Doctor Dictionary - Word Of The Day

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Hi Friends,

Building a strong vocab is very necessary for cracking all the MBA exams. Hence, i shall post one word daily here from Doctor Dictionary.

Hope you would find it useful.
 

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fulminate \FUL-muh-nayt\, intransitive verb:

1. To issue or utter verbal attacks or censures authoritatively or menacingly.
2. To explode; to detonate.
3. To utter or send out with denunciations or censures.
4. To cause to explode.
This mass culture--global, immediate, accessible, buoyant, with shared heroes, models, and goals--is immensely intoxicating. Ayatollahs fulminate against it; dictators censor it; mandarins try to slam the door on it.
-- Lawrence M. Friedman, The Horizontal Society
He lets others fulminate on his behalf while he maintains his gentlemanly demeanor.
-- Richard Sandomir, "Cablevision's Dolan Makes the Deal Only When He's Ready", New York Times, December 6, 1998​
Everyone wants to be young, beautiful and rich. I don't say that scornfully: there are worse things to want to be. But that's why, for example, people don't begrudge Kate Moss how much she earns for a day's work but will fulminate over the take-home pay of some fat, old Water Board exec.
-- Nigella Lawson, "Never mind the size, just feel the price", The Observer, September 3, 2000​
Fulminate comes from Latin fulminare, "to strike with lightning," from fulmen, fulmin-, "a thunderbolt."
 

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proselytize \PROS-uh-luh-tyz\, intransitive verb:


1. To induce someone to convert to one's religious faith.
2. To induce someone to join one's institution, cause, or political party.
3. To convert to some religion, system, opinion, or the like.
Jesuit missionaries appeared; the Japanese allowed them to proselytize.
-- Walter LaFeber, The Clash: A History of U.S.-Japan Relations
It has given the world an example of what hard work can do, but in general Japan prefers to focus on its own affairs and let other countries proselytize for democracy, capitalism, communism, or whatever else they believe in.
-- James Fallows, "Containing Japan", The Atlantic, May 1989​
He has a message and he wants to proselytize the whole world.
-- William Schneider, "The Republicans in '88", The Atlantic, July 1987​
Proselytize is formed from proselyte, "a new convert, especially a convert to some religion or religious sect, or to some particular opinion, system, or party," from Greek proselutos, "a proselyte, a newcomer," from pros, "toward" + elutos, from eluthon, "I came."
 

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denouement \day-noo-MAWN\, noun:
1. The final resolution of the main complication of a literary or dramatic work.
2. The outcome of a complex sequence of events.
And perhaps this helps to explain the frequency of the violent denouement in contemporary novels: in the country that embraced the slogan "Today is the first day of the rest of your life," how do you call it quits on a character who is still breathing?
-- Brad Leithauser, "You Haven't Heard the Last of This", New York Times, August 30, 1998​
Of course, the crusaders were losers in the short run, but Europe's storytellers have traditionally awarded them the righteous victory and not dwelt on the embarrassing denouement.
-- Todd Gitlin, The Twilight of Common Dreams
Though still only a prospect on the horizon, this, I think, could well be the next revolution. What a denouement if it is!
-- Julian Barbour, The End of Time
Denouement is from French, from Old French denoer, "to untie," from Latin de- + nodare, "to tie in a knot," from nodus, "a knot."
 

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celerity \suh-LAIR-uh-tee\, noun:
Rapidity of motion or action; quickness; swiftness.
Though not in the best of physical form, he was capable of moving with celerity.
-- Malachy McCourt, A Monk Swimming: A Memoir
Furthermore, as is well known, computer technology grows obsolete with amazing celerity.
-- Alan S. Blinder and Richard E. Quandt, "The Computer and the Economy", The Atlantic, December 1997​
The lightning celerity of his thought processes took you on a kind of helter-skelter ride of surreal non-sequiturs, sudden accesses of emotion and ribald asides, made all the more bizarre for being uttered in those honeyed tones by the impeccably elegant gent before you.
-- "A life full of frolics", The Guardian, May 19, 2001​
Celerity is from Latin celeritas, from celer, "swift." It is related to accelerate.
 

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sapid \SAP-id\, adjective:


1. Having taste or flavor, especially having a strong pleasant flavor.
2. Agreeable to the mind; to one's liking.
Chemistry can concentrate the sapid and odorous elements of the peach and the bitter almond into a transparent fluid
-- David William Cheever, "Tobacco", The Atlantic, August 1860​
I've raved about the elegant and earthy lobster-and-truffle sausage, the sapid sea bass with coarse salt poached in lobster oil, and the indescribably complex and delectable ballottine of lamb stuffed with ground veal, sweet-breads and truffles.
-- James Villas, "Why Taillevent thrives", Town & Country, March 1, 1998​
Sapid comes from Latin sapidus, "savory," from sapere, "to taste."
 

