baleful
/ˈbeɪɫfəɫ/
adjectiveable to bring about dangerous or destructive consequences
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Examples
1. I wouldn't mow it, until the ice could bear the machine, until it wouldn't buckle under, and the baleful loosestrife had gone to seed.
2. So essentially the Massachusetts delegates to the Confederation Congress say: 'No, we're not even going to consider this idea of revising the Articles because it's going to result in what they call "baleful aristocracies."
3. And it's a history that's organized over and against the notion of a kind of baleful dominance of the Church of Rome.
4. After it had passed away, they were ten times merrier than before, from the mere relief of Scrooge the Baleful being done with.
cardinal
/ˈkɑɹdənəɫ/, /ˈkɑɹdɪnəɫ/
adjectivepossessing the quality of being the most important or basic part of something
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Examples
1. One, 2013, a cardinal from this nation becomes pope.
2. Of course cardinal numbers are numbers like one two three four five.
3. This cardinal is on the make.
4. The mob even cut off the head of the papal legate cardinal John.
5. What's the cardinal sin?
concomitant
/ˌkɑnˈkɑmətənt/, /ˌkɑnkəˈmɪtənt/
adjectivesimultaneously occurring with something else as it is either related to it or an outcome of it
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Examples
1. A concomitant to that, business interests are stronger than they've been for decades.
2. At the same time there's been a concomitant loss of innocence.
3. And religious diversity is, of course, a concomitant of America's constitution, of our constitutional commitment to freedom of expression, freedom of religion.
4. Another aspect of the diaphragmatic descent is the concomitant increase in abdominal pressure.
5. There has, however, been no concomitant increase in the resources available to police forces.
counterproductive
/ˈkaʊntɝpɹəˌdəktɪv/
adjectiveproducing results that are contrary to what was intended
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Examples
1. What it actually is doing is counterproductive.
2. Counterclockwise is counterproductive.
3. It's counterproductive.
4. Prison is counterproductive.
5. However, this approach can also be counterproductive.
feckless
/ˈfɛkɫɪs/
adjectiveof no determination, competence, or strength
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Examples
1. Just stagnat, feckless offense producing absolutely nothing against an energetic Lakers defense, keyed by Kobe's work on the perimeter.
2. A feckless playboy suffers near-death and disfigurement after a relationship with his new girlfriend plunges his ex into homicidal obsession.
3. Mayor bill de blasio is perhaps the most FECKLESS, Ineffective Mayor in the history of this Great Country.
4. Trump was feckless during his presidency and he's now furious.
5. Trump was feckless during his presidency and he's now furious.
immaterial
/ˌɪməˈtɪɹiəɫ/
adjectivenot valuable or connected with the situation at hand
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Examples
1. Elevate the material to the immaterial.
2. Surely that interval is immaterial.
3. These remarkable images were based on immaterial reality.
4. The immaterial soul is good.
5. The soul is an immaterial substance.
inchoate
/ˌɪnˈkoʊət/
adjectiverecently started to develop, thus not complete
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Examples
1. So that was my inchoate thinking about being a public defender.
2. So we're gonna be talking about things like due process and the hearsay rule, but often these things are completely inchoate in an impeachment setting because the Senate makes its own rules.
3. But whether the House rushed the impeachment hearing and the impeachment decision is probably inchoate to the question of whether there should be additional evidence and witnesses at the Senate trial.
4. So, the whistleblower-complaint-is-hearsay argument is probably not as strong as Lindsey Graham thinks it is, and it's absolutely inchoate in the context of the actual primary evidence, like the transcript.
5. The OAAU and the Muslim Mosque Incorporated at the moment of his assassination were really inchoate.
inconsequential
/ˌɪŋˌkɑnsəˈkwɛntʃəɫ/
adjectivewithout any significance or importance
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Examples
1. What actually happened at that moment is really inconsequential.
2. So that is inconsequential.
3. However, his arrest was almost inconsequential in the overall struggle against organized crime.
4. We're all so inconsequential.
5. It's just completely inconsequential.
transitory
/ˈtɹænzəˌtɔɹi/
adjectiveonly continuing for a short stretch of time
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Examples
1. My love for my husband is transitory compared to his love for himself.
2. If you're wrong about the exclusivity of this forum, do you win or do you lose if this is, indeed, a transitory claim?
