week 28

Ah propinquity, a word meaning "proximity or physical closeness." Your propinquity to someone in a conversation will affect whether you can smell his breath or not.Propinquity had a brief moment in the sun on a television show in the 1950s called Dobie Gillis. There was an episode in which the nerdy girl, who was in love with Dobie Gillis, decided to get him to love her back. How? Propinquity! And so she explained it to him, over and over and over, theorizing that just being near someone long en

Disgruntled sounds like what it is — dissatisfied, grunting and grumbling. You could become a disgruntled employee if your boss swipes all your best ideas without giving you credit (or a raise).
Disgruntled actually comes from gruntle, an old verb meaning, not so surprisingly, "to grunt." When you're disgruntled, you might grunt with dissatisfaction and anger. If you are a disgruntled customer, why not ask to speak to a manager? Unless you'd rather just stand there grunting.

Sedate means to be calm, but if a doctor sedates you it means you've been administered a tranquilizing drug. Most surgeries require some form of sedation, but to be sedate in day-to-day life means composed, quiet, and serene. Not necessarily unconscious.
To be sedate when dining with the Queen means that you behaved with dignity and solemnity. To be sedated when dining with the Queen means that you were face down in the bread pudding and drooling onto the tablecloth. The medical sense of the wor

Avarice is a fancy word for good old-fashioned greed. It's one of what some call "the seven deadly sins."
Do you want more and more money? Or cookies? Or video games? Or anything? Then your heart is full of avarice, which you probably know better as greed. When people talk about greed, it's clearly not a good thing, but avarice has an even worse flavor to it. Avarice is often looked upon as a sin, and it's always considered despicable and evil.

Use the adjective vulnerable to describe something or someone open to being physically or emotionally wounded, like a newborn chick or an overly sensitive teenager.

If someone offers you a pill that promises eternal life, don’t take the pill. It’s a panacea, a remedy that falsely claims to solve every problem ever. Those are the roots of panacea, a cure for all aches. But a panacea doesn’t really cure everything; it just acts like it can. Use the word to describe an unbelievable solution, like a new law that will make everyone rich, or a robot that does your homework for you.

The goal of meditation is to reach a state of serenity, when you mind is still and perfectly calm. Use serenity to mean the quality or state of being calm and peaceful.
It is hard to believe that the ocean, whipped by winds during a storm, can ever return to a state of serenity, where its surface looks like glass.

If someone can't be satisfied, they are insatiable. After being lost in the woods eating only berries for a few days, you'll find your hunger is insatiable once you finally get to the table.Perhaps you have an insatiable desire to learn all the words in the English language. Synonyms are unappeasable and gluttonous.

A cacophony is a mishmash of unpleasant sounds, often at loud volume. It's what you'd hear if you gave instruments to a group of four-year olds and asked them to play one of Beethoven's symphonies.
A cacophony is a jarring, discordant mix of sounds that have no business being played together. When the orchestra tunes up before a show, it sounds like a cacophony because each musician is playing a completely different tune, at different times, and at different volumes. Once the show begins, that c

To eradicate something is to get rid of it, to destroy it, and to kiss it goodbye.
Eradicate is from the Latin word eradicare meaning "to root out." When you yank that weed up by the roots, it has been eradicated; it's not coming back. Eradicate often means to kill a bunch of somethings, like what you want the poison to do to the roach family and their extended relatives living in your house, and what we thought we did to bedbugs. You can also eradicate corruption, poverty, or diseases. Although

If you take the news of your brother's death with equanimity, it means you take it calmly without breaking down. Equanimity refers to emotional calmness and balance in times of stress.
If equanimity reminds you of equal, that's because the words have a lot in common.A near synonym is composure.

If a highly forgetful person loses his phone, his wallet, and then his car keys in separate instances all in one day, you could say that he has reached an organizational nadir. This means “lowest point.”
This was originally strictly an astronomical term and is the opposite of the word zenith, which is the part of the sky located directly above a person’s head or, “high point.” In fact, nadir is derived from the Arabic nazir, which means “opposite to.”

An exploit is a heroic act or notable deed. The King Arthur legends are full of stories of the exploits of the Knights of the Round Table, including Sir Lancelot and King Arthur himself. The verb exploit means to use someone or something, usually selfishly or for profit––workers who are tired of being exploited by factory owners form unions that allow them to stand together as a powerful force.

"Fallible" means capable of making mistakes — or, easier to remember — capable of failing. Infallible means exactly the opposite — incapable of failing.
This word is often used to describe human capacity for error — no one is infallible. And yet, we are able to be infallible in certain ways: children are infallibly curious, teenagers infallibly hungry. I

A word that comes up a lot in discussions of both food and people pairings, compatible speaks to a person or thing’s ability to exist agreeably with something or someone else.
Use the word compatible to describe two things that work well together, like your Wii and your big screen TV, or peanut butter and jelly. You may have heard that opposites attract, but initial attraction doesn’t necessarily mean that opposites will be compatible in the long-term.

If you're a straight-A student and still you worry about failing all of your classes, you're being irrational. Your fears are not based on fact and not likely to come true.
Usually you use irrational to describe ideas and thoughts that are not based on reason, although emotions and behavior can be irrational too if they don't seem reasonable. Do you jump onto a chair and scream when you see a mouse? If so, you have an irrational fear of mice, or musophobia.

Bedlam is a scene of madness, chaos or great confusion. If you allow football fans onto the field after the big game, it will be pure bedlam. Over time, the pronunciation of “Bethlehem” morphed into bedlam and the term came to be applied to any situation where pandemonium prevails. The trading floor at the New York Stock Exchange appears to be bedlam, but the traders insist it’s organized chaos.

To impede something is to delay or block its progress or movement. Carrying six heavy bags will impede your progress if you're trying to walk across town.
Impede comes from the Latin impedire which literally means "to hold the feet," formed from the prefix in- "in" plus pes "foot." Think about walking with a cast on your foot––how slow and awkward that would be. If you have a hard time reading, that will impeded your progress in math. An impediment is something that impedes, such as a physical d

Revere means that to respect someone so deeply that you almost worship them. Despite the size of the American military, the American people revere peacemakers like Martin Luther King, Jr. and Mahatma Gandhi. Rock stars are revered by throngs of devoted fans.
Revere is related to the words reverence ("to hold something in worshipful awe") and its opposite — irreverent. Reverence for the irreverent is actually possible. Howard Stern humor is often vulgar and absurdly irreverent yet his legions of

Something that is moribund is almost dead, like the moribund plant you didn't water for months, or so without change or growth that it seems dead, like a moribund town that seems trapped in the 1950s.In Latin, mori means "to die." You probably recognize this root in words like mortal, mortician, and mortuary. Moribund means "near death," but it can also mean something that is coming to an end, nearly obsolete, or stagnant.