A "Malign Influence" in Iraq: Ten Words in the News You Need to Know

In this week's news, a bus fire in India kills 40, in Egypt, the reemergence of a powerful member of the regime of former President Hosni Mubarak signals a return to old ways, Washington prepares for a state visit from Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, investigations into the new health care law focus on misleading assertions made by Obama, and Twitter adds images in advance of a potential IPO.

To fully understand these unfolding news stories, learn ten key words taken from Washington Post, San Francisco Chronicle, and New York Times coverage.
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Full list of words from this list:

words only definitions & notes
  1. inferno
    a very intense and uncontrolled fire
    An overnight bus crashed into a highway barrier and burst into flames Wednesday in southern India, killing 45 passengers who were locked inside the cabin — many of them burned alive in the inferno, officials said.
    -- India bus inferno kills 45; many burned alive, The San Francisco Chronicle, Oct. 30, 2013
    When you see inferno in a news story about a fire, know that this is not a trivial blaze, but rather a fast, furious flame that's difficult to fight.
  2. quintessential
    representing the perfect example of a class or quality
    But critics of General Tohamy say he was the quintessential Mubarak man, the handpicked guardian of the system of corruption and impunity that was a central grievance of the revolution of January 2011.
    -- Ousted General in Egypt Is Back, as Islamists’ Foe, The New York Times, Oct. 30, 2013
    Notice essence or even essential inside the adjective quintessential, and you'll have a clue that it describes the very nature of something's being. The word dates back to alchemists' belief that after earth, wind, air, and fire, there was a fifth (or in Latin, quint) element, or essence: the purest one.
  3. signal
    communicate by means of an action, gesture, or sound
    And his swift and silent return, the critics say, signals a restoration of the old order after the military takeover.
    -- Ousted General in Egypt Is Back, as Islamists’ Foe, The New York Times, Oct. 30, 2013
    Beware words like signal whose meanings, taken out of context, seem obvious. Here, we're used to signal meaning "a sign," or "to give a sign," as in "The traffic cop signaled the car to stop." In this context it's being used in a passive sense, to mean "to show or foretell," as in "The car's speeding up signaled to the cop that he might want to jump out of the way."
  4. gloss
    give a deceptive explanation or excuse for
    ...the disconnect between Obama’s statements and the cancellations reflects how elected officials sometimes gloss over nuances when making a political argument.
    -- Obama accused of breaking promise to consumers as health plans cancel policies, The Washington Post, Oct. 29, 2013
    Gloss is a good word to know when reading about how a politician's promise materializes as actual law. In this context it means "to skip over or deceive." No connection to strawberry-scented lip products favored by preteens.
  5. blunt
    characterized by directness in manner or speech
    A bipartisan group of foreign policy leaders in the Senate warned in unusually blunt terms Tuesday that Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki may be pulling his country back toward civil war.
    -- Senators warn Obama that Maliki may be leading Iraq back toward civil war, The Washington Post, Oct. 29, 2013
    Blunt means "dull" in the context of knives and "direct" in the context of communication. It's a word not often used to describe domestic or international diplomacy, where great subtlety is the name of the game.
  6. malign
    evil or harmful in nature or influence
    Maliki’s Shiite-led government is too dominated by Iran’s “malign influence” and its mistreatment of the Sunnis is pushing that minority group toward extremism, the senators charged.
    -- Senators warn Obama that Maliki may be leading Iraq back toward civil war, The Washington Post, Oct. 29, 2013
    As a verb, malign means "to say something harmful about someone else." Here calling Iran's "influence" over Iraq "malign" turns out to be just another way to say "bad influence" without sounding like a parent begging a teen to find new friends.
  7. grapple
    work hard to come to terms with or deal with something
    But the new line of attack comes as the administration continues to grapple with its problem-plagued Web site, HealthCare.gov.
    -- Obama accused of breaking promise to consumers as health plans cancel policies, The Washington Post, Oct. 29, 2013
    In the movies, when a bank robber scales a rope with a hook on its end that he's tossed up to the roof of a building, the hook at the end of the rope is a grappling hook. As a verb, grapple means "holding something fast," as a grappling hook would do. It suggests a wrestling match or a fight, so when it's used here to refer to a problematic website, you know that this is not just a few surface fixes, but rather a moving target that must be pinned down.
  8. mislead
    take someone in the wrong direction or give wrong directions
    While Republicans are insisting that the president misled the public about the effects of the law....
    -- Obama accused of breaking promise to consumers as health plans cancel policies, The Washington Post, Oct. 29, 2013
    If you're following Republicans' new line of attack on the Affordable Care Act, mislead is a good word to have under your belt. It's also a good example of a word's whose meaning you can figure out by looking at morphology clues: mis- means "bad or wrong" (think misery) and lead means to take someone somewhere. Thus mislead means to take someone somewhere bad, give wrong directions, or just bad information.
  9. contradiction
    opposition between two conflicting forces or ideas
    ...others who are sympathetic to the administration said the seeming contradiction shows the difference between political talking points intended to sell a controversial law and the intricacies of the health policies that underlie it.
    -- Obama accused of breaking promise to consumers as health plans cancel policies, The Washington Post, Oct. 29, 2013
    From contra, meaning "against," and diction meaning speech, contradiction refers to two or more statements that can't both be true. With Republicans up in arms about the contradiction between Obama's promises about the Affordable Care Act and its roll out, contradiction is a word to get used to.
  10. stream
    something continuously flowing
    Twitter’s principal form of advertising, known as a sponsored tweet, also appears in the stream of messages from users, and advertisers can post sponsored tweets with images in them.
    With a Twitter initial public offering on the horizon, it's hard to remember a time when media wasn't delivered via stream, but whatever the valuation of the company, they have been a party to the change in the way we ingest (and digest) information.
Created on Wed Oct 30 08:25:51 EDT 2013 (updated Thu Nov 14 10:14:18 EST 2013)

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