Grade 8 College Vocabulary, Week 13

Definition: extreme poverty; the state of lacking even the things needed for life.

Context: Della has one dollar and eighty-seven cents to her name on Christmas Eve. She lives in near penury, yet she still means to give Jim a gift worthy of him.

KJV: Christ praised the poor widow who gave two mites: "but she of her penury hath cast in all the living that she had" (Luke 21:4).

Synonyms:

poverty, destitution, want, indigence

Antonyms:

wealth, affluence, plenty

Root:Latin penuria, "want, scarcity," related to paene, "almost": always nearly enough, never quite.

Definition: having to do with money.

Context: Della's pecuniary troubles were simple to count and hard to solve: the rent was high, and Jim's pay had been cut.

Synonyms:

financial, monetary, fiscal

Antonyms:

nonmonetary; spiritual (by contrast)

Root:Latin pecunia, "money," from pecus, "cattle." In early Rome a man's wealth was counted in his herds.

Definition: attractive in a cheap, showy way but without real worth; falsely appealing.

Context: Della chose a platinum chain that was plain and simple. It showed its value by what it was made of, not by any meretricious ornament. Do not confuse meretricious with meritorious ("deserving praise"); they are nearly opposites.

Synonyms:

gaudy, tawdry, flashy, specious

Antonyms:

genuine, tasteful, chaste, sincere

Root:Latin meretricius, from merere, "to earn, to serve for pay": showy in order to sell itself.

Definition: to start something or set it in motion, especially by urging; to provoke.

From the reading: The lesson notes that O. Henry "uses big words for fun," and instigates is one of them. After Della flops down on the couch and howls over her $1.87, the narrator says the scene instigates a moral reflection on life.

Synonyms:

provoke, prompt, incite, initiate

Antonyms:

quell, suppress, halt

Root:Latin instigare, "to goad, urge on," from in- + stig-, "to prick" (as in stimulus, a pointed stick for driving cattle).

Definition: generous giving of money or gifts, especially by a great person to many people; also the gifts themselves.

Context: The kings in Gentile da Fabriano's Adoration of the Magi come with royal largesse, yet the eldest lays his crown on the ground before the Child.

Synonyms:

generosity, bounty, liberality, munificence

Antonyms:

stinginess, parsimony, miserliness

Root:Old French largesse, from large, "generous," from Latin largus, "abundant."

Definition: active kindness; doing good to others.

Context: The Magi's gold showed their beneficence. Della and Jim showed a deeper kind: each gave up the dearest thing in the house for the other.

Synonyms:

kindness, charity, benevolence, goodwill

Antonyms:

malevolence, cruelty, selfishness

Root:Latin beneficentia, from bene, "well," + facere, "to do": doing well by another.

Definition: something offered to God; an offering or sacrifice given in worship.

KJV: After the battle with Midian, Israel's captains brought their gold to the LORD: "We have therefore brought an oblation for the LORD, what every man hath gotten, of jewels of gold" (Numbers 31:50).

Context: The gold, frankincense and myrrh of the wise men were an oblation laid before the Christ Child.

Synonyms:

offering, sacrifice, tribute

Antonyms:

(none exact) withholding, theft

Root:Latin oblatio, from oblatus, past participle of offerre, "to offer" (ob- "toward" + ferre "to carry").

Definition: not serious; silly or trifling; lacking any real purpose or worth.

From the reading: "...that a thief and a vagabond should repent, when so many who are rich and secure remain hard and frivolous, and without fruit for God or man?" (Father Brown, in "The Queer Feet")

Synonyms:

trivial, flippant, shallow, trifling

Antonyms:

serious, earnest, weighty, grave

Root:Latin frivolus, "silly, of little worth."

Definition: ordinary and dull; lacking imagination or poetry; matter-of-fact.

From the reading: "In short, there is in life an element of elfin coincidence which people reckoning on the prosaic may perpetually miss."

Synonyms:

mundane, commonplace, humdrum, pedestrian

Antonyms:

poetic, imaginative, extraordinary

Root:Latin prosaicus, from prosa, "prose," short for prosa oratio, "straightforward speech": like prose rather than verse.

Definition: a statement that seems to contradict itself or common sense, yet turns out to be true.

From the reading: "The French electrify the world not by starting any paradox, they electrify it by carrying out a truism."

KJV link: Christ's teaching is full of paradox. The first shall be last, and whoever loses his life for Christ's sake shall find it (Matthew 16:25). Chesterton loved paradox because Christian truth often looks upside down to the world.

Synonyms:

contradiction, puzzle, enigma, anomaly

Antonyms:

truism, platitude, commonplace

Root:Greek paradoxon, from para- "contrary to" + doxa "opinion": something contrary to what people expect.

