修之路·烨天

canker • \KANG-ker\  • verb
1 : to become infested with erosive or spreading sores
*2 : to corrupt the spirit of
3 : to become corrupted

Example sentence:
"It was evident that their hearts were cankered with discontent." (Samuel
Johnson, Rasselas)

Did you know?
"Canker" is commonly known as the name for a type of spreading sore that
eats into the tissue—a use that obviously furnished the verb with both its
medical and figurative senses. The word ultimately traces back to Latin
"cancer," which could refer to a crab or a malignant tumor. The Greeks had
a similar word, "karkinos," and according to the Ancient Greek physician
Galen the tumor got its name from the way the swollen veins surrounding the
affected part resembled a crab's limbs. "Cancer" was adopted into Old
English, becoming "canker" in Middle English and eventually shifting in
meaning to become a general term for ulcerations. "Cancer" itself was
reintroduced to English later, first as a zodiacal word and then as a
medical term.

morpheme • \MOR-feem\  • noun
: a word or part of a word that contains no smaller unit of meaning

Example sentence:
The word "unloader" includes the morphemes "un-," "load," and "-er."

Did you know?
Morphemes are the indivisible basic units of language, much like the atoms which physicists once assumed were the indivisible units of matter. English speakers borrowed "morpheme" from French "morphème," which was itself created from the Greek root "morphē," meaning "form." The French borrowed "-ème" from their word "phonème," which, like English "phoneme," means "a basic unit of speech that distinguishes one utterance from another." The French suffix and its English equivalent "-eme" are used to create words that refer to distinctive units of language structure. Words formed from "-eme" include "lexeme" ("a meaningful linguistic unit in the vocabulary of a language"), "grapheme" ("a unit of a writing system"), and "toneme" ("a unit of intonation in a language in which variations in tone distinguish meaning").

schlemiel • \shluh-MEEL\  • noun
: an unlucky bungler : chump

Example sentence:
"What a schlemiel," sighed Evelyn, watching Frank trip his way up to the bowling lane and throw yet another ball straight into the gutter.

Did you know?
"Schlemiel," from the Yiddish "shlemil," has sometimes been associated with Peter Schlemihl, the hero of a story about an unlucky man who sold his shadow to the devil, by German writer Adelbert von Chamisso. While this story may have helped to popularize "schlemiel," the word probably has much older roots. The Hebrew name "Shelumiel" is mentioned in the Bible (Numbers 1:6), and the Talmud describes Shelumiel as a man whose behavior earned derision and an unfortunate fate. A "schlemiel" in modern English usage is a chronic blunderer or loser, and is sometimes paired with the less common "schlimazel," another Yiddish word for an unlucky or bungling person.

schlemiel • \shluh-MEEL\  • noun
: an unlucky bungler : chump

Example sentence:
"What a schlemiel," sighed Evelyn, watching Frank trip his way up to the bowling lane and throw yet another ball straight into the gutter.

Did you know?
"Schlemiel," from the Yiddish "shlemil," has sometimes been associated with Peter Schlemihl, the hero of a story about an unlucky man who sold his shadow to the devil, by German writer Adelbert von Chamisso. While this story may have helped to popularize "schlemiel," the word probably has much older roots. The Hebrew name "Shelumiel" is mentioned in the Bible (Numbers 1:6), and the Talmud describes Shelumiel as a man whose behavior earned derision and an unfortunate fate. A "schlemiel" in modern English usage is a chronic blunderer or loser, and is sometimes paired with the less common "schlimazel," another Yiddish word for an unlucky or bungling person.

mitigate • \MIT-uh-gayt\  • verb
1 : to cause to become less harsh or hostile : mollify
*2 : to make less severe or painful : alleviate
3 : extenuate

Example sentence:
Gordon was determined to help mitigate the suffering of the people in the tornado-ravaged area.

