body.”

anachronism - noun an artifact that belongs to another time; a person who seems to be displaced in time; who belongs to another age; something located at a time when it could not have existed or occurred

“Captain American is an example of an anachronistic person."

  nomenclature - noun a system of words used to name things in a particular discipline

“We use a nomenclature to remember the order of taxa in biology.”

expurgate - verb edit by omitting or modifying parts considered indelicate

“When proof reading my essay I expurgated words that didn’t belong.”

bellicose - adj. having or showing a ready disposition to fight

“The young bull had a bellicose manner.”

gauche - adj. lacking social polish

“The boy had a slightly gauche attitude.”

rapacious - adj. excessively greedy and grasping; devouring or craving food in great quantities; living by preying on other animals especially by catching living prey

“Vampaneze in Darren Shan’s Cirque Du Freak series have rapacious eating habit.”

paradox - noun (logic) a statement that contradicts itself

“And example of a paradox is found In George Orwell’s Animal Farm, ‘All animals are equal but some are more equal than others.’”

conundrum - noun a difficult problem

“The youth ae faced with conundrums every day, or so it seems.”

anomaly - noun (astronomy) position of a planet as defined by its angular distance from its perihelion (as observed from the sun); a person who is unusual; deviation from the normal or common order or form or rule

“The blood spatter was and anomaly and puzzled the detectives.”

ephemeral - adj. lasting a very short time; noun anything short-lived, as an insect that lives only for a day in its winged form

“Drugs only provide an ephemeral high.”

rancorous - adj. showing deep-seated resentment

“Girls act rancorous towards one another.”

churlish - adj. having a bad disposition; surly; rude and boorish

“The man in the movie theater was churlish.”

precipitous - adj. characterized by precipices; extremely steep; done with very great haste and without due deliberation

“Her essay had obvious signs it was done with precipitous haste.”