Building a Better Vocabulary

morphemes, fac and totum. Fac is from the Latin word facio, which means “to do or make,” and totum is a Latin word meaning “all. ...

Lecture 2: The Spelling-Meaning Connection diamond or you’ve been in a situation where you’ve felt obliged to put on a factitiou ...

z A base word is a word that can stand on its own. In the word XQSUR¿WDEOH, for example, the base word is SUR¿W, which means “m ...

Lecture 2: The Spelling-Meaning Connection A friend who is __ can be a good person with whom to share secrets. &KLS¶VBBBBB ...

:RUGVIRU/\LQJ6ZLQGOLQJDQG&RQQLYLQJ Lecture 3 B enjamin Disraeli, the well-known British prime minister of the 19th ce ...

/HFWXUH:RUGVIRU/\LQJ6ZLQGOLQJDQG&RQQLYLQJ swindler, who would enter a town, mount a bench in the public square to ...

ż The sophists were itinerant teachers in ancient Greece who taught, among other things, rhetoric, or the art of persuasive spe ...

/HFWXUH:RUGVIRU/\LQJ6ZLQGOLQJDQG&RQQLYLQJ think of the target words sophist and specious together, as in: “That s ...

Ersatz (adjective) Describes an inferior substitute. z The story of how ersatz entered English is a wonderful example of our la ...

/HFWXUH:RUGVIRU/\LQJ6ZLQGOLQJDQG&RQQLYLQJ z In fact, the word political is by far the most common collocate with ...

+RZZRXOG\RXGHVFULEHDQDUJXPHQWWKDWLVGHFHSWLYHO\SODXVLEOH" How would you describe an argument that is immediately recogn ...

/HFWXUH:RUGV7KDW([SUHVV$QQR\DQFHDQG'LVJXVW :RUGV7KDW([SUHVV$QQR\DQFHDQG'LVJXVW Lecture 4 A ll parents, as much as ...

z You may also see JDGÀ\ used alongside its collocate, political, as in the phrase a political JDGÀ\. The Greek philosopher Soc ...

/HFWXUH:RUGV7KDW([SUHVV$QQR\DQFHDQG'LVJXVW z $W¿UVWJODQFHquerulous might seem to be related to query, which can be ...

z 0DZNLVK is another synonym for maudlin, but there is an important distinction in meaning between these two words. As describe ...

/HFWXUH:RUGV7KDW([SUHVV$QQR\DQFHDQG'LVJXVW z Scabrous originally came from the Latin adjective scaber, meaning “rough, ...

z Fulsome is what the author, editor, and usage expert Bryan A. Garner calls a VNXQNHGWHUP, that is, a word or term that is un ...

/HFWXUH:RUGV7KDW([SUHVV$QQR\DQFHDQG'LVJXVW Left in your desk over the weekend, your pastrami sandwich might become ___ ...

Fighting Words and Peaceful Words Lecture 5 T hink back to a time when you had a disagreement with someone. Was LWMXVWDWLIIR ...

Lecture 5: Fighting Words and Peaceful Words ż Row: an upheaval, a free- for-all, a rumble. z In addition to words that descri ...