GRE Plus Vocab

2006-03-28T22:49:00.000-08:00

dilettante
n.
A dabbler in an art or a field of knowledge; a lover of the fine arts but in an amateurish or superficial way.

The world of intelligentsia is one of snobs, where the dilettantes are snubbed and only those with immense domain expertise acknowledged as worth their salt.

A Connoisseur is what you crave to be, not a smatterer or dilettante.

CHIAROSCURO

2005-10-19T03:18:00.000-07:00

adj.
the alternate dark and light as in painting or in shadows

It was a marvelous chiaroscuro, making it difficult to infer it was depicting early morning or late evening.

The painter excelled at creating chiaroscuro effects.

WASTREL

2005-10-18T03:22:00.000-07:00

n.
a low character woman, a prostitute, a slut.

It was no surprise that the wastrel's daughter took to convent on acquiring age; she had always been groomed to be a nun.

What a waste is a wastrel's sick life, no family of own, no privacy, no true love.

GASCONADE

2005-10-17T21:12:00.000-07:00

v.
to indulge in loud bragging and boastfulness

The raconteur (=one who spins yarns and tall stories) persisted in gasconading about his fictitious achievements.

If you see beyond his gasconade, you find a heart of gold; he does this tall talking just to make life funnier for all of us.

ADUMBRATE

2005-10-16T00:23:00.000-07:00

v.
to outline something, say the future.
the concept arose because of the outline emerging when sun sets behind a hill, with just the dark outline of the hill being visible.

All her adumbrations of the future as a nasty phase of loss and evil turned to be hoax.

Carefully adumbrate this scenarios against the backdrop of all facts and it would be as evident to you all too that who the murderer is.

DOXOLOGY

2005-10-15T23:29:00.000-07:00

n.
of course you know a 'logy' makes it a study of.
Doxology is the study of hymns,
that religious prosody (=poetry) so prevalent in some religions esp. Hinduism.

The professor was an authority in interpreting doxological literature.

The Germans have intelligently decoded numerous mathematical formulae woven into hymns written in Sanskrit of ancient period; which is a doxologist's delight.

EXCORIATE

2005-10-14T23:34:00.000-07:00

v.
to strip off the skin as a punishment; to flay someone for his unacceptable remarks or conduct.

Hollywood has so brash a people that any degree of excoriation doesn't bring moderation in behavior of its weirdoes.

It was an absolutely out of the world reaction, an excoriation where gentle constructive criticism may have yielded better results.

ACCOUTREMENT

2005-10-13T16:14:00.000-07:00

n.
This means accessories or equipment that goes with the main stuff.
A similar word can be PARAPHERNALIA.

All the military accoutrements were shiped in time, but delivered very delayed.

The five star hotel offerd all the writing paraphernalia.

UNTRAMMELED

2005-10-12T15:01:00.000-07:00

adj.
said of unobstructed progress towards something;
a pursuit without any hassles, without being

STYMIED

or without facing any

BARRICADES

.
The untrammeled style of cooking is a famous cooking show

The untrammeled vision of Thomas.

HALCYON

2005-10-11T07:38:00.000-07:00

adj.
denoting very calm and peaceful as applicable to days or an era.

the origin goes to medieval times with the sailors spotting kingfisher (also called halcyon), and thus inferring no strom was coming, since the bird would fly only when the expected times were non-stormy.

In these times of constant strife, I have just fogged memory of the halcyon days.

Turbulence outside yet halcyon within, this is what a yogi is like.

BOWDLERIZE

2005-10-10T07:43:00.000-07:00

v.
a word asking for throwing out the objectionable material from a work; we can also call EXPUNGING a synonym.

It is indeed surprisng that although we are a democracry and there is freedom of press, the police swooned in on our printing press and asked for bowdlerizing certain paragraphs on the President-elect.

The Speaker of the house asked the notary to bowdlerize the foul language used by one of the members against another from the house proceedings transcript lest decades later people worry what a bad congress work culture their seniors had.