3. If this is indeed a transitory claim.
4. So is crawling just a transitory stage?
5. The ritual represents the transitory nature of material life.
Examples
1. After all, what god could fear a trifling weed?
2. 'Cause they're not trifling.
3. That he, himself, is only a trifling bit of the world and that no more importance should be attached to him than to plenty of other things that please us in the world, though we can't explain them.
4. I had been called into the warden's office and given a suit of civilian's clothing, a trifling sum of money and a great deal of advice, which I am bound to confess was of a much better quality than the clothing.
5. It's giving the keys to our kingdom over to something as trifling as the weather, or as random as a two year olds tantrums.
plastic
/ˈpɫæstɪk/
adjectivecapable of easily being molded or shaped into taking another form
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Examples
1. And petrochemicals mostly means plastic.
2. No doubt plastics are useful.
3. - Oh, boy, 73 percent of fish have ingested plastic.
4. Plastics have reached the deepest trenches.
5. Save plastic.
portentous
/pɔɹˈtɛntəs/
adjectivewarning or indicating that something significant, particularly unpleasant, is going to take place
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Examples
1. Whereas the issues before us rapidly assuming a portentous magnitude deserve formal acknowledgement, I hereby proclaim that the means which conduce to a desirable result are now in your hands.
2. We shouldn’t, on top of everything else, accord our illness too much portentous respect.
3. She's already had two children with portentous names and now she's pregnant with a third.
4. He offers them these portentous sayings, like this last little epigram about the tavern and the road thereto, and he uses this archaic language.
5. Can he really answer the portentous, cosmic aura that he invokes over and over again in the very style of this novel?
retrospective
/ˌɹɛtɹəˈspɛktɪv/
adjectivereferring or relating to a past event
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Examples
1. I've got reviews, retrospectives, explanations of video game tech.
2. That’s retrospective inevitability.
3. During these mock interviews, the standard Justice League members offer retrospective takes on their crime-fighting lives in the context of the film's present events.
4. Again, this is all retrospective.
5. Some promising ideas include retrospective models, phenomenal concepts, introspective opacity, the sense of acquaintance.
to aggrandize
/əˈɡɹænˌdaɪz/
verbto enhance something or someone's power, grandeur, importance, status, wealth, etc.
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Examples
1. He is excited, perhaps even sexually, by her sadness and far from rescuing her, uses her sorrow to aggrandize himself.
2. No explicit provision of the Constitution has been violated here, nor has Congress aggrandized itself at the expense of the executive branch.
3. You very frequently misremember things, have I blown up, did I see one or two cases and have I somehow aggrandized it.
4. You aggrandize them.
5. It's a bit self-aggrandizing, but basically when an individual investor invests in early-stage startups.
to attenuate
/əˈtɛnjuˌeɪt/
verbto take away from something's effect, value, size, power, or amount
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Examples
1. We know electromagnetic radiation attenuates with distance.
2. And the inherent organic beauty of timber and limestone, granite or marble attenuates any errors at the level of form.
3. The chain of agents does attenuate us from our ownership.
4. So egocentric bias is attenuated.
5. So they really attenuate the energy of interaction between the ions.
Examples
1. Each Eternal has watched civilizations burgeon and die from their domain of Olympia.
2. So one of them is this burgeoning field of geophysics called hydrobio-geochemistry.
3. For basketball, and for Parker's burgeoning stardom.
4. And it was just burgeoning then.
5. So to what extent is non-state authoritarianism or a culture of authoritarianism burgeoning in America, especially with foreign actors that are contributing to that.
to constrict
/kənˈstɹɪkt/
verbto restrict the things someone can or wants to do
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Examples
1. So I have to constrict the range on the inverse tan function.
2. You're constricted.
3. So all of your arteries constrict.
4. Your blood vessels will constrict.
5. When you restrict salt your blood vessels constrict.
Examples
1. Three years of chaos would culminate in impeachment.
2. Trump's dominance would culminate in front of the cameras in the Rose Garden.
3. And that process culminates in the TRIPS Agreement.
4. This odd behavior would culminate in the unexplained death of the player.
5. This whole Cash Diet thing is culminating in a trip to Mardi Gras.
to deflect
/dɪˈfɫɛkt/
verbto stop a person from doing what they initially intended
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Examples
1. Cars can deflect bullets.
2. I deflected the ball!
3. Deflect that negative gossip.
4. The plate armor deflects part of the impact energy of the war hammer blow, not all of it, though.
5. Number two is deflect.
to elevate
/ˈɛɫəˌveɪt/
verbto give a better rank, position, or condition to someone or something
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Examples
1. - Elevate the legs.
