English Flashcards
People or things that are kind of a mess (wrinkled clothes, knotted hair, chaotic house)
Disheveled, slovenly, unkempt.
Showing no sentimentalism or compassion.
Ruthless, uncompassionate
E.g. If you want to cut down on the clutter in your apartment, you can’t be sentimental about it. You have to be ruthless and throw out anything that is not essential.
A behavior or act full or pure evil
Wicked, diabolic, ill, spiteful
Describe a person so immersed in his bubble that doesn’t mind about others, like a woman putting on make up while driving on a highway, antonym of considerate.
Reckless, inconsiderate.
To erase or destroy completely so that there is nothing left, e.g. text, hope, an opponent, or all traces of your presence. The action of making something completely gone.
Obliterate (completely gone) Decimate and eradicate are valid alternatives. Decimate means more like a drastic reduction in number.
Absolutely absurd, almost like ridicule.
Preposterous: to a vegetarian, the idea of eating a 52-ounce T-bone steak would seem preposterous — absolutely absurd.
When the word preposterous was first used, it meant reversing the normal order of things — putting what was last first, and vice versa. Imagine putting on your underwear over your pants and you’ll see that there’s a kind of absurdity in something that’s backwards, which is why preposterous came to mean “ridiculous.”
Use of force to make something happen
Coercion: like a bully using force to get money from a kid, or a policeman using force to get information.
If you want to describe something that smells absolutely rotten, almost offensive you say it:
Reeks, stinks, smells.
Having feelings of being worried, anxious and afraid about what might happen
Be on the edge, be edgy or uptight.
E.g. My employee was feeling extremely on the edge when I announced we would be cutting costs.
To make something worse, aggravate or intensify negatively (in a formal way)
Exacerbate, worsen, e.g. the pandemic only exacerbated existing health care system deficiencies.
Having many complexly arranged elements, like the wiring of a mother board or the plot of a complicated movie.
Intricate
Lacking brilliance, uninteresting, dull, meh. E.g. “Investors starting selling shares after ___________ earning reports”.
Lackluster
Alternate expression for Everything, All-Inclusive
The whole shebang.
The force with which makes a body start moving. The force that gets something moving.
Impetus: don’t let it lose impetus.
Cheat someone by not returning the right amount of money. Rip off.
Short-change, rip off.
Ideas or arguments that don’t really matter. Talk about things that don’t matter. A pointless argument.
Moot point.
E.g.
If your airplane is crashing, whether or not your socks match is a moot point.
If you’re hoping to win the lottery and buy a vacation home but don’t win, the location of your vacation home is a moot point.
Knock buildings or things down, most times for construction projects, as in “erase” them.
Raze, bulldoze.
E.g. Raze trees or Raze an old building.
Adjective for something that happens “a lot” or “excessively”, abundantly.
Profusely, exhuberantly, copiously, abundantly.
E.g.
Old saying to express the entirety of something, all its parts.
Lock, stock, barrel.
E.g. She removed Christmas decorations lock, stock, barrel.
The phrase was inspired by an old joke about a rural Scotsman who takes his worn-out gun to be repaired. But it’s virtually beyond repair, and the gunsmith suggests he should simply buy a new one. The Scotsman replies that he’ll settle for a new stock, a new lock, and a new barrel—in other words, a whole new gun.
Another term for “an example of this is”
Case in point.
E.g. Copying docker files to a container is not an unusual task. Copying a configuration file to rest the behavior of a test image is a case in point.
An impressive amount of something, at a stupefying, astonishing, astounding, hard-to-believe level.
Staggering
From the verb stagger, meaning shock.
E.g. Investors lost staggering amounts of money as bitcoin lost value.
The way someone feels when caught in a lie, or make a mistake, or suddenly feel self-conscious for some reason.
Abashed / Embarrassé / envergonhado
E.g. He could help but feel abashed after getting caught lying.
A lot of options, like in excess or infinite.
A Plethora of, myriad, copious options.
Plethora acts as a noun, opposed to copious, profuse which act as adjectives.
E.g. She brought a plethora of desserts.
Scrape something in a way that it leaves a mark
Scuff, scratch.
Adjective for someone who doesn’t want to change points of view, and a similar one for someone stubbornly resistant to authority or control.
Adamant, stubborn, recalcitrant.
Describe a break from painful tasks
Reprieve, take a break, a breather.
Comprehend the meaning or nature of something.
Fathom, understand, comprehend something very enigmatic.
