Combined Week 4 Vocab

adj: having a sour or bitter taste or character; sharp; biting

Acerbic comments directed at those who deserve them.

verb: to increase in intensity, power, influence, or prestige

aggrandize your farm by purchasing the property next to it.

• noun: a medieval science aimed at the transmutation of metals, esp. base metals into gold
• (an alchemist is one who practices alchemy)

It's the same transition that let us move from alchemy to atomic physics.

adj: agreeable; responsive to suggestion

Managements of both companies must be amenable to the idea.

noun: something or someone out of place in terms of historical or chronological context

adj: having a tightening effect on living tissue; harsh; severe; something with a tightening effect on tissue

The physical properties of the powder also give it a mildastringent action.

adj: sharing a border; touching; adjacent

So far gene recombination can move only single genes or small contiguous gene units.

noun: a generally agreed-upon practice or attitude

Convention holds that politics stops at the water's edge

• adj: tending to believe too readily; gullible
• noun form: credulity

The law will afford relief even to the simple and credulous who have been duped by art and falsehood.

• noun: an attitude or quality of belief that all people are motivated by selfishness
• adj form: cynical

Such people need to rethink their cynicism because it distorts their thinking.

• noun: polite or appropriate conduct or behavior
• adj form: decorus

How you handle it is an index of the quality, wisdom and decorum of the things inside you.

• noun: scorn, ridicule, contemptuous treatment
• adj form: derisive
• verb form: deride

The comment met with immediate derision across the internet.

verb: to dry out or dehydrate; to make dry or dull

noun: one with an amateurish or superficial interest in the arts or a branch of knowledge

Most of my readers don't know I'm a dilettante techno musician.

verb: to slight or belittle

Don't disparage anecdotal evidence or pretend that there is no emotion in medical research.

• n.inactivity; stillness; dormancy (adj: quiescent)
• When a cell is in a term of no growth and no division.
• was struck by the elk's quiescence as it just stood there in the clearing

• v.to make or become thin; to purify or refine (n: rarefaction, adj: rarefied)
• An example of rarefy is add fresh air to a previously suffy room; to rarefy the air.
• An example of rarefy is to develop a sense of taste; to rarefy sense of taste.

• n.the act of censuring, scolding, or rebuking. (v. reprove).
• When you scold someone for bad behavior, your scolding words are an example of a reproof.
• The fear of reproof prevented them from complaining.