Grade 11 College Vocabulary, Week 23

Definition: Naive, simplistic, and superficial; also, dull and lacking substance.

Context (original sentence): His jejune essay on the war treated a long tragedy as a simple adventure story.

Synonyms:

naive, simplistic, insipid

Antonyms:

sophisticated, substantial

Root:Latin jejunus, fasting, barren.

Definition: Showing a casual lack of concern; carefree and indifferent.

Context (original sentence): He strolled into the examination with an insouciant smile, as if it were a picnic.

Synonyms:

nonchalant, carefree, unconcerned

Antonyms:

anxious, worried

Root:French insouciant (in-, not + soucier, to care).

Definition: Loud and resonant, with a mournful tone.

Context (original sentence): The plangent toll of the church bell announced the old king's death.

Synonyms:

resonant, mournful, plaintive

Antonyms:

(none exact)

Root:Latin plangere, to beat the breast in grief.

Definition: To depict or describe in painting or words.

From the reading: "“That is Wat the limner,” quoth the landlady, sitting down beside Alleyne, and pointing with the ladle to the sleeping man." (The White Company)

Synonyms:

depict, portray, delineate

Antonyms:

(none exact)

Root:Old French enluminer, to illuminate (a manuscript).

Definition: Bad-tempered and spiteful.

Context (original sentence): The splenetic old judge snapped at every lawyer who stood before him.

Synonyms:

irritable, peevish, spiteful

Antonyms:

good-natured, genial

Root:Late Latin spleneticus, from splen, the spleen (seat of ill humor).

Definition: The mistaken use of a word in place of a similar-sounding one, often with comic effect.

Context (original sentence): When the nervous usher announced that the choir would sing an "anteater" instead of an anthem, the congregation smiled at the malapropism.

Synonyms:

misuse, verbal slip

Antonyms:

(none exact)

Root:from Mrs. Malaprop, a character in Sheridan's The Rivals (1775), from French mal a propos, out of place.

Definition: Physical beauty.

Context (original sentence): Poets of every age have praised the pulchritude of Helen of Troy.

Synonyms:

beauty, loveliness, comeliness

Antonyms:

ugliness, homeliness

Root:Latin pulcher, beautiful.

Definition: Expressing excessive admiration or praise.

Context (original sentence): The adulatory biography mentioned none of the general's mistakes.

Synonyms:

flattering, fawning, sycophantic

Antonyms:

critical, disparaging

Root:Latin adulari, to fawn.

Definition: Wisdom; the capacity for deep insight.

Context (original sentence): The sapience of the old abbot drew pilgrims from distant countries.

Synonyms:

wisdom, sagacity, discernment

Antonyms:

folly, foolishness

Root:Latin sapere, to be wise.

Definition: A long and eventful journey or experience.

From the reading: "This masterly translation does all that can be done for the Odyssey in the romantic style." (The Odyssey)

Synonyms:

journey, voyage, trek

Antonyms:

(none exact)

Root:from the Odyssey, Homer's epic of Odysseus's ten-year voyage home.

Definition: The reappearance of a characteristic from remote ancestors after several generations; a reversion to an earlier type.

Context (original sentence): The farmer's sudden love of the sea seemed an atavism from his sailor ancestors.

Synonyms:

reversion, throwback

Antonyms:

(none exact)

Root:Latin atavus, a remote ancestor.

Definition: Related in origin, especially of words from the same root.

From the reading: "And the habit which is concerned with geometry and the cognate sciences I suppose that you would term understanding and not reason, as being intermediate between opinion and reason." (The Republic)

Synonyms:

related, kindred, akin

Antonyms:

unrelated

Root:Latin cognatus, born together.

Definition: A person who has or affects a special appreciation of art and beauty.

From the reading: "The aesthetes touched the last insane limits of language in their eulogy on lovely things." (Orthodoxy)

Synonyms:

connoisseur, art lover

Antonyms:

philistine, boor

Root:Greek aisthetes, one who perceives.

Definition: Having mixed feelings or contradictory ideas about something.

Context (original sentence): She was ambivalent about the move: glad for the new job, sorry to leave her friends.

Synonyms:

conflicted, uncertain, torn

Antonyms:

certain, decided

Root:Latin ambi-, both + valere, to be strong.

Definition: Something or someone that one vehemently dislikes; originally, a formal curse by church authority.

From the reading: "Anathema maranatha! was the cry That rang from town to town, from street to street; At every gate the accursed Mordecai Was mocked and jeered, and spurned by Christian feet." (Poems of Longfellow)

Synonyms:

abomination, bane, curse

Antonyms:

blessing

Root:Greek anathema, a thing devoted (to evil); a curse.

Definition: Apt in the circumstances; well suited.

From the reading: "While he bestowed those of greater value on the two most distinguished warriors, one of whom was his host, he seasoned his offerings to their inferiors with such well-timed and apposite compliments, as left them no ground of complaint." (The Last of the Mohicans)

Synonyms:

apt, pertinent, fitting

Antonyms:

inappropriate, irrelevant

Root:Latin apponere, to put near.

Definition: The jargon or slang of a particular group.

Context (original sentence): Sailors' argot, with its "belay" and "avast," puzzled the landlubber passengers.

Synonyms:

jargon, slang, cant

Antonyms:

(none exact)

Root:French argot, thieves' slang, of uncertain origin.

Definition: To declare or state solemnly and emphatically.

From the reading: "They descended, passing the man with the pail, who again asseverated that he had let no intruder pass, down to the commissionaire and the hovering chestnut man, who rigidly reasserted their own watchfulness." (The Innocence of Father Brown)

Synonyms:

declare, affirm, assert

Antonyms:

deny

Root:Latin asseverare (ad- + severus, serious).

Definition: A self-taught person.

Context (original sentence): An autodidact, Lincoln learned law from borrowed books by firelight.

Synonyms:

self-taught person

Antonyms:

(none exact)

Root:Greek autodidaktos (autos, self + didaskein, to teach).

Definition: An abrupt, unintended shift from the lofty to the trivial in speech or writing, producing a ridiculous effect.

Context (original sentence): The poem's bathos—moving from the death of a hero to the price of cheese—made readers laugh.

Synonyms:

anticlimax, letdown

Antonyms:

sublimity

Root:Greek bathos, depth.