Grade 10 College Vocabulary, Week 2

Definition: (n.) the question or issue a test gives the writer; (adj.) done at once; (v.) to bring about or urge on.

From the reading: ✎ "Read the prompt twice. Underline the question itself."

Synonyms:

(n.) question, topic, cue; (adj.) immediate, punctual; (v.) spur, provoke

Antonyms:

(adj.) tardy, dilatory, slow; (v.) deter, discourage

Root:Latin promptus, "brought forth, ready at hand," from promere (pro- "forth" + emere "to take").

Definition: an accepted rule or practice, especially in writing or behavior; also a formal assembly or agreement.

From the reading: ✎ "Ideas and analysis; development and support; organization; language use and conventions."

Synonyms:

custom, standard, norm, practice

Antonyms:

innovation, departure, irregularity

Root:Latin conventio, "a meeting, an agreement," from convenire, "to come together."

Definition: to drive out or send away for good; to expel from a country or from the mind.

From the reading: ✎ "List five vague phrases to banish from your timed essays"

Synonyms:

expel, exile, dispel, eliminate

Antonyms:

admit, welcome, harbor

Root:Old French banir, "to proclaim, outlaw," from a Germanic word related to ban, "a public order."

Definition: failing to produce the intended result; lacking the force to succeed.

From the reading: "It was a strong effort of the spirit of good, but it was ineffectual."

Synonyms:

futile, fruitless, unavailing, impotent

Antonyms:

effective, efficacious, successful

Root:in- "not" + Latin effectus, from efficere, "to accomplish."

Definition: (of a theory or belief) shown to be false; discredited and rejected.

From the reading: "...the principles of Agrippa had been entirely exploded and that a modern system of science had been introduced which possessed much greater powers than the ancient..."

Synonyms:

discredited, refuted, debunked, disproved

Antonyms:

confirmed, established, vindicated

Root:Latin explodere, "to drive off the stage by clapping and hissing" (ex- "out" + plaudere "to clap"). An exploded theory has been hissed off the stage.

Definition: a teacher or instructor, especially one who guides a student's whole course of study.

From the reading: "Under the guidance of my new preceptors I entered with the greatest diligence into the search of the philosopher’s stone and the elixir of life..."

✝ link: "Knowledge puffeth up, but charity edifieth" (1 Corinthians 8:1).

Synonyms:

tutor, mentor, master, instructor

Antonyms:

pupil, disciple, novice

Root:Latin praeceptor, from praecipere, "to take beforehand; to instruct" (prae- "before" + capere "to take").

Definition: to drink in; (figuratively) to absorb ideas or habits, often without examining them.

From the reading: "...these fancies which you have so greedily imbibed are a thousand years old and as musty as they are ancient?"

Synonyms:

absorb, assimilate, soak up, take in

Antonyms:

reject, expel, repudiate

Root:Latin imbibere, "to drink in" (in- + bibere "to drink").

Definition: a sudden, unexplained change of mind or behavior; a whim.

From the reading: "By one of those caprices of the mind which we are perhaps most subject to in early youth, I at once gave up my former occupations..."

✝ link: "Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, and cometh down from the Father of lights, with whom is no variableness, neither shadow of turning" (James 1:17).

Synonyms:

whim, impulse, fancy, vagary

Antonyms:

constancy, resolve, steadiness

Root:French caprice, from Italian capriccio, "a sudden start, a whim"; the word is often linked with capra, "goat," an animal that leaps without warning.

Definition: to predict from present signs; to foretell.

From the reading: "...the looks of her medical attendants prognosticated the worst event."

Synonyms:

forecast, predict, foretell, portend

Antonyms:

(none exact) recall, look back on

Root:Greek prognostikos, from pro- "before" + gignoskein "to know": to know beforehand.

Definition: kindness and gentleness of character; a gracious, well-meaning disposition.

From the reading: "On her deathbed the fortitude and benignity of this best of women did not desert her."

Synonyms:

kindliness, graciousness, goodwill, gentleness

Antonyms:

malevolence, malice, hostility

Root:Latin benignitas, from benignus, "kind, generous" (bene "well").

Definition: impossible to repair, restore or make right.

