week 17

Something fallacious is a mistake that comes from too little information or unsound sources. Predictions that the whole state of California will snap off from the rest of North America and float away have proven to be fallacious — for now, anyway.
Fallacious comes ultimately from the Latin fallax, "deceptive." The word fallacious might describe an intentional deception or a false conclusion coming from bad science or incomplete understanding. "Her assumption that anyone that old — over 20 — coul

Manifold is a smarty-pants way to say "varied," "many," or "multiple." There are many good reasons to expand your vocabulary, so you could say the benefits of learning new words are manifold.
Manifold sounds like "many fold," which is what it is — something with many features, like a wallet with lots of folds so stuffed with junk that makes you sit funny when it's in your back pocket. As an adjective, manifold loves to appear in books, like Mrs. Gryce in Edith Wharton's "The House of Mirth," who

If you put on big fake feet, stomp through your muddy backyard and tell everyone you saw Bigfoot fixing a steak on your grill, you are playing a hoax on your friends.
Hoax is believed to be a shortened version of hocus pocus, thus conveying the feeling of trickery and sleight of hand. April First, also known as April Fools' Day, is a day of hoaxes. Successful hoaxes in history: Orson Welles' War-of-the-Worlds radio broadcast in 1938 and the alien autopsy film footage made public in the 1990s.

If you are gullible, the joke is on you because you are easily fooled.
It is thought that gullible might be derived from the verb gull, meaning "to swallow." This would be a funny coincidence as gullible describes an overly trusting person who tends to swallow the stories he hears whole. The related word, gull, can be used as a noun "don't be such a gull!" or as a verb "you can't gull me into believing that!"

If a restaurant is a consummate example of fine dining, you might say there's nothing more to say about fine dining that what this restaurant represents. Consummate means complete or finished.
Consummate can be used to describe something good or bad: consummate joy, a consummate liar. To consummate means to bring something to completion, but it often refers specifically to making a marriage complete by having sexual relations. The adjective is pronounced KÄN-sə-mit, but the verb is pronounced KÄ

Fraught means filled with something — often something bad. Your Thanksgiving was fraught with awkward moments when your family saw your blue hair, and it only got worse when you told them you'd quit law school to join the circus.

The word deploy is mainly used in military contexts and to refer to the strategic arrangement of fighting forces.To deploy means more than just dispersing troops, however — there is usually a specific formation in mind, consistent with military strategies. And you can deploy nonmilitary assets, too, like accounting teams before an IRS audit.

When you concoct something, you mix up different ingredients. If you want to become a mad scientist or a wizard, you'll have to learn how to concoct strange potions.
If the word concoction makes you think of steaming caldrons or liquids bubbling in test tubes, you’ll be amused to know that it comes from a Latin word for “digestion.” Yum! On summer days, children sometimes concoct imaginative stews from grass, leaves and dirt. They may also concoct lies to explain why they tried feeding such conc

The adjective impeccable describes something or someone without any flaws. A stand-up comedian needs impeccable timing for his jokes to work.
The adjective impeccable refers to something or someone without marking or error — but it can also mean to be spotless or clean.

A labyrinth is a structure with many connected paths or passages in which it is hard to find your way. In figurative use, a labyrinth is a complicated situation: our tax code is a labyrinth of rules and regulations.
In Greek mythology, the Labyrinth was the structure built for King Minos of Crete to confine the Minotaur, a monster with the head of a bull and the body of a man. The word maze is a near synonym for labyrinth, and is also used figuratively, as in, "After war broke out, trying to fig

It's possible to perpetrate a good deed, but not likely. That's because perpetrate means to commit or be responsible for something — usually something mischievous or bad.
If you manage to slip a whoopee cushion under your teacher's rear without her seeing it, then you've perpetrated a classic prank. But if you use your wily ways to break into the bank's safe, then you've just turned yourself into "a felony-class perpetrator." So do yourself a favor and stick to perpetrating lesser crimes.

If you are interviewing employees for your new pet store, you may want to ask if they are resourceful. If they are, it means they are good at problem solving, and this could come in very handy.

When you evaluate something, you're making a judgment, one that most likely results from some degree of analysis.

Sometimes you might feel so happy about something you could just burst. This is the time to exult, or rejoice, and you might show your great happiness by laughing, dancing, and shouting with pure joy.To exult means to express your joy in some visible way. Some people exult in a sedate manner, maybe just enjoying their happiness quietly within themselves. Others are more emotional, perhaps expressing their triumph in a loud or physical manner. When you break the word down into its Latin parts, th

If you want to surprise your mom with a sweatshirt, but don't know her size, it might take an act of subterfuge, like going through her closet, to find it out. Subterfuge is the use of tricky actions to hide, or get something.
It's pronounced "SUB-ter-fyooj." As a countable noun, a subterfuge is a tricky action or device: She employed a very clever subterfuge to get the information she needed.

If you call someone assiduous, it's a compliment. It means they're careful, methodical and very persistent. Good detectives are classically assiduous types.Although we tend to think of sedentary types as being the very opposite of assiduous ones, many assiduous activities (like writing, thinking, or detective work) are best done sitting in a chair.

Something that's murky is dim, gloomy or hard to see through clearly. Think of the dark fog around a haunted house or the cloudy, muddy water in a swamp.

Take the noun, enigma, for something that is a puzzle or a mystery. Why do you have to learn difficult words like this? That is an enigma.enigma refers to something or someone that is mysterious, puzzling or difficult to figure out. As a funny-sounding word with an interesting meaning, many things have been named enigma such as a rock band, a video game, a rollercoaster ride, and a very famous coding machine used in World War II.