My
Word List
Cacophony (kau KAHF uh nee)
A
mixture of sound, voice or words which is very unpleasant to hear.
Euphony is the opposite of cacophony.
Cadence
Rhythm; rise and fall of sounds.
Usage: We hoped that the speaker's words had a pleasing cadence,
he seems to speaking in a dull monotone.
Chagrin (shuh GRIN)
humiliation;embarrassed disappointment
Usage: Much to my chagrin, I began to giggle during the eulogy at the
funeral.
Usage: Joe was filled with chagrin,when he had to pull out of the race.
Charisma
magical ability to attract followers or inspire loyalty.
Usage: The saint's charisma helped in bringing in millions of rupees in
donations.
Abstruse (@b'-strus)
difficult to comprehend
Esoteric
Cerebral
brainy; intellectually refined
Usage: A cerebral discussion is one filled with big words and concerns
abstruse matters that ordinary people cannot understand
Usage: Sebastian was too cerebral to be a baseball announcer; he kept
talking about the existentialism of the outfield.
Celibacy
abstinence from sex
Usage: People who practice celibacy do not practice sex. Celibacy is
one of the requirements for Catholic priesthood.
Censure
To condemn severely for doing something bad.
Usage: The senate sometimes censures senetors for engaging in behaviour
unbecoming to an elected official.
Catholic
universal; embracing everything.
Usage: Leonardo Da Vinci was truly a catholic genius, he excelled in
everything he did.
Caustic (kaw stik)
corrosive; acid-like; biting;acrimonious
Usage: The teacher's caustic remarks left a number of students in tears.
Usage: The caustic detergent ate through the clothes.
Categorical
unconditional; absolute
Usage: Crooked politicians often categorically deny all charges, later
they go to jail.
Catharsis (kuh THAR sis)
purification that brings emotional relief or renewal.
Usage: Young teddy had swallowed a bottle of shoe polish, his mother
gave him raw eggs as a catharitic to make him vomit.
Usage: Talking to a psychiatrist, can lead to catharsis for some people.
Caricature
Portriat or description which is purposefully distorted or exaggerated
to prove a point about the subject.
Usage: The cartoonist of the news daily made caricature of the
political mistakes of the day to highlight the errors to the common
masses.
Castigate
To severely criticise; to chastise
Usage: Tom's mother-in-law castigated him, for forgetting to pick her
up at the airport.
Catalyst
A person or thing, that helps in speeding up another process, without
actually getting directly involved in it.
Usage: The Russian launch of the Sputnik, was the catalyst required for
the creation of the modern day American Space exploration.
Capitulate (kuh PCIH uh layt)
surrender; give up or give in
Usage: On the twentieth day, the worker's capitulated and went back to
work without a new contract.
Recapitulate
To summarize
Usage: The professor always recapitulated the main points of his
speech, at the end of his class.
Capricious (kuh PRISH us)
unpredicable
Usage: The weather these days has become very capricious. One minute it
is raining, the other minute it is sunny.
Caprice (kuh PREES)
whim; hunch
Penny attempted a quadruple somersault off the ten-meter diving board
as a caprice. It was a very painful caprice.
Cajole (kuh JOHL)
v.- To persuade someone to do something he/she does not want to do.
Usage: Joel cajoled me into giving the speech on human rights at the
conference, it turned out that he did not have anyone to fill in that
spot on the program for that evening.
Callow (KAL oh)
adj.- immature; To be callow is to be youthfully naïve,
inexperienced and unsophisticated.
Usage: The patient was alarmed at the callowness of the medical staff,
they were too young to be doctors, leave alone graduating from high
school.
Candor (KAN dor)
sincerely honesty; truthfullness
Usage: My friend exhibited candor, when he told me that for many years
he thought that I was a total jerk.
Usage: Teddy appreciated Ross's candor; Teddy was glad to know that
Ross thought his sideburns looked stupid.
Nuance
Very slight changes or difference in shade or color
Digress
To deviate from the actual theme in writing or speech.
Usage: Even though I had digressed from the original topic I had
chosen to write the article on, the article when completed did present
a very unique opinion of the very sensitive topic in today's society.
Magnanimous
Noble , generous
Usage: When the media moghul Ted Turner, donated $1 billion to
Public Radio, he challenged other businessmen also to be magnanimous.
Magnanimity (verb)
Munificence
generosity,charity
Usage: The children's home largely depended on the munificence of
the wealthy to finance their daily operational needs.
Munificent (adjective) -- Being lavish or generous
Maladroit
Inept, awkward
Usage: It was painful to watch the young senator's maladroit delivery
of the nomination speech.
Malinger
To pretend illeness to avoid work
Usage: During the labor problems, hundreds of workers malingered,
resulting in the company to reduce their production, and thereby loose
millions of dollars in revenue.
Malleable
Able to change, shape or form due to outside pressure.
Usage: Gold is a very useful metal due to its high malleability.
A child's personality is very malleable, and it depends a lot on what
the parents say or do.
Mandate
Order, Command
Usage: The new policy went into effect as soon as the President signed
the mandate.
Mandate (verb), Mandatory (adjective)
Marginal
At the outer edge or fringes; of mininum quality or acceptance
Usage: Even though the trend towards greater parental involvement in
child development is very widely accepted, fathers still tend to have a
marginal role.
Mark's GMAT scores were so marginal that he was not accepted by a
number of graduation schools.