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moil \MOYL\, intransitive verb:


1. To work with painful effort; to labor; to toil; to drudge.
2. To churn or swirl about continuously.
3. Toil; hard work; drudgery.
4. Confusion; turmoil.
Why should he toil and moil, and be at so much trouble to pick himself up out the mud, when, in a little while hence, the strong arm of his Uncle will raise and support him?
-- Nathaniel Hawthorne, The Scarlet Letter
He saw himself in the sleepless moil of early parenthood, and felt a plunging anxiety.
-- Alan Hollinghurst, The Spell
Moil comes from Middle English moillen, "to soak, to wet," hence "to soil, to soil one's hands, to work very hard," from Old French moillier, "to soften, especially by making wet," ultimately from Latin mollis, "soft."
 

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pastiche \pas-TEESH; pahs-\, noun:
1. A work of art that imitates the style of some previous work.
2. A musical, literary, or artistic composition consisting of selections from various works.
3. A hodgepodge; an incongruous combination of different styles and ingredients.
The figure was a pastiche, assembled from fragments: a Greek head, a Roman imperial cuirass, and halo, limbs, weapons, and crocodile fashioned by a Venetian craftsman.
-- Patricia Fortini Brown, Venice and Antiquity
Whoever said the unexamined life is not worth living apparently never intended to go into book publishing, where there is almost no research and where much of the conventional wisdom is a pastiche of folklore, myth and wishful thinking.
-- Edwin McDowell, "Publishing: And They All Said It Wouldn't Sell", New York Times, February 6, 1989​
Rather, the aim is to create a composite reflection of how New York got this way, how its bridges and subways were built, how its power structure and political culture evolved, how its pastiche of unique neighborhoods developed, collapsed and rose again, and how some of its citizens survive on the bottom rung and others succeed or fail on the top.
-- Sam Roberts, "The 10 Best Books About New York", New York Times, February 5, 1995​
Pastiche comes from Italian pasticcio, "a paste," hence "a hodgepodge, literary or musical," ultimately from Latin pasta, "paste."
 

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pantheon \PAN-thee-on; -uhn\, noun:


1. A temple dedicated to all the gods; especially (capitalized), the building so called at Rome.
2. The collective gods of a people; as, a goddess of the Greek pantheon.
3. A public building commemorating and dedicated to the famous dead of a nation.
4. A group of highly esteemed persons.
Well into the fourteenth century the Grand Duke of Lithuania, Prince Gediminas, still put his faith in Perkunas, the god of thunder and forests, who ruled over the many other gods and goddesses in the Lithuanian pantheon.
-- Yaffa Eliach, There Once Was a World
What [Galileo] discovered . . . would soon do nothing less than revolutionize astronomy, change forever the way the inhabitants of this planet conceived the universe beyond it, and . . . land him in the pantheon of immortal scientists.
-- William E. Burrows, This New Ocean
Argentina had spawned its own pantheon of civic-minded historical heroes, from General Jose de San Martin, the country's liberator in the independence struggle with Spain, to Domingo Sarmiento, the crusading journalist, educator, and president who had finally wrested Argentina into the modern age as a unified republic.
-- Jon Lee Anderson, Che Guevara: A Revolutionary Life
Pantheon comes from Greek pantheion, "temple of all the gods," from pan-, "all" + theos, "god."
 

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termagant \TUR-muh-guhnt\, noun:


1. A scolding, nagging, bad-tempered woman; a shrew.
2. Overbearing; shrewish; scolding.
The termagant who had dragged him out on long, boring walks, who had tried in vain to censor his reading, who had labelled him an impious liar and criminal, was dead at last, and the boy, hearing a servant say 'she has passed away', sank to his knees on the kitchen floor to thank God for so great a deliverance.
-- Jonathan Keates, Stendhal
Family legend recounts that Sister Garrison once quite literally brokeup her husband's drinking party by smashing the offending bottles, and this is sometimes taken to mean that Abijah Garrison was driven to desert his family by his termagant of a wife.
-- Henry Mayer, All on Fire
The music critic Maclintick, with his termagant wife and his book which will never be finished, who in a moment of drunken despair throws his cherished text down the lavatory and then gasses himself.
-- David McKie, "Secret harmonies", The Guardian, March 30, 2000​
Termagant comes from Middle English Termagaunt, alteration of Tervagant, from Old French. Termagant was an imaginary Muslim deity represented in medieval morality plays as extremely violent and turbulent. By the sixteenth century, termagant was used for a boisterous, brawling, turbulent person of either sex, but eventually it came to refer only to women.
 

