Building a Better Vocabulary

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Lecture 30

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his lecture focuses on words associated with the large and the small,
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answer the following large and small questions: (1) Is ginormous
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really big things be described as capacious or commodious, and what’s the
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for big and small given to English by the classic satire written by Jonathan
Swift, Gulliver’s Travels"

Exiguous (adjective)

Excessively scanty, inadequate, and meager.

z Use exiguous to emphasize a smallness that is undesirable or is
less than the normal amount or size of something, as in: “Starting
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a fortune in the stock market, becoming known as a wizard of
Wall Street.” Synonyms for exiguous include inadequate, hand-to-
mouth, scant, scarce, VNLPS\, spare, and sparse.

z We often see exiguous used with one of several collocates:
resources, supplies, ¿QDQFHV, or evidence.

z To remember exiguous, connect it to exact, a related word that comes
from the same Latin origin. In your vocabulary notebook, highlight
the ex- and write down that when you have less than the exact amount
of something you need, you have an exiguous amount.

Diminuendo (noun)

A decrease in loudness or intensity.
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