week 29

Because an adherent is usually something or someone that sticks to something or someone else, it's logical that it can also mean a person who believes in and supports a certain philosophy or leader.An adherent to a cause can be called a disciple, one who believes and tries to get others to believe. It can also refer to a material that sticks to other things.making the word mean "to stick to."

Use the noun apathy when someone is not interested in the important things that are happening. You might feel apathy for the political process after watching candidates bicker tediously with one another.the expressions voter apathy, student apathy, and consumer apathy show just how unenthusiastic large groups of people can be.

Whether you are eating a steak, playing table tennis, or cheering on your favorite team, you can use the word gusto to describe something you do with great enthusiasm. Use this word to describe vigorous activities — you probably wouldn’t, say, "take a nap with gusto," even if you really enjoy napping. You are more likely to score goals and dance the Macarena with gusto.

Though dilettante might sound like a nice French word, don't use it on your friend who thinks he can play the guitar after several short lessons. A dilettante is an amateur, often one who pretends to be very knowledgeable.Today, the word implies you're pretending to be more of an artist than you're interested in or capable of being, so if you call your friend who likes to paint a dilettante, it's like you're calling him or her a poser.

Have you ever seen people who can bend so easily, they can touch their heels to the back of their heads? That person is, in a word, lithe.As a meek person bends to the will of others, the meaning of lithe has broadened to flexible and even graceful. Think of a dancer or the ease of a sleek cat when you think of lithe. You can use it to describe a person or the way someone moves.

French roots for the word exhort mean "thoroughly encourage," so to exhort is to fill up with encouragement! "When he heard the crowd exhort him with stomping and cheers, he knew that he could finish the marathon."
Some synonyms for exhort include stimulate, excite, and urge on. Words and shouts can exhort, and this is especially true when the recipient of those chants fears coming up short with an effort.

If something is boring and unoriginal, it's banal. Banal things are dull as dishwater.Ever notice how some TV shows, songs, and even phrases are boring and unoriginal? It's like you've seen or heard the same thing a million times. Anything that's unoriginal and dull is banal — a fancy word for things that bore you to tears. When you're writing, try not to be banal. Clichés and dull topics are banal.

Typical means what you would expect—a typical suburban town has lots of neat little houses and people. Atypical means outside of type—an atypical suburban town might be populated by zombies in damp caves.
Atypical is a synonym of "unusual," but it carries a more objective feel—scientific studies might mention atypical results, suggesting that there is a clear definition of what is typical and what is not. "Unusual" is more of a casual observation that one might make in a non-scientific context.

Something pathetic inspires pity and contempt. Pathetic things are awful or lame.
These days, when you see the word pathetic, it's pretty clear that it's no compliment. This is an insulting word for things that are so bad they bum you out. A sports team losing ten games in a row is pathetic. Someone who constantly lies, even though the lies are obvious, is pathetic. Trying to dunk a basketball and missing by three feet is pathetic. When something is astoundingly lame or awful, people love to say

Inebriated is just a fancy way of saying drunk. If you see a man staggering down the street grasping a bottle of rum in his hand, chances are he's inebriated.
When you want to use an impressive word to say that someone is drunk, go ahead and use inebriated. If you like, you can also use it to refer to someone who is intoxicated with substances other than alcohol, but at its heart, inebriated simply means tanked, blotto, stinko, drunk. In more recent years, it has taken on the sense of being part

If an executive gives a speech that begins, "This business is all about survival of the fittest. You need to burn the midnight oil and take one for the team," his employees might get sick of listening to these meaningless clichés and tell him to cut the platitudes.Be warned: if you throw too many platitudes into your conversations, people are eventually going to get tired of listening to you.

Nondescript is a word used to describe something that isn't special or unusual in any way. You might have trouble finding a nondescript apartment building because it looks exactly like every other apartment building around it.
You could use the word nondescript to describe your blind date if she was completely uninteresting and dull, both in looks and personality. Some houses are so nondescript that you have to drive by several times just to make sure it's the right one.

Obese means excessively fat. In medical terms, it means you have a body mass index (BMI) of 30 or more, at which point your body's excess fat begins to threaten your health.In the last third of the 20th century and into the 21st, increasing numbers of Americans are obese, in what health professionals call "an obesity epidemic"; they attribute it to rising portion-sizes, increased consumption of processed food, the demise of family meals, and food marketing, among other factors.

If your marching band gets into a fight with another school's pep squad, your principal might say the fracas was uncalled for and undignified. A fracas is a noisy quarrel.

Indolent is an adjective meaning slow or lazy. It can take an indolent teenager hours to get out of bed on a weekend morning. Often it's noon before he finally comes shuffling down to breakfast in his pajamas.
An indolent person is slow and lazy — not the type of person you'd want running your corporation or competing with you in a relay race. Doctors use the word indolent to describe medical conditions that are slow to progress. If you're diagnosed with an illness, you'd prefer an indolent one

Things that wax and wane grow larger and smaller, like the moon. Things that wane simply grow smaller. "My initial enthusiasm for helping waned when I saw the pile of envelopes that needed licking."
You may have heard the expression "on the wane." It means a fad, or a fashion, or a disease, that is on its way out the door. "The face mask fad at school was on the wane as new reports of kids infected with a dreaded new fly virus waned."

Bliss is a state of complete happiness or joy. Marriage is often associated with this joyous feeling: people who are married and still in love are described as living in wedded bliss.
Another common association is heaven or paradise, as in eternal bliss.

An adversary is someone who fights against or opposes another. In tennis, you stand across the net from your adversary.
Adversary as in "enemy" or "opponent" is related to the words adversarial, or hostile, or adverse, meaning against or contrary. The Adversary is a specific reference to Satan, or the Devil.

A garrulous person just won’t stop talking (and talking, and talking, and talking...).
Garrulous comes from the Latin word garrire for "chattering or prattling." If someone is garrulous, he doesn't just like to talk; he indulges in talking for talking’s sake — whether or not there’s a real conversation going on. If you discover that you have a garrulous neighbor sitting next to you on the plane, you might just want to feign sleep, unless you really want to hear everything going through his mind

The verb pique means to make someone angry or annoyed. But when something piques your interest or curiosity, here the verb pique just means to arouse, stimulate, or excite.So you can see how something that pricks you could make you both excited and angry. But it's frustrating––enough to make you want to storm away from learning vocab. That storming away, by the by, might be called a "fit of pique."