Words in Use-5

Which words should I study?
Wordlists feature a number of words, which ones are in use?
What kind of words appear in usage?

Troubled with these questions? Do not know which words you should learn? Well, I simplify that problem for you: the words in use are featured on this page. These are words that are culled from daily newspapers columns, editorials, online magazines etc. Featuring about 50 words a week, this post gives you an in-depth look at the words floating around us. You would begin to see that in some time, words start making a repeat appearance.

How to use this list?
Well, the first step is going through this list and identifying the words you do know. For this culled list, explore exact dictionary definitions, word-roots and mnemonics. These tools would help you learn these words and make sure you use these words on a regular basis, else they would soon disappear from the shelves of your memory.

List for this week
[list style=”list5″ color=”black”]

Affront: a personal offensive act
Aficionados: an ardent devotee
Agglomeration: cluster of varied parts
Apostates: A disloyal person who betrays or deserts his cause or religion or political party or friend etc.
Arbitrary: Based on or subject to individual discretion or preference or sometimes impulse or caprice
Articulate: Speak, pronounce, or utter in a certain way
Avenue: a wide street
Battered: Damaged by blows or hard usage
Brevity: the quality of expressing much in a few words
Charade: blatant deception
Cheekily: insolent
Clientele: followers
Collateral: Serving to support or corroborate
Concede: to acknowledge as true
Connived: to cooperate secretly
Contemporary: Characteristic of the present
Credence: belief as to the truth of something
Cryptic: puzzling
Curdled: Transformed from a liquid into a soft semisolid or solid mass
Demographic: A statistic characterizing human populations (or segments of human populations broken down by age or sex or income etc.)
Detriment: loss or damage
Eccentric: not situated in the center
Envisage: to visualize
Expedited: to speed up the process of something
Hagiography: A biography that idealizes or idolizes the person (especially a person who is a saint)
Ideology: body of doctrine or belief
Imminent: Close in time; about to occur
Impassioned: Characterized by intense emotion
Incestuous: guilty of incest
Indigenous: native
Inevitable: Incapable of being avoided or prevented
Intransigence: refusing to compromise
Litigation: a lawsuit
Logjam: an immovable pile of logs
Logjam: Any stoppage attributable to unusual activity
Magnanimous: Noble and generous in spirit
Mandate: a command on a public issue
Mandated: Assign under a mandate
Massacred: Kill a large number of people indiscriminately
Melancholic: gloomy
Mogul: A very wealthy or powerful businessman
Nepotism: Favoritism shown to relatives or close friends by those in power (as by giving them jobs)
Paradigm: A standard or typical example
Pariah: A person who is rejected (from society or home)
Pillage: The act of stealing valuable things from a place
Pious: showing respect, devotion towards God
Pitched: to fix in a definite place or location
Plausible: having the appearance of truth
Pragmatism: The attribute of accepting the facts of life and favoring practicality and literal truth
Ravage: A destructive action
Reminiscent: Serving to bring to mind
Revive: to activate
Savvy: to understand
Scrutiny: investigation
Serenaded: Sing and play for somebody
Shoved: to move along by force
Slain: Kill intentionally and with premeditation
Spiels: a high flown speech
Swathe: to wrap
Tumultuous: highly agitated
Unrepentant: Stubbornly persistent in wrongdoing
Vanity: excessive pride in one’s appearance