Interesting words

They work in a wide variety of environments and are supremely adaptable.

The McMahon Bill excluded the military from control of atomic energy, except as the technology was directly applicable to weapons, propulsion, and other military needs.

Farming accounts for one-third of the country’s economy, although only 12 percent of its land is arable.

From the brand’s Raw Earth Collection, the bowl is fashioned from corn and bamboo and reinforced with melamine, and is fully biodegradable.

A communicable disease that is prevalent in 1% of the population is an epidemic, according to the World Health Organization.

Dr. Jean-Jacques Muyembe, director of Congo’s National Institute for Biomedical Research, said Ebola is dangerous but it is also curable with proper treatment.

“The Viacom turnaround is delivering demonstrable and measurable results. We are quickly evolving into much more than a U.S. based pay-TV company.”

Father’s voice shook with conviction that was discernable even through the television’s fuzzy speakers.

These non-career employees handle large workloads but are often treated as an expendable source of labor.

A highly improbable event that's not explicable by natural laws—the definition of a miracle—happens every day in golf.

This, in turn, caused a spark, which caused some flammable material to burst into flames.

The room where the food was stored was as impregnable as a fort.

Robin Williams' performance in the original movie was iconic and inimitable.

I was doing my best to catch up in my other classes, but some days the workload felt insurmountable.

She made the decorated pins herself, melting and molding malleable plastic into interesting shapes, seated at a picnic table in her backyard a few weekends ago.

We accept as a given that art — “great” art — is permanent, precious, the product of personal power, to which Mr. Irwin says: No. He proposes, instead, that art is mutable and conditional.

She was boating in navigable, public waters – the equivalent of being in the public road.

Mr. Rein described Mr. Blum as a client like any other, but one who believed in legal activism, and said his cases were not done pro bono but for a fee, which may be negotiable.

He looks at me with a rage so palpable it fills the space between us with fire.

She wants everyone to be pliable and easy to control.

Water is not potable, not even in the capital city, Funafuti.

Batteries able to store power from renewable sources lessen dependence on fossil fuels.

By the time my wife and I purchased the building, the centre was caved in, and there was not a scrap of wood that was salvageable.

Both are "physical" energies, subject to the law of conservation, and as such transmutable one into the other.

“This is really not a viable, sustainable solution to addressing the wildfire risk from power lines,” he says.

“We can’t live without bread here,” said Bruno Lanterne, 55, a hairdresser, as he left the bakery, two baguettes tucked under his arm.

After her day in the orchard, she dotes on her three-year-old daughter, whose black hair she carefully combs back and secures with tiny barrettes.

While vinyl records were still the most popular music format, the Walkman—originally the “Sound-About” in the United States—played much smaller cassettes and was small enough to fit in a purse or pocket.

The ballet offers no chance to develop empathy for or understanding of Amélie, played as a powerfully seductive coquette by Ms. Osipova.

Simply listed as potato croquettes, the small plate arrives as a surprise: golden squiggles of fried batter dusted with what appears to be powdered sugar, but is in fact duck fat powder.

Their shirts were tucked neatly into waistbands with bright yellow epaulettes on the shoulders and caps dipped low over their faces.

She longed to touch that fur, to rub her cheeks against it, but of course she never did; for it was the grossest breach of etiquette imaginable to touch another person’s daemon.

Those at the deforestation frontier do not follow the publication of decrees and laws in the government’s official gazette or read the details of legal changes reported in major newspapers.

The august personage in purple paused at sight of the slender, blue-frocked figure, and raising a gold-mounted lorgnette to her eyes deliberately inspected it.

A lunette window near the ceiling splashed the canvas with light at an angle similar to that of the implicit light source in Caravaggio’s composition.

It was as though the masked wizards on the ground were puppeteers, and the people above them were marionettes operated by invisible strings that rose from the wands into the air.

He knew there were true dungeons down in the castle cellars—oubliettes and torture chambers and dank pits where huge black rats scrabbled in the darkness.

With a palette balanced in my left hand, I press the tip of my brush into the gray splotch of acrylic paint.

Using a micro pipette, we injected a tiny drop of oil containing fluorescent dyes into a cell.

Reyes, with her wide-eyed gaze, seems wholly supported by the music, whirled into multiple pirouettes on its airy currents, while Hallberg evinces a graver joy, balancing perfectly measured phrasing with unhurried technical precision.

Critics called these women “suffragettes,” a word intended to be disparaging, but the women embraced the term as one of power and rebellion.

The short biographies, or “vignettes,” dropped between chapters sketch a relationship between a physical book and its owner.

Make vinaigrette: In a food processor, combine garlic, half the lemon juice, half the zest, half the mint, 1 cup peas, half the cilantro, half the basil, olive oil, vinegar and mayo.

But the story is much more complicated than that—and there are unintended consequences of our movement to vilify trans fats. —Forbes Dec 31, 2014

Still, the new cases may not mollify critics who question why no top Wall Street executive went to prison over the 2008 financial crisis. —New York Times Apr 9, 2015

Modi’s apology did not pacify members of opposition parties, who staged a symbolic walkout of the parliamentary session, wearing black cloths over their mouths. —Los Angeles Times Dec 5, 2014

Inconsistent planning and politics have so stultified Nasa, after all, that America today has no way to launch people into space. —The Guardian Jun 26, 2014

CEOs are worshipped as rock stars, if not nearly deified. —Time Mar 4, 2015

But it still reflects an impulse to reify or personify what is really a technological process, not an individual agent. —Slate Feb 5, 2015

He’s never satisfied that he’s done his best; he continually strives to maximize his abilities and expand his possibilities. —Forbes Apr 23, 2015

Tension was always building inside the volcano, considered the country’s most dangerous, a pressure that intensified with each foundational shift in the earth. —Washington Post Apr 18, 2015

Two new volumes exemplify how some comic strips and books not only ducked the trash, but manage to remain meaningful decades later. —New York Times Feb 18, 2015

You have invoked the spirit of Heaven to sanctify a person's belief that what they are doing is righteous. —Newsweek Summer 2014

To qualify, students can pay a $45 fee to verify their identity using a webcam and an official photo identification card. —Washington Post Apr 22, 2015

“You’ll relegate me to the past, the relic of another era, my ideas, my attainments, as ossified as the stone itself,” he fulminates. —New York Times Mar 15, 2015

Just as Scrooge became synonymous with miser, and Peter Pan became a syndrome, Spock was dispassion personified. —New York Times Feb 27, 2015