Definition: a statement so obviously true that it hardly needs saying.

From the reading: "They carry a truism so far--as in the French Revolution." Valentin's genius lies not in strange ideas but in following plain ones all the way.

Synonyms:

platitude, commonplace, cliché, axiom

Antonyms:

paradox, novelty, revelation

Root:English true + -ism, first used in the 1700s.

Definition: having to do with the deepest questions about reality, such as being, cause, God and the soul; (loosely) very abstract.

From the reading: Valentin fears he has brought the English detectives "so far on a fantastic guess only to listen to the metaphysical gossip of two mild old parsons."

Synonyms:

philosophical, abstract, theoretical, transcendent

Antonyms:

physical, concrete, practical

Root:Greek meta ta physika, "after the physics": the name given to Aristotle's books that came after his Physics and dealt with first causes.

Definition: easily seen or noticed; standing out.

From the reading: "...among whom the man we must follow was by no means conspicuous--nor wished to be."

Synonyms:

noticeable, prominent, obvious, salient

Antonyms:

inconspicuous, hidden, unobtrusive

Root:Latin conspicuus, "visible," from conspicere, "to look at closely" (con- + specere "to look").

Definition: not drawing attention to oneself; quiet and modest in manner.

From the reading: "The young lady, having scattered bread for the birds (for the fourth or fifth time that day, because the dog ate it), passed unobtrusively down the lane of laurels..." ("The Flying Stars")

Synonyms:

inconspicuous, discreet, low-key, modest

Antonyms:

conspicuous, obtrusive, showy

Root:un- + obtrusive, from Latin obtrudere, "to thrust against" (ob- + trudere "to push").

Definition: A claim to something, often one that is not justified; a show of being more important, holy or learned than one really is.

From the reading: "Flambeau suddenly flung off all his pontifical pretensions."

Synonyms:

pretense, affectation, airs, claim

Antonyms:

modesty, humility, sincerity

Root:Latin praetendere, "to stretch out in front, to put forward as an excuse" (prae- "before" + tendere "to stretch").

Definition: out of place; not fitting the surroundings or what is expected.

From the reading: "...a kind of coarse white trousers common among the early Victorians, but strangely incongruous today." ("The Sins of Prince Saradine")

Synonyms:

out of place, inappropriate, discordant, jarring

Antonyms:

fitting, harmonious, consistent, appropriate

Root:Latin incongruus, from in- "not" + congruere "to agree, come together."

Definition: innocent and unsuspecting; frank and open, without guile. Do not confuse it with ingenious ("clever, inventive"). Flambeau's crimes were ingenious; Father Brown only looked ingenuous.

Context: On the train, the little priest seems so ingenuous that he tells everyone in the carriage he is carrying something made of real silver. In truth he is already watching the thief.

KJV link: "Be ye therefore wise as serpents, and harmless as doves" (Matthew 10:16). Father Brown is as harmless as a dove without being ingenuous at all.

Synonyms:

naive, artless, guileless, innocent

Antonyms:

crafty, sly, worldly, disingenuous

Root:Latin ingenuus, "native, freeborn," and so "noble, frank," from in- + gignere, "to be born."

Definition: clear and easy to understand; also, thinking clearly.

From the reading: Father Brown explains the trail he left "went on Father Brown, with lumbering lucidity" and says: "as you wouldn’t leave any tracks for the police, of course somebody had to."

KJV: "The entrance of thy words giveth light; it giveth understanding unto the simple" (Psalm 119:130).

Synonyms:

clear, plain, coherent, intelligible

Antonyms:

obscure, confused, muddled, unintelligible

Root:Latin lucidus, "bright, clear," from lux, lucis, "light."

Definition: too deep to be measured or fully understood.

From the reading: "The mystery of heaven is unfathomable, and I for one can only bow my head." (Flambeau, still pretending to be a priest)

KJV: "O the depth of the riches both of the wisdom and knowledge of God! how unsearchable are his judgments, and his ways past finding out!" (Romans 11:33).

Synonyms:

unknowable, inscrutable, impenetrable, bottomless

Antonyms:

comprehensible, shallow, plain

Root:un- + fathom (Old English fæthm, "outstretched arms," the six-foot measure sailors used for depth) + -able.

Definition: Not able to decay; not able to be bribed or led into wrongdoing.

From the reading: "...what they really meant in the Middle Ages by the heavens being incorruptible."

KJV: "...the dead shall be raised incorruptible, and we shall be changed" (1 Corinthians 15:52).

Synonyms:

imperishable, everlasting; (sense 2) honest, upright, unbribable

Antonyms:

perishable, corruptible; (sense 2) venal, crooked

Root:Latin incorruptibilis, from in- "not" + corrumpere "to spoil, destroy" (con- + rumpere "to break").