2. Elevate your feet.
3. Elevate Your Legs
4. The heat from the spice elevates your body temperature.
5. Foods with high salt content can elevate your blood pressure.
to foment
/ˈfoʊmɛnt/
verbto either worsen or cause violence, trouble, etc.
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Examples
1. The campus foments this energy to make changes to better our society.
2. The United States doesn’t foment color revolutions.
3. And they will be fomenting dissension and problems with it.
4. It's fomenting.
5. They didn't foment the businesses.
to galvanize
/ˈɡæɫvəˌnaɪz/
verbto push someone into taking action, particularly by evoking a strong emotion in them
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Examples
1. The role of the USSR in fascism’s defeat galvanized Communist parties in Latin America.
2. In the wake of the Moynihan Report, groups across the country, individuals and groups, galvanize into action.
3. It galvanized the office of the prosecutor.
4. Our boys' deaths galvanize.
5. And their recommendations have galvanized every health organization against them.
to lull
/ˈɫəɫ/
verbto help someone feel relaxed and calm or to help them fall asleep
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Examples
1. You can lull an audience, with the familiarity.
2. My childhood is in a lull.
3. - Hits this weird lull halfway through.
4. The lull is finished.
5. This lulls many babies to sleep.
Examples
1. She quickly puts some wax on the scales.
2. Paraffin wax is a common wax made from petroleum.
3. Paraffin wax is a common wax made from petroleum.
4. When the lamp is off, the wax is slightly denser than the liquid around it.
5. - I'm about to get my chest waxed.
to misattribute
/mɪsˈætɹɪbjˌuːt/
verbto incorrectly state what or who created or caused something
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Examples
1. and then they misattribute.
2. You can even misattribute phony arousal, arousal that isn't even coming from your body.
3. You can even misattribute that.
4. What she was misattributing as love--
5. Well, she was misattributing his aggressive response as love.
Examples
1. In 1947, the Burmese government obtained independence, but not unity.
2. Laabs obtained private chats between alleged members of the group.
3. Our region shall obtain a cat on quest, the cat of Cat Hall, before all.
4. -Media obtained this audio, this hot-mic audio of McCarthy today before an interview on Fox this morning.
5. Candidates must also obtain specialty certification in prosthodontics.
to oscillate
/ˈɑsəˌɫeɪt/
verbto constantly go back and forth between very different opinions, behaviors, beliefs, etc.
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Examples
1. The prints rapidly oscillate between associations of violence and beauty and precariousness and permanence and matter and spirit.
2. These waves oscillate at around 10 to 100 cycles per second.
3. Gorgonian fans oscillate with the waves.
4. When is oscillates.
5. So every single source of electromagnetic wave is oscillating charges.
to overshadow
/ˈoʊvɝˈʃædoʊ/
verbto cause a person or thing to come across as less significant
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Examples
1. The Tea family has always been overshadowed.
2. The history of the Byzantine empire is often overshadowed by the Western Roman empire.
3. Three, Bond's style never overshadows him.
4. Jessica Simpson Simpson's side hustle success has long overshadowed her relatively brief career as a pop and reality TV star.
5. However, the excitement is overshadowed by mother Kim Plath's reluctance.
to permeate
/ˈpɝmiˌeɪt/
verb(of beliefs, feelings, ideas) to expand to every part of a thing and have an effect on it
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Examples
1. Inequality permeates British society.
2. A fever of excitement permeated the college.
3. During the cooking process, coconut oil permeates the starch granules.
4. The smell of bacon just permeated the air.
5. Still, these standards permeate retail.
to proliferate
/pɹoʊˈɫɪfɝˌeɪt/
verbto cause something to rapidly increase in numbers or grow in size
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Examples
1. At the dawn of the Internet era through the late 1990s, proprietary software proliferated.
2. It proliferates the stereotypes about surface-to-air missiles.
3. And the basics of the immune system is proliferating cells.
4. One could clearly proliferate examples of this kind.
5. African narratives in the West, they proliferate.
to squelch
/ˈskwɛɫtʃ/
verbto forcefully bring the development or growth of something that is troubling to an end
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Examples
1. Any questions that were raised by family members we quickly squelched by virtue of the huge power that the Bathory-Nadasdy’s held.