TRAVESTY

2005-10-09T07:47:00.000-07:00

n.
it is a parodying or making fun of someone or something, a mockery of sorts that shows what ridiculous things happen in this world.

The travestying of the institution of democracy is very deplorable; such acts infringing the constitutionally granted freedom ought not be repeated.

It was travesty of sorts, with the she-chimpanzee bearing placard in her neck stating she was the monarch of England.

related sentiments are satirical attitude.

VICISSITUDES

2005-10-08T00:51:00.000-07:00

adj.
means ups and downs of life.

you know life and destiny are linked by people, and that joys and sorrows, easy periods and difficult stretches are there... so a single word to describe this all is vicissitudes of life.

Despite the vicissitudes of life, she mainatined her calm and with grit fought back every challenge life threw at her.

Off mark, but do you believe in destiny?

NOSEGAY

2005-10-07T01:08:00.000-07:00

n.
this stands for a bouquet of flowers, you can imagine something that makes the 'nose' go 'gay'! i.e. happy.

this is not to be confused with NOISOME, which implies disgusting and offensive in smell.

so a noisome nosegay would be a contradiction of sorts.

It was a more lovely gift than all the nosegays I received, her single flower to me, and that one a rose and you know what, a red one.

TROGLODYTE

2005-10-06T01:12:00.000-07:00

n.
it is another word for a cave dweller, you know what man used to be millenniums ago.

what weird lives those days must have been, with all fundmental discoveries and inventions happening all around.

another similar word is TRENCHERMAN, a person with a heavy appetite,
so you can visualise a troglodyte who is also a trencherman.

POLEMIC

2005-10-05T16:18:00.000-07:00

adj.
Fr polmique <> L palpitare, to tremble
1 of or involving dispute; controversial
2 argumentative; disputatious Also, esp. for 2, po[lem$i[cal

n.
1 an argument or controversial discussion
2 a person inclined to engage in argument or disputation
polemically

adv.
polemic
modif.
— Syn. polemical, discursive, argumentative, contestable, disputatious; see also controversial, quarrelsome 1, questionable 1, uncertain 2.See dispute, forensic

He keeps on stirring polemics.

All news channels are on a lookout for a meaty polemic so that their day's programming can be configured on it.

SERENDIPITY

2005-10-04T19:29:00.000-07:00

n.
coined (c. 1754) by Horace Walpole after The Three Princes of Serendip (i.e., Sri Lanka), a Pers fairy tale in which the princes make such discoveries
1 a seeming gift for finding something good accidentally
2 luck, or good fortune, in finding something good accidentally

serendipitous
adj.

They say, (though it may hurt man's ego), that 80% of scientific advances have occurred because of serendipity. James Watt was doing something else, when the idea of a steam engine struck him. Similarly, the Apple-Newton legend occurred just like that, not that Isaac Newton deliberately sat under a tree to find out how/why an apple falls!

But then, pressures of modern life are such that we cannot solely rely on serendipity to yield solutions. You would love to read books by Edward de bono on Thinking.

Serendipity also advocates man's subconscious mind is always at play, thus what seems accidental discovery, might be lots of background processing by our mind.

AFFLATUS

2005-10-03T06:25:00.000-07:00

AFFLATUS
n.
inspiration or powerful impulse, as of an artist or a poet;
divine inspiration

It was a heavenly moment, when afflatus descended, and Kekule could think out how the benzene structure would be akin to that of a coiled snake.

Rather than wait for afflatus, you must apply analytic thinking to solve this problem

REIFICATION

2005-10-02T12:41:00.000-07:00

reify
(verb transitive)
-[fied, -[fying = to treat (an abstraction) as substantially existing, or as a concrete material object
rei[fication
n.

This is a powerful word, to translate abstract thoughts into concrete reality.
All of us dream and imagine what not...the idea is to shape all that into tangible for-all-to-see-and-feel stuff, to reify that. Towards this we need to keep in mind the obstructions the real world puts across, but with our grit and resolve, we can get what we dreamt of.

An entrepreneur does it, a scientist does it, a painter does it, a social reformer does it: reification of ideas.