week 20

Use the adjective nebulous for situations that are "hazy, indistinct" and also "cloudy" or "fuzzy."
Nebulous comes from its Latin relative nebulosus and they mean "fuzzy," "hazy," and "without distinct outlines." They both come from the noun form, nebula, which is a "mist" or "fog." In astronomy, a nebula is a fuzzy cloud of gaseous matter and something nebulous is made up of such ingredients hydrogen and galactic dust.

Repose is a formal or literary term used to mean the act of resting, or the state of being at rest. Repose is also a state of mind: freedom from worry.
As a verb, repose means to rest or relax, or to rest on something for support: There she was, reposing on the front porch.

Use the adjective extant to describe old things that are still around, like your extant diary from third grade or the only extant piece of pottery from certain craftspeople who lived hundreds of years ago.Extant is the opposite of extinct: it refers to things that are here — they haven't disappeared or been destroyed. Use extant to describe things that it may be surprising to learn are still around — you wouldn't say jeans you bought last year are extant, but a pair of jeans worn by Marilyn Monr

Funerals are lugubrious. So are rainy days and Mondays. Anything that makes you sad, gloomy, or mournful can be called lugubrious. lugubrious sounds slow, heavy, and sad. Sometimes, just the "feel" of a word is enough to clue you in to its meaning, and lugubrious is one of those words. I was feeling great when I got to the concert, but the lugubrious music left me in a terrible mood.

If something is reviled, you alone don’t dislike it; a whole community of like-minded souls has to hate its guts. For instance, spam is widely reviled.If you’re the only one who hates, say, your math teacher, it’s not fair to say that person is reviled. If she is majestically unpopular with the entire senior class and is routinely the butt of geometry-themed insults, well then sadly, this instructor is indeed reviled. Generally, when someone or something is reviled, much of the poison aimed is i

Reserve abstemious for someone who exercises restraint, especially with regard to alcohol. A rock musician may sing about enjoying wine and women, but in his private life he may be abstemious.
You might get the idea that abstemious is a relative of abstain with a change of consonant, but in fact the two words only share the abs- prefix, meaning "away."

When you talk of the vicissitudes of life, you're referring to the difficult times that we all go through: sickness, job loss, and other unwelcome episodes. No one can escape the vicissitudes of life. Losing a pet, crashing the car, being called in for jury duty: these are examples of vicissitudes — chapters in one's life that one would rather avoid but must get through. Some lives have more vicissitudes than others, to be sure, but no life is without events that test and challenge us.

Puissant means powerful and in possession of authority, and is often used to describe the political power of someone, like a prince or president.Synonyms for this somewhat rarely used adjective include forcible, mighty, strong, steady, unyielding, and vigorous.

If you accuse someone of committing an offense, you indict them. A book that indicts the entire education system might lay out all the reasons that schools are failing kids.In a legal sense, the verb indict means to bring formal charges against someone, especially in a court of law, as in a federal grand jury. The grand jury indicted, the man on 12 counts of murder. Although it's true the boy had stolen cookies from the cookie jar in the past, that is no reason to indict him out of hand in the p

When something is redolent of something, it makes you think of that thing by making a pretty strong impression on you. He had a shifty eye redolent of years of lying and petty crime.
People used to use redolent of something with a strong, distinctive odor. Now, think of it as "stinks of" — but in a fancy way. If you're touring an old castle, you might say that the worn carpet and handsome woodwork are redolent of the place's former glory, though otherwise it's a dump.

Edifice means a building, but it doesn't mean just any building. To merit being called an edifice, a building must be important. A mini temple can be an edifice, or a towering sky scraper.
The meaning of edifice has expanded to include a system of ideas––when it is complicated enough to be considered to have walls and a roof, then it is an edifice. You could say that basic facts of addition and subtraction are the foundation on which the edifice of higher math rests.

An omnivorous animal eats meat and plants — everything on the menu.

Stifling, humid and downright oppressive, sultry is an adjective that has everything to do with sweltering heat and a definite need for a tall glass of iced tea.You know how movies about the old south always show people wilting in the shade of their front porches, mopping their damp brows? Well that's because of the sultry summer weather. A sultry atmosphere is thick, almost swampy feeling. And all that heavy heat can certainly get passions stirring — "a sultry look" is one that happens to expre

You can use maudlin to describe something that brings tears to your eyes, or makes you feel very emotional. Tearjerkers like "Forrest Gump" and "Titanic" can be described as maudlin.Maudlin is often paired with sentimental, or even schlocky, to describe cry-fests, as in "I can't watch another second of that overly-sentimental, maudlin soap opera. Turn that schlock off."

Something that's derogatory is insulting or disrespectful. If you make derogatory comments, that means you say things that are unflattering, unkind, or demeaning.Derogatory means about the same as insulting. Derogatory language is meant to hurt, and it usually does. If you feel offended or insulted by what someone says, the person probably said something derogatory. Racial, sexist, and homophobic slurs are all derogatory. Insults that mean someone is stupid or crazy are derogatory.

The trunk of some people's cars may contain items as disparate as old clothes, rotting food, and possibly a missing relative. Disparate things are very different from each other.

If you're trenchant, it means you think or say smart, sharply worded things that cut right to the heart of the matter. A trenchant observation is one that makes people scratch their chins thoughtfully, or wince with embarrassment for whomever you're talking about, or both. The word is often used to describe political commentary or cultural criticism. One person known for her trenchant wit was the author and critic

Joking that your dead grandmother "never looked better" could inject some levity, or frivolity, into her funeral, but your relatives might find your joke inappropriate to the occasion.Levity literally means "lightness," and it's often an attempt to inject some lightness or humor into an otherwise somber situation. Telling your Aunt Edna a joke while she recuperates from a skiing accident could provide the levity needed to brighten her mood. Yet levity is often used to describe humor that's not a