Grade 8 College Vocabulary, Week 5

Definition: a great flood of water, or a heavy downpour of rain. It can also mean an overwhelming rush of anything, such as a deluge of letters.

From the reading: "the same day were all the fountains of the great deep broken up, and the windows of heaven were opened."

Synonyms:

flood, inundation, torrent

Antonyms:

drought, trickle, dearth

Root:Latin diluvium, a flood, from diluere, to wash away (dis- apart + luere to wash). "The Deluge" is an old English name for Noah's flood.

Definition: to flood or cover with water. It can also mean to overwhelm with more of something than one can handle.

KJV: "And the waters prevailed exceedingly upon the earth; and all the high hills, that were under the whole heaven, were covered" (Genesis 7:19).

Context: The waters did more than wet the valley. They inundated every high hill under heaven.

Synonyms:

flood, submerge, overwhelm

Antonyms:

drain, dry up, trickle

Root:Latin inundare, to overflow, from in- (upon) + unda (a wave).

Definition: a sudden, violent event that brings great destruction or change.

KJV: "And knew not until the flood came, and took them all away; so shall also the coming of the Son of man be" (Matthew 24:39).

Context: In the days of Noah, men went on eating and marrying until the cataclysm swept them away.

Synonyms:

catastrophe, disaster, upheaval

Antonyms:

calm, blessing, stability

Root:Greek kataklysmos, a flood, from kata- (down) + klyzein (to wash). The Greek New Testament uses this very word for Noah's flood.

Definition: impossible to stop, prevent or persuade; going on steadily without relenting.

From the reading: "And the rain was upon the earth forty days and forty nights."

Context: Day after day the rain fell with inexorable force, and no one could plead with it or hold it back.

Synonyms:

relentless, unstoppable, unyielding

Antonyms:

yielding, flexible, stoppable

Root:Latin inexorabilis, from in- (not) + exorare (to persuade by pleading): something that cannot be moved by prayer or plea.

Definition: moral uprightness; steady, honest goodness in thought and conduct.

From the reading: Genesis calls Noah "a just man and perfect in his generations".

KJV: "Noah was a just man and perfect in his generations, and Noah walked with God" (Genesis 6:9).

Synonyms:

righteousness, probity, uprightness

Antonyms:

corruption, depravity, dishonesty

Root:Latin rectitudo, straightness, from rectus (straight, right). The same root gives us rectangle and correct.

Definition: reverent devotion to God, shown in worship and in faithful duty to one's family.

KJV: "let them learn first to shew piety at home, and to requite their parents" (1 Timothy 5:4).

Context: Noah's piety reached his whole household. He "prepared an ark to the saving of his house" (Hebrews 11:7).

Synonyms:

devotion, godliness, reverence

Antonyms:

impiety, irreverence, ungodliness

Root:Latin pietas, dutiful devotion to God, country and parents, from pius (dutiful). Virgil called his hero "pious Aeneas" for this virtue.

Definition: to set apart or shut away from others; to isolate.

From the reading: "and the LORD shut him in."

KJV: "as God had commanded him: and the LORD shut him in" (Genesis 7:16).

Context: Noah did not sequester himself. The LORD's own hand closed the door and set him apart from the doomed world.

Synonyms:

isolate, seclude, set apart

Antonyms:

expose, release, mingle

Root:Latin sequestrare, to give up for safekeeping, from sequester, a trustee who held property during a dispute.

Definition: steady and firm; never hesitating or changing in purpose or loyalty.

From the reading: "Thus did Noah; according to all that God commanded him, so did he"

KJV: "Thus did Noah; according to all that God commanded him, so did he" (Genesis 6:22).

Context: For many years Noah's obedience was unwavering, plank by plank and cubit by cubit.

Synonyms:

steady, constant, resolute

Antonyms:

vacillating, fickle, faltering

Root:English un- (not) + waver, from Old Norse vafra, to move unsteadily, to flicker.

Definition: to speak about something with scorn and mockery; to treat as foolish or not worth believing.

From the reading: The sketchbook asks for one sentence "that a scoffing neighbor outside might have said the day before."

KJV: "Knowing this first, that there shall come in the last days scoffers, walking after their own lusts" (2 Peter 3:3).

Synonyms:

mock, jeer, ridicule

Antonyms:

respect, praise, heed

Root:Middle English scof, mockery, probably from a Scandinavian word meaning jest or scorn.

Definition: contemptuous laughter or ridicule; the state of being mocked.

KJV: "The proud have had me greatly in derision: yet have I not declined from thy law" (Psalm 119:51).

Context: The psalmist's words fit Noah well. He was held in derision for years, yet he did not turn from God's command.