Did you know?
Would it be correct to say, "His boyish appearance mitigated against his getting an early promotion"? Most usage commentators would say "no." They feel such examples demonstrate a long-standing confusion between "mitigate" and the look-alike "militate." Those two words are not closely related etymologically ("mitigate" descends from the Latin verb "mitigare," meaning "to soften," whereas "militate" traces to "militare," another Latin verb that means "to engage in warfare"), nor are they particularly close in meaning ("militate" means "to have weight or effect"). The confusion between the two has existed for long enough that one commentator thinks "mitigate against" should be accepted as an idiomatic alternative to "militate," but if you want to avoid criticism, you should keep "mitigate" and "militate" distinct.

soi-disant ? \swah-dee-ZAHNG (the final "NG" isn't pronounced, but the vowel
is nasalized)\  ? adjective
: self-proclaimed, so-called

Example sentence:
Meredith is a soi-disant gourmet, but her cooking doesn't approach the
quality demonstrated by the chefs she is so quick to criticize.

Did you know?
"Soi-disant," which in French means literally "saying oneself," is one of
hundreds of French terms that entered English in the 17th and 18th
centuries, during the period known as the Enlightenment. Even as political
antipathies between France and England were being played out on
battlefields in Europe and America, English speakers like Lord Chesterfield
(a patron of letters and an intimate of Voltaire) were peppering their
correspondence with French. "Soi-disant" first began appearing in English
texts in 1752 as a disparaging term for someone who styles or fancies him-
or herself in some role (for example, a "soi-disant expert"). "Crepe," "vis-
à-vis," "etiquette," and "sang-froid" are a few of the other French terms

microburst • noun
: a violent short-lived localized downdraft that creates extreme wind shears at low altitudes and is usually associated with thunderstorms

Example sentence:
During thunderstorm season, microbursts as strong as 50 miles per hour can cause almost as much damage to crops and structures as a full-force hurricane.

Did you know?
Credit for the invention of the word "microburst" is generally given to tornado expert Tetsuya Theodore Fujita. Fujita first described these extremely intense wind patterns in 1974. He noted that microbursts are usually short-lived, lasting only 5 to 15 minutes, but that they are extremely dangerous, especially for aircraft, because they cause sudden unexpected changes in wind direction or speed. Since the mid-1970s, many airports have installed Doppler radar systems to help them detect potentially deadly microbursts.

funambulism • noun
1 : tightrope walking
*2 : a show especially of mental agility

Example sentence:
As a game-show contestant Brian amazed us all with his funambulism, answering every question correctly to win the $10,000 first prize.

Did you know?
Back in ancient Rome, tightrope walking was a popular spectacle at public gatherings. The Latin word for "tightrope walker" is "funambulus," from the Latin "funis," meaning "rope," plus "ambulare," meaning "to walk." It doesn't take any funambulism on our part to see how the word for an impressive act of physical skill and agility came to mean an impressive act of mental skill or agility. That extended sense of the word has been around since at least 1886, when British academic and writer Augustus Jessopp described the act of diagramming sentences as "horrible lessons of ghastly grammar and dreary funambulism."

vituperate • verb
*1 : to abuse or censure severely or abusively : berate
2 : to use harsh condemnatory language

Example sentence:
The author was vituperated by many critics in the media for lifting material from other sources without properly attributing them.

Did you know?
"Vituperate" first appeared in English in the mid-16th century. It derives from the past participle of the Latin verb "vituperare," which was formed as a combination of two Latin words: the noun "vitium," meaning "fault," and the verb "parare," meaning "to make or prepare." ("Parare" helped give us a number of other English words, such as "prepare," "separate," "apparatus," and even "emperor.") "Vituperate" possesses several close synonyms, including "berate" and "revile." "Berate" usually refers to scolding that is drawn out and abusive. "Revile" means to attack or criticize in a way prompted by anger or hatred. "Vituperate" adds to the meaning of "revile" by stressing an attack that is particularly violent in nature.