week 37

If you want to get someone to like you, don't offer to fetch them a Coke, rub their feet, or do their homework. They won't like you any better, and your servile attitude will only cost you their respect.
To remember servile, just think of the word servant––they both derive from the Latin servus "slave." In fact, servile also means anything characteristic of a slave. "After winning the lottery, the ex-slave shed first his servile clothes, later his servile manner. The transformation was complete.

If your teacher says your position on the benefits of abolishing homework is not tenable, she means it is not based in fact. To be tenable is to be evidence-based and well-founded.
Tenable comes from the Latin root tenir which means "to hold," as in "hold together." If your plan is tenable, it will probably hold together when you execute it, or hold up to scrutiny. It's good to note that the opposite of tenable is untenable

Are you always challenging the establishment? Or provoking popular thought by attacking traditions and institutions? Then you're definitely an iconoclast.
To be called an iconoclast today is usually kind of cool — they're rugged individualists, bold thinkers who don't give a hoot what tradition calls for. But back in medieval Greece, the iconoclasts had a more thuggish reputation.

A phobia is an intense and irrational fear of something. If seeing a spider makes you scream and jump on top of a table, then you might suffer from a phobia.

If you want a fancy way to say that you took a trip to the countryside, you might talk about your country sojourn. Sojourn is a literary word meaning "a temporary stay or visit" or "to live or stay somewhere for a short time." In figurative is, sojourn means to delve––your math teacher may stop midway through lessons on fractions for a brief sojourn into techniques for slicing pie.

The adjective austere is used to describe something or someone stern or without any decoration. You wouldn't want someone to describe you or your home as austere.
Austere is not usually a positive word because it means that a person or a thing isn't pleasurable. For example, if you go on an austere diet, it's likely you wouldn't ever get to have candy

Therapy is the act of caring for someone, or the method of caring. If you have a rare disease, your doctor's therapy will hopefully cure you.

If you call someone erudite, that means they show great learning. After you've earned your second Ph.D., you will be truly erudite. If you bring someone out of a raw state, you educate them, so someone who is erudite is very educated indeed (and perhaps a bit of a showoff). You can say either ER-oo-dite or ER-yoo-dite; the second one, being a bit harder to say, can seem a bit more erudite.

Confront means either to face a situation that makes you uncomfortable, or to say something to someone about something they've done that bothers you. Rather than letting things go, when people are rude to you you should confront them.You can confront a sad truth, you can confront a person by calling them on their behavior, you can confront someone with the fact that they have terrible breath. You can be confronted, too—on the trip through the mountains, we were confronted by the impassibility of

When something is so unnecessary that it could easily be done away with, like a fifth wheel on a car or a fifth person on a double date, call it superfluous.
Superfluous (soo-PER-floo-uhs) means "more than required." Use it when pointing out something that could be removed without detracting from the quality of something:

To give someone the incentive to act in a certain way is to motivate that person. If you give your dad a food-processor for his birthday, you might motivate him to help out with the cooking.

If you're standing still but the room is inexplicably spinning, you might want to let someone know you're suffering from vertigo — the sensation of dizziness or whirling.
Contrary to popular belief, vertigo is not exactly the same thing as acrophobia, the fear of heights.

When you do something voluntarily, you do it of your own volition, or will. Doing something willingly, or because you agree to it, is doing something of your own volition.
Volition comes from Latin and French roots meaning "wish" or "will." Legal speech and writing often include the word volition, as a way to affirm that a person involved in a crime acted "on their own volition," or consented to be part of the crime. Maybe criminals don't wish to go to jail, but their acts often show their volit

Felicitous describes something that's really pleasant. If someone behaves in a felicitous manner, she's being agreeable and appropriate.Felicitous also describes something that's happy or lucky. When you plan a trip to the amusement park and it turns out that the sun is shining, that’s felicitous. If you need to mail a package by a certain date and you make it to the post office just in time, that’s also felicitous. Felicitous can also describe something that's well chosen. Planning an outdoor w

Rationalize means to justify by developing a rationale, or a set of reasons for something. You could rationalize cutting school, saying your classes are boring, but you are still doing what you shouldn't be doing.
Rationalize can also mean reorganizing along rational lines––a watchmaker's shop might be set up in a totally illogical way that made sense only to the old owner, whose children will rationalize the shop's organization once the old man dies.

Conducive means tending to cause or produce something. Regular exercise is conducive to happiness and a feeling of well-being.
This adjective is usually followed by the preposition to, and it refers to bringing about something favorable or helpful: A positive attitude is conducive to good health.

An antipathy is a deep-seated dislike of something or someone. Usually it's a condition that is long-term, innate, and pretty unlikely to change — like your antipathy for the Red Sox. In general, antipathies are considered feelings that are kept at least somewhat under wraps and are not out on the surface

An old man watching his grandchildren play might look back fondly on his halcyon days, remembering the peaceful, happy time of his youth.
The word halcyon comes from a story in Greek mythology about the halcyon bird, which had the power to calm the rough ocean waves every December so she could nest. Like those calm waters, halcyon has come to mean a sense of peace or tranquility. People often use the phrase halcyon days to refer idyllically to a calmer, more peaceful time in their past.

Nascent describes the birth or beginning of something, for example a civilization, a trend, an idea, or an action. It can also imply a future promise, like the nascent government of a new country.
You’re in the future looking back at the first time you learned the definition of the word nascent. Your nascent efforts to use the word felt awkward, but you quickly felt comfortable with it, especially after you learned how to pronounce it: “NAY-sent.” Now you use the word all the time: "the nascent

Germane means relevant; it fits in. If you are giving a speech on dog training, stick to the germane, canine stuff. Topics that would not be germane? Catnip toys, hamster wheels, and the use of a saddle.You might want to bring up all sorts of complaints during an argument with your best friend, but she says the two of you should only discuss issues that are germane to the current fight.