baleful
/ˈbeɪɫfəɫ/
adjective
able to bring about dangerous or destructive consequences
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Examples

1I 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.
2So 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."
3And it's a history that's organized over and against the notion of a kind of baleful dominance of the Church of Rome.
4After 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/
adjective
possessing the quality of being the most important or basic part of something
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Examples

1One, 2013, a cardinal from this nation becomes pope.
2Of course cardinal numbers are numbers like one two three four five.
3This cardinal is on the make.
4The mob even cut off the head of the papal legate cardinal John.
5What's the cardinal sin?
concomitant
/ˌkɑnˈkɑmətənt/, /ˌkɑnkəˈmɪtənt/
adjective
simultaneously occurring with something else as it is either related to it or an outcome of it
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Examples

1A concomitant to that, business interests are stronger than they've been for decades.
2At the same time there's been a concomitant loss of innocence.
3And religious diversity is, of course, a concomitant of America's constitution, of our constitutional commitment to freedom of expression, freedom of religion.
4Another aspect of the diaphragmatic descent is the concomitant increase in abdominal pressure.
5There has, however, been no concomitant increase in the resources available to police forces.
counterproductive
/ˈkaʊntɝpɹəˌdəktɪv/
adjective
producing results that are contrary to what was intended
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Examples

1What it actually is doing is counterproductive.
2Counterclockwise is counterproductive.
3It's counterproductive.
4Prison is counterproductive.
5However, this approach can also be counterproductive.
feckless
/ˈfɛkɫɪs/
adjective
of no determination, competence, or strength
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Examples

1Just stagnat, feckless offense producing absolutely nothing against an energetic Lakers defense, keyed by Kobe's work on the perimeter.
2A feckless playboy suffers near-death and disfigurement after a relationship with his new girlfriend plunges his ex into homicidal obsession.
3Mayor bill de blasio is perhaps the most FECKLESS, Ineffective Mayor in the history of this Great Country.
4Trump was feckless during his presidency and he's now furious.
5Trump was feckless during his presidency and he's now furious.
immaterial
/ˌɪməˈtɪɹiəɫ/
adjective
not valuable or connected with the situation at hand
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Examples

1Elevate the material to the immaterial.
2Surely that interval is immaterial.
3These remarkable images were based on immaterial reality.
4The immaterial soul is good.
5The soul is an immaterial substance.
inchoate
/ˌɪnˈkoʊət/
adjective
recently started to develop, thus not complete
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Examples

1So that was my inchoate thinking about being a public defender.
2So 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.
3But 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.
4So, 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.
5The OAAU and the Muslim Mosque Incorporated at the moment of his assassination were really inchoate.
inconsequential
/ˌɪŋˌkɑnsəˈkwɛntʃəɫ/
adjective
without any significance or importance
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Examples

1What actually happened at that moment is really inconsequential.
2So that is inconsequential.
3However, his arrest was almost inconsequential in the overall struggle against organized crime.
4We're all so inconsequential.
5It's just completely inconsequential.
transitory
/ˈtɹænzəˌtɔɹi/
adjective
only continuing for a short stretch of time
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Examples

1My love for my husband is transitory compared to his love for himself.
2If you're wrong about the exclusivity of this forum, do you win or do you lose if this is, indeed, a transitory claim?
3If this is indeed a transitory claim.
4So is crawling just a transitory stage?
5The ritual represents the transitory nature of material life.
trifling
/ˈtɹaɪfɫɪŋ/
adjective
without any value or importance
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Examples

1After all, what god could fear a trifling weed?
2'Cause they're not trifling.
3That 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.
4I 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.
5It'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/
adjective
capable of easily being molded or shaped into taking another form
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Examples

1And petrochemicals mostly means plastic.
2No doubt plastics are useful.
3- Oh, boy, 73 percent of fish have ingested plastic.
4Plastics have reached the deepest trenches.
5Save plastic.
portentous
/pɔɹˈtɛntəs/
adjective
warning or indicating that something significant, particularly unpleasant, is going to take place
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Examples

1Whereas 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.
2We shouldn’t, on top of everything else, accord our illness too much portentous respect.
3She's already had two children with portentous names and now she's pregnant with a third.
4He offers them these portentous sayings, like this last little epigram about the tavern and the road thereto, and he uses this archaic language.
5Can he really answer the portentous, cosmic aura that he invokes over and over again in the very style of this novel?
retrospective
/ˌɹɛtɹəˈspɛktɪv/
adjective
referring or relating to a past event
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Examples

1I've got reviews, retrospectives, explanations of video game tech.
2That’s retrospective inevitability.
3During 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.
4Again, this is all retrospective.
5Some promising ideas include retrospective models, phenomenal concepts, introspective opacity, the sense of acquaintance.
to aggrandize
/əˈɡɹænˌdaɪz/
verb
to enhance something or someone's power, grandeur, importance, status, wealth, etc.
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Examples

