week 42

When there's diversity, there's variety. Often, this word is used for diversity of race, class, or gender.
To have diversity, you need a mix of whatever you're talking about. If you like science fiction, romantic comedies, cartoons, and action movies, then you like a diversity of types of films. If you like nothing but kung fu films, then you don't like a diversity of films. No matter what kind of diversity you're talking about, there needs to be a real mix, kind of like a huge box of Crayolas.

Yes, artless could mean lacking in art, but more often it means lacking in superficiality or deceit. An artless person could never make a living as a con artist.
Originally meaning "unskillful" or "uncultured," artless evolved into meaning not skilled or cultured in the art of deceit. If you are artless, you are natural and uncontrived. Young people, animals, the socially inept — these can all be artless in the way they express themselves. They seem to mean exactly what they say.

The verb delve means to dig into, loosen, or investigate. She delved into her family's history and discovered an inventor, a checkers champion, and a circus equestrian in her ancestry.
Delve has a literal meaning of to dig into the earth ("to delve the soil," as in preparing a garden, for example), but this sense is rare now. The verb is most often used in the more figurative sense — like to delve into a problem or into someone's personal life.

The French word ennui describes a feeling that combines tiredness and boredom. Ennui is one version of "the blahs."
Though it sounds it little fancy — maybe because it comes from French — ennui is a common feeling that everybody experiences: being bored and tired. School and work fill lots of people with ennui. A terrible TV show could create ennui. If you feel like your life is going nowhere, ennui could set in. When you're feeling ennui, you might as well take a nap, because you're too drowsy

To expurgate is to censor. Usually, people talk about expurgating bad words from something written or on TV.
On TV, if you hear some words bleeped out, those words have been expurgated. In print, we can expurgate by using dashes ( — — ) or random characters like %&$#. Sometimes we can expurgate just by rewriting something so that the entire sentence with the naughty parts is gone, or by putting it into mild words. When it comes to things children read or watch, there's often the difficult questi

To replenish something is to refill it. If you have a pet pooch, you’re probably obligated to replenish his food bowl to avoid being barked at incessantly.
Use replenish when talking about something valuable or desirable, such as money or food. For example, you might discuss replenishing your bank account, but you wouldn’t speak of replenishing a trash can. You can also use replenish in a joking way to show that something is of value to you; by noting that the jar of jellybeans on your desk need

The adjective expedient describes something that provides an easy way to achieve a goal or result, but it's not necessarily a moral solution.Use expedient when you want to hint that a particular solution or strategy has certain benefits and advantages but is not completely fair. However, expedient can also be used to describe something practical for a particular purpose.

Comely means attractive or appropriate. A comely girl is pretty. A comely hairstyle makes you seem prettier maybe than you are. If your manners are comely, it means you know the right way to act to put people at their ease.
Comely is related to the word becoming, in the sense of something's being attractive and appropriate––you're comely wearing that becoming blouse, the way she told the story was becoming to a comely young lady.

A qualm is a feeling of uneasiness, or a sense that something you're doing is wrong, and it sounds almost like how it makes your stomach feel.If you have qualms about lying to get into the over-18 dance club, you might decide to follow your gut-check and meet your friends for coffee instead.

Choose the verb manifest when someone shows something for everyone to notice. You might manifest your dislike of school food by stirring it around into a big pile of slop on your tray. As an adjective, manifest is a formal way to say that something is apparent to the senses and is synonymous with evident, apparent, or clear. If you have strong feelings about something, they will be manifest on your face. A ship or plane's manifest is the list of cargo or passengers on a particular trip.

A callous person is insensitive or emotionally hardened. If you laugh at your little sister while she's trying to show you her poetry, you're being callous.We usually use callous in the metaphorical sense for emotionally hardened. If someone is unmoved by other people's problems, you might say he shows a callous indifference to human suffering.

If a politician pretends to be angry as a way of rousing the anger of the voters and getting more votes, he's guilty of artifice — a subtle and crafty trick.
Before taking on its current meaning, artifice meant a skilled piece of workmanship. A beautiful diamond bracelet might have been considered a piece of artifice, for example; now it would only be called artifice if the diamonds were fake.

A gratuity is a tip that's given by a customer in exchange for services. You might leave a gratuity of several dollars when you eat lunch in a restaurant or when you get your hair cut.
A gratuity is usually a relatively small amount of money, a percentage of the total cost of a purchase or service. A gratuity doesn't pay for the goods purchased — it's a separate reward to the person who did the work. For example, in the United States, waiters and waitresses typically expect a gratuity of between

Capricious is an adjective to describe a person or thing that's impulsive and unpredictable, like a bride who suddenly leaves her groom standing at the wedding altar.
You can criticize a fickle-minded person as capricious, but it could just as well describe quickly changing weather, as in "capricious spring storms."
also means= unpredictable

To begrudge someone something is to wish them ill for it or to envy them. Try not to begrudge his getting the promotion over you. If you begrudge your friend his happiness because he got the nicer car, your friendship will suffer.

A formal or fancy word for indispensable, requisite is often now used in a humorous context. During their princess phase, three year old girls are loathe to leave the house without the requisite beads, tiaras and high heels.
To remember this word, notice how similar it is to required. College students looking to sign up for classes they find interesting often bump up against the word prerequisite, which refers to a list of classes they will need to take before the one they're interested in.