2. But the media squelches him.
3. And I'm gonna tell you right now, these are some spicy nuts, but once you make peanut butter in your mouth, it squelches it.
4. You've got to squelch those feelings.
5. Aw, it doesn't squelch. -
to supersede
/ˌsupɝˈsid/
verbto take something or someone's position or place, particularly due to being more effective or up to date
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Examples
1. Today, Harryhausen's stop-motion animation technique has been superseded by more sophisticated computer-generated imaging and performance-capture animations.
2. Do you supersede the orders of the General Director on this matter?
3. Then the governor superseded that mandate, eliminated it.
4. And quickly the demand for that product superseded our ability to create videos.
5. Their ideology far supersedes ours.
deterrent
/dɪˈtɝɹənt/
nouna thing that reduces the chances of someone doing something because it makes them aware of its difficulties or consequences
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Examples
1. These deterrents were a big reason the forward pass wasn't immediately embraced.
2. Are punishments deterrent?
3. - That's a deterrent right there.
4. And so punishment serves a public deterrent function.
5. Discourage undesirable behavior with deterrents.
nadir
/ˈneɪdɝ/
nounthe moment in which a situation or life is at its lowest or worst
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Examples
1. Born at the nadir of US race relations, Parks grew up in a world where racism was a poisonous fact of life.
2. And this was at the nadir of Democrats in Georgia.
3. And then, finally, there's the circadian nadir round 3:00 to 5:00 in the morning, which is the lowest point of alertness in the 24 hour day.
4. So that's the nadir of Hobbes' argument.
5. The Eye of the Storm sadly isn't available online for purchase, but The Nadir is equally as innovative and is relatively cheap at $135.
precursor
/pɹiˈkɝsɝ/
noun*** a person or thing that comes before somebody/something similar and that leads to or influences its development
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Examples
1. The Venetian gazette was a precursor to the modern newspaper.
2. So, she had a precursor.
3. The mediaeval burgesses and the small peasant proprietors were the precursors of the modern bourgeoisie.
4. This enzyme converts more cholesterol to pregnenolone, a progesterone precursor.
5. It holds the precursor inside.
to check
/ˈtʃɛk/
verbto keep something bad under control in order to prevent deterioration or to slow down its spread or development
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Examples
1. The computer system checks the rider's body movements about 100 times every second.
2. Check your local listings.
3. Checking the facts.
4. - Check your chimple!
5. Check the other box.
to converge
/kənˈvɝdʒ/
verb(of roads, paths, lines, etc.) to lead toward a point that connects them
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Examples
1. This sequence converges to 0.
2. These two rays are converging.
3. Growth from migration and natural growth from the birth of babies converge in the urban areas.
4. 10,000 humpbacks converge for their Hawaiian luau.
5. Serious business people from all over the country converge here for this conference.
status quo
/stˈæɾəs kwˈoʊ/
nounthe situation or condition that is currently at hand
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Examples
1. You're CONTENT with the Status Quo.
2. Do not like the Status Quo.
3. Where we flip the table on the Status Quo.
4. The Status Quo remains.
5. She's the lead author of The Rights of Women and the author of Maintaining the Status Quo, Institutional Obstacles to the Child Custody Dispute.
to assuage
/əˈsweɪdʒ/
verbto help reduce the severity of an unpleasant feeling
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Examples
1. We want to assuage and conciliate them.
2. - Would you say your fear of spiders is now completely assuaged?
3. They are hoping to assuage a feeling of catastrophe they experienced in the deprived chaotic home of their birth.
4. Even a majority sale to a U.S. investor may not assuage fears during a time of intense scrutiny towards China and a presidency at stake.
5. But the military had assuaged the public spheres, claiming that it had merely been a weather balloon.
zenith
/ˈzinəθ/, /ˈzinɪθ/
nounthe highest point that a certain celestial body reaches, directly above an observer
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Examples
1. I think I've reached the zenith of my career, probably.
2. Egypt was the Arab Spring's zenith.
3. -Yeah, they make Zenith!
4. It is the zenith of technology.
5. In England, the 860s are the zenith of their destruction.