1He is excited, perhaps even sexually, by her sadness and far from rescuing her, uses her sorrow to aggrandize himself.
2No explicit provision of the Constitution has been violated here, nor has Congress aggrandized itself at the expense of the executive branch.
3You very frequently misremember things, have I blown up, did I see one or two cases and have I somehow aggrandized it.
4You aggrandize them.
5It's a bit self-aggrandizing, but basically when an individual investor invests in early-stage startups.
to appease
/əˈpiz/
verb
to end or lessen a person's anger by giving into their demands
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Examples

1Or just to appease?
2But the young king was not appeased.
3Appease the gnome.
4Appease the gnome by giving him a toy.
5This ought to appease Granny!
to attenuate
/əˈtɛnjuˌeɪt/
verb
to take away from something's effect, value, size, power, or amount
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Examples

1We know electromagnetic radiation attenuates with distance.
2And the inherent organic beauty of timber and limestone, granite or marble attenuates any errors at the level of form.
3The chain of agents does attenuate us from our ownership.
4So egocentric bias is attenuated.
5So they really attenuate the energy of interaction between the ions.
to burgeon
/ˈbɝdʒən/
verb
to have a rapid development or growth
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Examples

1Each Eternal has watched civilizations burgeon and die from their domain of Olympia.
2So one of them is this burgeoning field of geophysics called hydrobio-geochemistry.
3For basketball, and for Parker's burgeoning stardom.
4And it was just burgeoning then.
5So 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/
verb
to restrict the things someone can or wants to do
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Examples

1So I have to constrict the range on the inverse tan function.
2You're constricted.
3So all of your arteries constrict.
4Your blood vessels will constrict.
5When you restrict salt your blood vessels constrict.
to culminate
/ˈkəɫmɪˌneɪt/
verb
to end by coming to a climactic point
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Examples

1Three years of chaos would culminate in impeachment.
2Trump's dominance would culminate in front of the cameras in the Rose Garden.
3And that process culminates in the TRIPS Agreement.
4This odd behavior would culminate in the unexplained death of the player.
5This whole Cash Diet thing is culminating in a trip to Mardi Gras.
to deflect
/dɪˈfɫɛkt/
verb
to stop a person from doing what they initially intended
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Examples

1Cars can deflect bullets.
2I deflected the ball!
3Deflect that negative gossip.
4The plate armor deflects part of the impact energy of the war hammer blow, not all of it, though.
5Number two is deflect.
to elevate
/ˈɛɫəˌveɪt/
verb
to give a better rank, position, or condition to someone or something
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Examples

1- Elevate the legs.
2Elevate your feet.
3Elevate Your Legs
4The heat from the spice elevates your body temperature.
5Foods with high salt content can elevate your blood pressure.
to foment
/ˈfoʊmɛnt/
verb
to either worsen or cause violence, trouble, etc.
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Examples

1The campus foments this energy to make changes to better our society.
2The United States doesn’t foment color revolutions.
3And they will be fomenting dissension and problems with it.
4It's fomenting.
5They didn't foment the businesses.
to galvanize
/ˈɡæɫvəˌnaɪz/
verb
to push someone into taking action, particularly by evoking a strong emotion in them
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Examples

1The role of the USSR in fascism’s defeat galvanized Communist parties in Latin America.
2In the wake of the Moynihan Report, groups across the country, individuals and groups, galvanize into action.
3It galvanized the office of the prosecutor.
4Our boys' deaths galvanize.
5And their recommendations have galvanized every health organization against them.
to lull
/ˈɫəɫ/
verb
to help someone feel relaxed and calm or to help them fall asleep
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Examples

1You can lull an audience, with the familiarity.
2My childhood is in a lull.
3- Hits this weird lull halfway through.
4The lull is finished.
5This lulls many babies to sleep.
to wax
/ˈwæks/
verb
to grow in strength, size, intensity, etc.
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Examples

1She quickly puts some wax on the scales.
2Paraffin wax is a common wax made from petroleum.
3Paraffin wax is a common wax made from petroleum.
4When 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/
verb
to incorrectly state what or who created or caused something
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Examples

1and then they misattribute.
2You can even misattribute phony arousal, arousal that isn't even coming from your body.
3You can even misattribute that.
4What she was misattributing as love--
5Well, she was misattributing his aggressive response as love.
to obtain
/əbˈteɪn/
verb
to be widely common, applied, or recognized
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Examples

1In 1947, the Burmese government obtained independence, but not unity.
2Laabs obtained private chats between alleged members of the group.
3Our 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.
5Candidates must also obtain specialty certification in prosthodontics.
to oscillate
/ˈɑsəˌɫeɪt/
verb
to constantly go back and forth between very different opinions, behaviors, beliefs, etc.
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Examples

