English Vocabulary March 2025 Flashcards
(15 cards)
define:
to dragoon smb
You can talk about people dragooning others into something, meaning they’re forcing them into it, as if with highly trained and lethally armed cavalry soldiers.
“Dragoon” is rare but easily understood in context.
It’s perfect when you want to sound academic or amusingly specific, compared to more familiar terms like “rope,” “draft,” “railroad,” “coerce,” “bulldoze,” and “twist their arm.”
Talk about people dragooning other people, often into things, or into doing things.
Your tone can be quite serious: “They dragooned me into this godawful trip.” Or not: “They dragooned me into watching Hot Tub Time Machine.”
define:
to gestate (vi/vt)
In a literal sense, when a living thing gestates inside its mother, it’s growing and developing, getting ready to be born.
And in a figurative sense, when work, ideas, and projects gestate, they develop slowly and thoughtfully before they go public or take their final form, as if they’re living creatures soon to be born.
The idea had to gestate.
Writing gets better if you let it gestate a while.
He gestated the idea.
We gestated our writing.
define:
to debase smt
When you say that someone or something debases something, you mean they corrupt that thing, making it less honorable.
He’s debasing the U.S. Constitution.
They debased their own standards.
He debased the language itself.
She’s debasing that whole culture.
define:
obiter dictum, obiter dicta (pl)
OH bit er DICK tum
An obiter dictum is an opinionated but unauthoritative comment that somebody makes, often about how something should be done.
This narrator’s obiter dicta are driving me nuts.
This narrator keeps peppering the story with obiter dicta.
No one is reading her daily obiter dicta over on X.
define:
to predicate (intr)
PRED uh kate
When one thing is predicated on another thing, it rests on it or depends on it in a logical way.
Democracy is predicated on an informed electorate.
The economy in the antebellum south was predicated on slavery.
The success of modern suburbs is predicated on constant growth.
define:
to sate smt
To sate people, or to sate their desires or hungers, is to fill them or satisfy them either completely or too much.
At dinner, he was sated.
My sweet tooth can be sated only by Twizzlers.
In the library, his curiosity was sated.
I was sated with mac and cheese.
We were sated with all the new gossip.
define:
astute
uh STOOT
Astute people are quick to notice everything, and too smart to be tricked. And astute things, like comments, are smart, keen, observant, and practical.
He’s astute at foreseeing problems.
She’s astute at reading the room.
define:
gilt edged
To gild something is to add a thin layer of gold to it. So, gilt-edged things, such as dinner plates, book pages, or playing cards, are coated all around the edges with gold.
And in a metaphorical sense, gilt-edged things are fancy and elegant in a subtle way.
Specifically in the stock market, because the first bond certificates were printed with golden edges, gilt-edged stocks, bonds, and securities are extremely safe to invest in.
You might talk literally about gilt-edged books, pages, tableware, frames, mirrors, cocktail dresses and so on.
Or, get abstract, and talk about gilt-edged people, reputations, lifestyles, or opportunities.
define:
kismet
KIZZ met
“Kismet” traces back through Turkish to an Arabic word for “fate, lot, or portion,” and further back to an Arabic word for “divide.” So, kismet is the specific little piece of life or luck that the universe seems to have set aside to give to you.
While destiny can deal you a bad hand and fate can lead you to your doom, kismet can give you the talent you need to succeed and put you in the right place at the right time.
It was a moment of kismet.
It felt like kismet when they bumped into each other again.
It was kismet when they found each other again after thirty years.
define:
laggardly
LAG urd lee
We use “laggardly” to mean “moving too slowly, like a person who can’t keep up.”
You might complain about literally laggardly things and people, like a laggardly Internet connection, or a laggardly clump of teenagers blocking a busy hallway.
Or get more abstract and complain about laggardly wages, economies, bureaucracies, paces, progress, responses, thoughts, storytelling, etc.
You could also complain that things or people are laggardly at something, or laggardly in doing something.
define:
prelude
PRELL yood
We use “prelude” to mean “a beginning or introduction to something else: possibly a cause of it, or the first sign or signal of it, or the first step of its existence.”
Between classmates, a smile can be the prelude to a friendship.
define:
stolid
STALL id
So, if you describe people (or the things they do or say) as stolid, you mean they’re showing no emotion at all, as if there’s not much going on inside their hearts or minds.
More loosely, if you describe things as stolid, you could mean they’re dull and boring: not new, not thrilling, not flashy, and not exciting.
“their stolid grimaces,” “her stolid support,” “her stolid opposition,” “his stolid reply.”
define:
to straiten smt
To straiten things or people is to squeeze them: to push them into tight, narrow, awkward situations, often financial ones (where they barely have enough money to get by).
Most often, we use it to talk about tight, narrow, squeezed, uncomfortable financial situations: we talk about people being in straitened times or straitened circumstances, or having straitened means or straitened finances.
define:
windlass
to windlass smt
A device for lifting and lowering something heavy attached to a rope by winding the rope around a cylinder. A windlass on a ship, for example, can lift and lower an anchor; a windlass on a well can lift and lower the bucket of water.
“Windlass” is a verb, too, meaning “to lift or lower things with a windlass,” as in “They windlassed the anchor” or “They windlassed a load of coal from the bottom of the mineshaft.”
That brings us to the figurative sense that we’ll focus on. To windlass something out of someone is to get it out of them by working steadily, as if it’s a heavy weight that you’re moving by winding a rope.
define:
to glean smt
Since the 1300s in English, we’ve used “glean” to mean “to make a second pass through a field of crops: to go back through it to pick up all the leftover bits that the first round of harvesters didn’t already pick up.”
The meaning of “glean” soon expanded to other crops beyond corn and wheat, and then to other, abstract things, like pieces of advice or information.
Today, to glean things is to gather them or pick them up bit by bit, as if you’re gathering leftover crops.
Things we glean are usually bits of information, like tips, knowledge, advice, and lessons. When people say things like “What do you hope to glean from this interview?” and “I didn’t glean much from that book,” it’s understood that they’re talking about gleaning some kind of valuable information.
