| A | B |
|---|
| abashed | adj. embarrassed (She was **** when the teacher caught her plagiarizing the paper. |
| arbiter | n. a person who is able to judge or decide some issue (Sometimes, an **** is needed when a student disagrees with a teacher's grade.) |
| benison | n. a blessing (i.e., a minister's blessing) [When he was caught in the avalance, he sought the **** of God (or Allah).] |
| bluff (3 definitions) | 1) v. to fool someone; 2) adj. a frank manner; blunt, but not unkind way; 3) n. a steep cliff (His **** manner made many people decline invitations to his home on the ****. He could not even **** people into attending parties there!) |
| canker (2 definitions) | 1) n. a spreading sore (His mother had a **** sore on her lip.); 2) n. an evil influence (Drug dealers are a **** in our society.) |
| complaisant | adj. obliging; willing to please (The waitress was a very **** person, and she earned a big tip.) |
| crass | adj. coarsely stupid; without refinement or sensitivity (It's **** of people to yell out remarks during graduation ceremonies.) |
| defame | v. to attack the reputation of (i.e., of a person; of a company) (Do not **** the Headmaster, as that will make him less effective in his job.) |
| ennui | n. boredom (The lecturer could not hold the audience's attention; they were filled with ****.) |
| funereal | adj. gloomy; mournful; sorrowful (After 9-11, a funereal feeling spread across the country, and it was coupled with a rise in patriotism.) |
| ideology | n. a set of beliefs (Martin Luther King's **** lives on today, despite his death so many years ago.) |
| inferno | n. intense heat (The fire at my neighbor's was a blazing **** before the fire department arrived.) |
| Inferno | hell (Books have been written about ****, including a poem by John Milton.) |
| mercenary (2 definitions) | 1) n. a hired soldier (During the Revolution, Britain had ****ies fighting for them.); 2) adj. concerned only with making money (The store owners at the beach had become very **** as the number of tourists kept increasing every year.) |
| parsimonious | adj. miserly; stingy; "tight" with money (He is so **** that he won't consider an allowance for his wife!) |
| propaganda | n. the deliberate process of spreading ideas that will help one's own cause or injust an enemy's cause (The United States dropped **** leaflets over Vietnam during that war.) |
| retrogress | v. to worsen; to go backwards (When he stopped attending tutorials, his grades began to ****.) |
| surfeited | v. given too much of something; supplied to excess (so it reaches overindulgence) (Their early afternoon T.V. options were **** with soap opera offerings.) |
| tureen | a dish (She served the first course in a beautiful imported soup ****.) |