1The prints rapidly oscillate between associations of violence and beauty and precariousness and permanence and matter and spirit.
2These waves oscillate at around 10 to 100 cycles per second.
3Gorgonian fans oscillate with the waves.
4When is oscillates.
5So every single source of electromagnetic wave is oscillating charges.
to overshadow
/ˈoʊvɝˈʃædoʊ/
verb
to cause a person or thing to come across as less significant
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Examples

1The Tea family has always been overshadowed.
2The history of the Byzantine empire is often overshadowed by the Western Roman empire.
3Three, Bond's style never overshadows him.
4Jessica Simpson Simpson's side hustle success has long overshadowed her relatively brief career as a pop and reality TV star.
5However, 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

1Inequality permeates British society.
2A fever of excitement permeated the college.
3During the cooking process, coconut oil permeates the starch granules.
4The smell of bacon just permeated the air.
5Still, these standards permeate retail.
to proliferate
/pɹoʊˈɫɪfɝˌeɪt/
verb
to cause something to rapidly increase in numbers or grow in size
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Examples

1At the dawn of the Internet era through the late 1990s, proprietary software proliferated.
2It proliferates the stereotypes about surface-to-air missiles.
3And the basics of the immune system is proliferating cells.
4One could clearly proliferate examples of this kind.
5African narratives in the West, they proliferate.
to squelch
/ˈskwɛɫtʃ/
verb
to forcefully bring the development or growth of something that is troubling to an end
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Examples

1Any questions that were raised by family members we quickly squelched by virtue of the huge power that the Bathory-Nadasdy’s held.
2But the media squelches him.
3And I'm gonna tell you right now, these are some spicy nuts, but once you make peanut butter in your mouth, it squelches it.
4You've got to squelch those feelings.
5Aw, it doesn't squelch. -
to supersede
/ˌsupɝˈsid/
verb
to take something or someone's position or place, particularly due to being more effective or up to date
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Examples

1Today, Harryhausen's stop-motion animation technique has been superseded by more sophisticated computer-generated imaging and performance-capture animations.
2Do you supersede the orders of the General Director on this matter?
3Then the governor superseded that mandate, eliminated it.
4And quickly the demand for that product superseded our ability to create videos.
5Their ideology far supersedes ours.
deterrent
/dɪˈtɝɹənt/
noun
a thing that reduces the chances of someone doing something because it makes them aware of its difficulties or consequences
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Examples

1These deterrents were a big reason the forward pass wasn't immediately embraced.
2Are punishments deterrent?
3- That's a deterrent right there.
4And so punishment serves a public deterrent function.
5Discourage undesirable behavior with deterrents.
nadir
/ˈneɪdɝ/
noun
the moment in which a situation or life is at its lowest or worst
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Examples

1Born at the nadir of US race relations, Parks grew up in a world where racism was a poisonous fact of life.
2And this was at the nadir of Democrats in Georgia.
3And 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.
4So that's the nadir of Hobbes' argument.
5The 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

1The Venetian gazette was a precursor to the modern newspaper.
2So, she had a precursor.
3The mediaeval burgesses and the small peasant proprietors were the precursors of the modern bourgeoisie.
4This enzyme converts more cholesterol to pregnenolone, a progesterone precursor.
5It holds the precursor inside.
to check
/ˈtʃɛk/
verb
to keep something bad under control in order to prevent deterioration or to slow down its spread or development
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Examples

1The computer system checks the rider's body movements about 100 times every second.
2Check your local listings.
3Checking the facts.
4- Check your chimple!
5Check 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

1This sequence converges to 0.
2These two rays are converging.
3Growth from migration and natural growth from the birth of babies converge in the urban areas.
410,000 humpbacks converge for their Hawaiian luau.
5Serious business people from all over the country converge here for this conference.
status quo
/stˈæɾəs kwˈoʊ/
noun
the situation or condition that is currently at hand
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Examples

1You're CONTENT with the Status Quo.
2Do not like the Status Quo.
3Where we flip the table on the Status Quo.
4The Status Quo remains.
5She'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/
verb
to help reduce the severity of an unpleasant feeling
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Examples

1We want to assuage and conciliate them.
2- Would you say your fear of spiders is now completely assuaged?
3They are hoping to assuage a feeling of catastrophe they experienced in the deprived chaotic home of their birth.
4Even 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.
5But the military had assuaged the public spheres, claiming that it had merely been a weather balloon.
zenith
/ˈzinəθ/, /ˈzinɪθ/
noun
the highest point that a certain celestial body reaches, directly above an observer
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Examples

1I think I've reached the zenith of my career, probably.
2Egypt was the Arab Spring's zenith.
3-Yeah, they make Zenith!
4It is the zenith of technology.
5In England, the 860s are the zenith of their destruction.

Great!

You've reviewed all the words in this lesson!