Marginalize (verb)
To push towards the outer fringes; make less consequential
Usage: Ted argued that having designated a month in the year as “Black
History Month” actually does disservice to minorities by marginalizing
them.
Martial
Of, relating to or part of the military lifestyle
Usage: My old teacher, Miss Woody's had such a martial demeanor that
you'd think she is was running boot camp, instead of teaching fifth
grade.
After the coup in Pakistan, the country was ruled under martial law for
a number of years.
Mediate
To reconcile differences between two parties.
Usage: Both the managers and players agreed that the President should
intervene and mediate the issues resulting in the dispute.
Mercenary
Doing something solely for the pay / money or for personal advantage.
Usage: A number of people all over the World, think that the United
States motives were mercenary in the invasion of Iraq. They would not
have invaded Iraq, if Iraq did not have huge reserves of Oil.
Iconoclast
Someone who attacks traditional beliefs or institutions
Idealization
Bring something to perfection
Ideology
Body of ideas or beliefs
Idolatory
The worship of a person,thing or institution as a God
Idyll
A rustic, romantic interlude; poetry or prose that celebrates pastoral
life
Illicit
Illegal, wrongful
Illuminate
To brighten with light, enlighten or elucidate
Immaculate
Totally unblemished, spotlessly clean
Immaterial
Unimportant, of no consequence
Immunity
expent from something;being free of
Immutable
Incapable of change
Impartial
Unbiased; fair , equal
Impassivity
Apathy, unresponsiveness
Imperceptible
Impossible to perceive, inaudible, incomprehensible
Impertubable
Cannot be disconcerted, disturbed or excited
Impetuous
Acting hastily or implusively
Implacable
Unbending, resolute
Implement
Carry out
Implosion
To collapse inward from outside pressure
Gratuitous
Free, obtained at no cost, unnecessary, uncalled for
Perfidious
Disloyal, treacheous
Usage: Although he was one of the most talented Generals, Benedict
Arnold is remembered today as a perfidious betrayer to the American
cause.
Peripatetic
Moving or travelling from place to place
Usage: Mark's new assignment has changed his sedentary life into a
peripatetic one. He is on official tours most of the time.
Permeate
To spread throughout or penetrate
Usage: Little by little, the smell of gass from the broken pipe
permeated the house
Proliferate
Prolific
very productive, fruitful,fertile
Usage: Picasso was a prolific painter and a prolific lover. He
painted a huge number of paintings, and he also had a
number of affairs.
Prodigious
enormous; extraordinary
Usage: The team of engineers had a prodigious task ahead of them, they
had to fill the Grand Canyon with ping pong balls !!
Prodigy
gifted or very talented child
Usage: Our 9 year old prodigy is busy practicing for his
basketball game.
Personification
Embodiment of an abstract idea or thing in to human form.
Usage: The inhuman killing of innocent children and elderly by the
rebel forces,made many people to personify the rebels as the Satan
himself
Peccadillo
minor offense, or lapse
Usage: What Dr. Dykes saw as a major offense – being addressed as Marge
rather than Doctor – Tina saw as a peccadillo as one that certainly
should not have lost her the job
Pendantic , Pedantry
Bookish, Academic
Usage: The men whom Jane met at the New York Books review, were of the
pendantic type
•Pedestrian
Unimaginative, Ordinary
Usage: The new Italian restaurant received a very poor review due to
its reliance on pedestrian dishes such as Chicken parmigiana, and Pasta
in marinara sauce
•Partisan
Showing allegiance to a group, cause or party
Usage: The vote for the President's budget was strictly partisan, every
member of the President's party voted yes, all others voted no
•Patriarchal
Relating to a father or founder
Usage: When children take over business from their fathers, they find
it difficult to meet the patriarchal expectations
•Pantheon
Group of illustrious people
Usage: It is highly unlikely that any of our recents Presidents are
likely to join the pantheon of American statesman
•Parse
To analyse bit by bit; To break down a sentence into grammatical
components
Usage: In the wake of the sex scandal, the journalists parsed every
utterance by the administrative officials
•Charlatan (SHAR luh tan)
fraud, quack ; con man
Usage: Buck was selling what he clained was a cure for cancer, but he
was just a charlatan, the pills were jelly beans
•Chasm (KAZ um)
a deep gaping hole; a gorge
Usage: Mark was so stupid that his girlfriend wondered if there was a
chasm where the brain should be
•Chastise (Chas TYZe)
To infict punishment; to discipline
Usage: Mother chastised us for firing our bottle rockets through the
living room window
•Chicanery (shi KAY nuh rer)
Trickery; deceitfullness
Usage: Political news would be dull were it not for the chicanery of
our elected officials
•Chimera (kye MEER uh)
An illusion; a foolish fancy
Usage: Susan's dream of becoming a movie star was just a chimera
•Choleric (KAHL ur ik)
hot tempered; quick to anger
Usage: When the grumpy old man was in one of his choleric moods, the
children refused to go close to him
•Chronic
constant;lasting a long time; inveterate
This word is usually associated with something negativeor undiserable.
Chronic illiness
•Chronical
a record of events in the order of time, a history
Usage: Sally's dairy provided her a detailed chronicle of her
daughter's extra curricular activities
•Perturbed
made uneasy or anxious
Usage: Because she expected her mother to be at home, the woman was
extremely perturbed when she called home ans nobody was picking up the
phone
•Pervasive
Spreading throughout
Usage: as the news of the disaster reached the town, a pervasive gloom
could be felt everywhere