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credulous \KREJ-uh-lus\, adjective:


1. Ready or inclined to believe on slight or uncertain evidence.
2. Based on or proceeding from a disposition to believe too readily.
Credulous monarchs were easy game for the numerous charlatans and tricksters who toured the courts of Europe trying to dupe them into parting with real gold by means of little more than a promise that they would repay such investments thousandfold.
-- Janet Gleeson, The Arcanum
To her critics, she was a madam and con artist who charged credulous clients . . . small fortunes to cast spells and bring about the deaths of rivals.
-- Laurence Bergreen, Louis Armstrong: An Extravagant Life
And unless our educational system focuses more on teaching students how to think than on what to think, our populace will become increasingly credulous.
-- Theodore Schick Jr., "The End of Science?", Skeptical Inquirer, March/April 1997​
Credulous derives from Latin credulus, "believing easily," from credere, "to believe."
 

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indigence \IN-dih-juhn(t)s\, noun:


A state of extreme poverty or destitution.
He is ever a handful of pocket change away from utter indigence.
-- Sven Birkerts, "The Socratic Method", New York Times, November 9, 1997​
The lean and hungry, unkempt, and addled look I'd cultivated throughout my twenties was beginning to read like desperation and indigence as I stepped into my mid-thirties.
-- Stephen McCauley, The Man of the House
Indigence comes from Latin indigentia, "neediness," from indigens, indigent- present participle of indigere to be in need of, from Latin indu (archaic form of in-), "in" + egere "to be needy, to need, to lack." The adjective form is indigent.
 

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ukase \yoo-KAYS; -KAYZ; YOO-kays; -kayz\, noun:


1. In imperial Russia, a published proclamation or order having the force of law.
2. Any order or decree issued by an authority; an edict.
I took a playwriting course from the noted Prof. A. M. Drummond, a huge man on crutches who right off the bat delivered a ukase never to begin a play with the telephone ringing.
-- Arthur Laurents, Original Story By
This new ukase, however, ignited bureaucratic warfare and spawned rival and conflicting rules and concepts, frittering away time and effort.
-- Richard B. Frank, Downfall: The End of the Imperial Japanese Empire
Ukase derives from Russian ukaz, "decree," from Old Church Slavonic ukazu, "a showing, proof," from u-, "at, to" + kazati, "to point out, to show."
 

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supplant \suh-PLANT\, transitive verb:


1. To take the place of (another), especially through intrigue or underhanded tactics; as, a rival supplants another.
2. To take the place of and serve as a substitute for.
He's your rival. The one you'll have to supplant.
-- Peter Brooks, World Elsewhere
In traditional accounts, early Greek times appear as a succession of migrations; one tribe drives out and supplants another until driven out in turn by a third, and this process may have lasted many hundreds of years.
-- Jacob Burckhardt, The Greeks and Greek Civilization
Economic opportunities for a saddler and harness maker were beginning to decline . . . as railroads supplanted the stagecoach trade.
-- Dennis J. Hutchinson, The Man Who Once Was Whizzer White
Supplant derives from Latin supplantare, "to put one's foot under another, to throw down a person by tripping up his heels," from sub-, "under" + plantare, "to stamp the ground with the foot," from planta, "the sole of the foot."
 

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quagmire \KWAG-myr; KWOG-\, noun:


1. Soft, wet, miry land that shakes or yields under the feet.
2. A difficult or precarious position or situation; a predicament.
. . .drenching rains that reduced all the roads to quagmires.
-- "The Career of a Soldier", New York Times, July 24, 1885​
Slowly, inevitably, over the course of several months, Don Jaime's pupil draws him into a quagmire of plot and counterplot.
-- Walter Satterthwait, "Crossing Swords", New York Times, June 6, 1999​
While the Nobel Prize in Literature, which he was awarded in 1957, should have signaled the pinnacle of Camus's career, it came at a time when he was struggling in the deepening quagmire of the Algerian war.
-- Isabelle de Courtivron, "Rebel Without a Cause", New York Times, December 14, 1997​
Quagmire is from quag, a dialectical variant of quake (from Old English cwacian) + mire, from Old Norse myrr, "a swamp."
 