From the reading: "...whose dearest ties are rent by that most irreparable evil, the void that presents itself to the soul..."

✝ link: "...that ye sorrow not, even as others which have no hope" (1 Thessalonians 4:13).

Synonyms:

irreversible, irremediable, irretrievable, beyond repair

Antonyms:

reparable, remediable, curable

Root:in- "not" + Latin reparare, "to restore" (re- "again" + parare "to make ready").

Definition: a short period of rest or relief from something hard; a delay granted before a duty or penalty.

From the reading: "I obtained from my father a respite of some weeks."

Synonyms:

reprieve, lull, pause, interval

Antonyms:

continuation, persistence, toil

Root:Old French respit, from Latin respectus, "a looking back, regard": a delay granted out of consideration.

Definition: to influence someone beforehand, usually favorably; to fill the mind with an opinion in advance.

From the reading: "M. Krempe was a little squat man with a gruff voice and a repulsive countenance; the teacher, therefore, did not prepossess me in favour of his pursuits."

Synonyms:

predispose, bias, incline, impress

Antonyms:

repel, alienate, disincline

Root:pre- "before" + possess, from Latin possidere, "to occupy": to take hold of the mind first.

Definition: hard to understand; deep, obscure or highly technical.

From the reading: "In a thousand ways he smoothed for me the path of knowledge and made the most abstruse inquiries clear and facile to my apprehension."

✝ link: "The secret things belong unto the LORD our God: but those things which are revealed belong unto us and to our children for ever" (Deuteronomy 29:29).

Synonyms:

recondite, esoteric, arcane, obscure

Antonyms:

plain, lucid, accessible, simple

Root:Latin abstrusus, "thrust away, hidden," from abstrudere (abs- "away" + trudere "to push").

Definition: (as here, and often on college tests) the ability to judge finely and tell things apart; good discernment and taste. Also, the act of making a distinction.

From the reading: "I read with ardour those works, so full of genius and discrimination, which modern inquirers have written on these subjects."

Synonyms:

discernment, judgment, acumen, perceptiveness

Antonyms:

indiscrimination, obtuseness, carelessness

Root:Latin discriminare, "to divide, distinguish," from discrimen, "a dividing line."

Definition: complete destruction; reduction to nothing.

From the reading: "The ambition of the inquirer seemed to limit itself to the annihilation of those visions on which my interest in science was chiefly founded."

Synonyms:

obliteration, extinction, eradication, destruction

Antonyms:

creation, preservation, establishment

Root:Latin annihilare, "to reduce to nothing" (ad- "to" + nihil "nothing").

Definition: impossible to wound, harm or defeat.

From the reading: "...what glory would attend the discovery if I could banish disease from the human frame and render man invulnerable to any but a violent death!"

✝ link: "...it is appointed unto men once to die, but after this the judgment" (Hebrews 9:27).

Synonyms:

impervious, unassailable, impregnable, invincible

Antonyms:

vulnerable, defenseless, susceptible

Root:in- "not" + Latin vulnerare, "to wound," from vulnus, "a wound."

Definition: not holy or blessed; wicked or profane.

From the reading: "Who shall conceive the horrors of my secret toil as I dabbled among the unhallowed damps of the grave..."

Synonyms:

unholy, profane, impious, sacrilegious

Antonyms:

hallowed, sacred, consecrated

Root:un- + hallow, from Old English halgian, "to make holy" (as in "Hallowed be thy name").

Definition: impossible to erase or remove; lasting permanently, as a mark or memory.

From the reading: "Six years had elapsed, passed in a dream but for one indelible trace..."

Synonyms:

permanent, ineradicable, lasting, ineffaceable

Antonyms:

erasable, fleeting, temporary

Root:Latin indelebilis, in- "not" + delere "to blot out, destroy."

Definition: liable to change; inconstant.

From the reading: "How mutable are our feelings, and how strange is that clinging love we have of life even in the excess of misery!"

✝ link: "For I am the LORD, I change not" (Malachi 3:6).

Synonyms:

changeable, variable, fickle, inconstant

Antonyms:

immutable, constant, fixed, unchanging

Root:Latin mutabilis, from mutare, "to change."