Synonyms:

mockery, scorn, ridicule

Antonyms:

respect, admiration, esteem

Root:Latin derisio, from deridere, to laugh to scorn (de- down + ridere to laugh).

Definition: stubbornly refusing to change one's mind or turn from wrong; hardened in heart.

From the reading: "For years I called to them, and they would not come."

KJV: "To day if ye will hear his voice, harden not your hearts, as in the provocation" (Hebrews 3:15).

Synonyms:

hard-hearted, unrepentant, intransigent

Antonyms:

penitent, yielding, tractable

Root:Latin obduratus, from obdurare, to harden (ob- against + durus hard).

Definition: patient self-control; holding back from punishment or anger when one has the right to act.

KJV: "when once the longsuffering of God waited in the days of Noah, while the ark was a preparing" (1 Peter 3:20).

Context: God's forbearance gave that generation all the years the ark was being built to turn and repent.

Synonyms:

patience, longsuffering, restraint

Antonyms:

impatience, wrath, intolerance

Root:Old English forberan, to endure, from for- (away) + beran (to bear).

Definition: a lack of interest, feeling or concern; indifference.

Context: In The Screwtape Letters, the old devil would much rather his patient drift into a dull apathy about God than become a bold, open enemy of the faith.

Synonyms:

indifference, listlessness, unconcern

Antonyms:

zeal, fervor, enthusiasm

Root:Greek apatheia, from a- (without) + pathos (feeling, suffering).

Definition: seeming true or reasonable at first glance, but actually false.

Context: Screwtape teaches Wormwood that a specious excuse ("there will be time to think about all that later") does more harm than a hard argument against God.

Synonyms:

misleading, plausible but false, deceptive

Antonyms:

sound, valid, genuine

Root:Latin speciosus, fair to look at, from species (appearance). The word once meant beautiful. Now it means beautiful on the outside only.

Definition: treating serious matters with disrespectful lightness; not taking things seriously when one should.

Context: Screwtape prizes a flippant habit of mind, since a man who treats everything as a joke can laugh his way past virtue without ever arguing with it.

Synonyms:

glib, facetious, irreverent

Antonyms:

earnest, serious, respectful

Root:Probably from English flip, to toss lightly, with the sense of a quick, careless tongue.

Definition: lukewarm. Used of people, it means lacking zeal, enthusiasm or conviction.

KJV: "So then because thou art lukewarm, and neither cold nor hot, I will spue thee out of my mouth" (Revelation 3:16).

Context: The tempters in Lewis's book are content with a tepid churchgoer whose faith never quite catches fire.

Synonyms:

lukewarm, halfhearted, indifferent

Antonyms:

fervent, ardent, zealous

Root:Latin tepidus, from tepere, to be slightly warm.

Definition: the quality in a speech or story that stirs feelings of pity, sorrow or tenderness. In rhetoric, it is the appeal to the hearer's emotions. In an ethopoeia, a speech of feeling (pathos) shows what the speaker feels at that moment.

From the reading: "Lord, I am afraid of the water, but I am more afraid of Thee."

Context: That line has pathos. It also shows character, so the lesson calls it mixed.

Synonyms:

poignancy, feeling, emotion

Antonyms:

detachment, coldness, bathos

Root:Greek pathos, suffering, feeling, from paschein (to suffer). Compare sympathy and apathy (word 13).

Definition: having to do with the devil; extremely wicked, cruel or cunning.

KJV: "Be sober, be vigilant; because your adversary the devil, as a roaring lion, walketh about, seeking whom he may devour" (1 Peter 5:8).

Context: Lewis wrote his letters from a diabolical point of view so that readers would see temptation from the enemy's side and learn to recognize it.

Synonyms:

devilish, fiendish, wicked

Antonyms:

angelic, saintly, benevolent

Root:Greek diabolos, slanderer, accuser, from dia- (across) + ballein (to throw). The devil throws accusations.

Definition: unwilling or unable to believe something; showing disbelief.

Context: The neighbors watched with incredulous faces as an old man built a huge ship on dry land and warned of a flood they had never seen.

Synonyms:

disbelieving, skeptical, doubtful

Antonyms:

credulous, trusting, convinced

Root:Latin incredulus, from in- (not) + credulus (believing), from credere (to believe). Do not confuse it with incredible (hard to believe).

Definition: humor or lightness of manner, especially when it is out of place at a serious time.

From the reading: The lesson rejects a joking Noah speech because the words "do not fit a six-hundred-year-old man at the most solemn hour of his life."

Context: Levity has its place at a feast, but not at the hour when the LORD shuts the door of the ark.

Synonyms:

frivolity, flippancy, lightheartedness

Antonyms:

gravity, solemnity, seriousness

Root:Latin levitas, lightness, from levis (light in weight). Its opposite, gravity, comes from gravis (heavy).