Vocabulary #19

English 2 Vocab List 19

1. assuage; verb - to calm or soothe; to satisfy. Mother hastened to the bedroom to assuage Beth's fears.

2. concise; adjective - saying much in few words; brief but full of meaning.  Ray has the envious reputation of being concise and to the point in everything he writes.

3. disperse; verb - to send off in different locations. When the tear gas is hurled, the crowd will disperse.

4. expedite; verb - to make easy and quick; to speed up.  In order to expedite matters we hired three additional workers.

5. inscrutable; adjective - so mysterious that it cannot be understood. We looked to Dora for a positive reactions, but her face was inscrutable.

6. pompous; adjective - self-important; stately; magnificent; excessively ornate.  The pompous doorman refused to admit the disheveled woman.

7. resilient; adjective - getting back strength or spirits quickly; spinging back into shape or position. Blanca was so resilient that she was back on the field two weeks after the accident.

8. sobriety; noun - seriousness, gravity, or solemnity; absence of alcoholic intoxication.  The extreme sobriety of five-year-old veribuca indicated a not very salutary sign of her development.

9. tirade; noun – a long, angry, or scolding speech; a harangue.  With the ferocity of a wild bird sinking its talons into its prey, the senator lambasted his opponent in a tirade that left no fault unexposed, no weakness unexploited.

10. voluminous; adjective – large, bulky; enough to fill volumes.  Dickens’ voluminous writings fill many library shelves.

11. atrophy; verb – to waste away.  Failure to exercise your muscles may cause them to atrophy.

12. condone; verb – to forgive or overlook.  I can commiserate with you, but I find it hard to condone the action you took.

13. disposition; noun – nature; tendency.  The melancholy foreman had disdain for any worker with a cherry disposition.

14. expunge; verb – to erase; to remove completely. Miss Porter promised to expunge the bad conduct notation from Danielle’s report card if she improved conspicuously.

15. insipid; adjective – lacking interest or spirit.  In a devastatingly incisive review, one critic disparaged the novel as insipid and boring.