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prepotency \pree-POTE-n-see\, noun:


1. The quality or condition of having superior power, influence, or force; predominance.
2. (Biology) The capacity, on the part of one of the parents, as compared with the other, to transmit more than his or her own share of characteristics to their offspring.
The awesome prepotency of this smokescape is no illusion, for this is an epicentre of power, oil capital of the Western world and the most industrialised corner of the United States.
-- "Dark heart of the American dream", The Observer, June 16, 2002​
Though Sir Tristram lost his record, his prepotency was reinforced at the Doomben races as three of the big race winners carry his blood.
-- "Sir Tristram loses record", Evening Post (Wellington, New Zealand), May 29, 2001​
These several remarks are apparently applicable to animals; but the subject is here much complicated, partly owing to the existence of secondary sexual characters; but more especially owing to prepotency in transmitting likeness running more strongly in one sex than in the other, both when one species is crossed with another, and when one variety is crossed with another variety.
-- Charles Darwin, The Origin of Species
Prepotency is from Latin praepotentia, from prae-, "before" + potentia, "power," from potens, "able, powerful," present participle of posse, "to be able."
 

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circumspect \SUR-kuhm-spekt\, adjective:


Marked by attention to all circumstances and probable consequences; cautious; prudent.
When the evidence is plentiful and the theories well confirmed, we can be more confident of the historical scenarios we propose; when theories are weak or evidence scarce, we ought to be more circumspect.
-- Robert J. Richards, "You Can't Get There From Here", New York Times, February 27, 2000​
One had the feeling, indeed, that he rather enjoyed being mysterious, for although he regularly granted interviews to scholars and journalists after leaving the State Department, he was always circumspect and often cryptic in what he said.
-- John Lewis Gaddis, "Dean Rusk's Personal Truce", New York Times, July 1, 1990​
Sadie is the gracious one, as if being the elder requires that she be circumspect and observe the manners.
-- Vincent Canby, "A Visit With Two Indomitable Sisters,", New York Times, April 7, 1995​
Circumspect comes from the past participle of Latin circumspicere, "to look around, to consider carefully," from circum-, "around" + specere, "to look." The noun form is circumspection.
 

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gregarious \grih-GAIR-ee-us\, adjective:


1. Tending to form a group with others of the same kind.
2. Seeking and enjoying the company of others.
True locusts, which are actually certain kinds of grasshoppers, are usually solitary and rather sluggish, but when they are crowded they enter a gregarious and highly active migratory phase.
-- Gilbert Waldbauer, Millions of Monarchs, Bunches of Beetles
In the newly discovered gene, the change of a single unit of DNA converts the worm from a solitary forager into a gregarious diner.
-- "Can Social Behavior of Man Be Glimpsed in a Lowly Worm?", New York Times, September 7, 1998​
My efforts to cultivate an identity as a strong silent type have consistently been undermined by my gregarious nature and my delight in conversation.
-- Marty Jezer, Stuttering: A Life Bound Up in Words
Although social and gregarious when he wants to be, Phil learned, during our early years together, not only to savor but also to require long periods of hermitlike solitude.
-- Frances K. Conley, Walking Out on the Boys
Gregarious is from Latin gregarius, "belonging to a herd or flock," from grex, greg-, "herd, flock."
 

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arriviste \a-ree-VEEST\, noun:


A person who has recently attained success, wealth, or high status but not general acceptance or respect; an upstart.
Sherman, in his $1,800 imported suit and British hand-lasted shoes is . . . an arriviste and a poseur.
-- Frank Conroy, "Urban Rats in Fashion's Maze", New York Times, November 1, 1987​
He excavates enough dirt that, midway through the book, the reader loses sympathy with Bernays, who comes across as an insufferable egotist and insecure, name-dropping arriviste.
-- Ron Chernow, "First Among Flacks", New York Times, August 16, 1998​
Since January its market value in Europe has risen more than threefold, topping $7.5 billion and making its founder, a 34-year-old Cambridge University Ph.D., a billionaire arriviste.
-- Elizabeth Corcoran, "The Searcher", Forbes, April 2000​
Arriviste comes from French, from arriver, "to arrive," from (assumed) Vulgar Latin arripare, "to reach the shore," from Latin ad-, "to, toward" + ripa, "shore."
 

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sedition \sih-DISH-un\, noun:


Conduct or language inciting resistance to or rebellion against lawful authority.
Most of us now accept as common sense what was once prosecuted as sedition, namely Tom Paine's proposition that "the idea of hereditary legislators is as absurd as a hereditary mathematician -- as absurd as a hereditary poet laureate".
-- Geoffrey Robertson, "Dumping our Queen", The Guardian, November 6, 1999​
At several points in his long career, Jinnah was threatened by the British with imprisonment on sedition charges for speaking in favour of Indian home rule or rights.
-- Akbar S. Ahmed, Jinnah, Pakistan and Islamic Identity
Outspoken critics of the policy have until now faced the possibility of having a charge of sedition brought against them.
-- David Cohen, "Malaysian universities rejecting Chinese students", The Guardian, May 3, 2001​
Sedition comes from Latin seditio, sedition-, "a going apart," hence "revolt, insurrection," from se-, "apart" + itio, ition-, "act of going," from ire, "to go."
 
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