v. hesitate as if in fear or doubt; shy away or be overcome with fright or astonishment
E.g. Just take a step back and boggle at those numbers.
n. headdress for men and boys; cap; a covering for the head, worn by women, usually protecting the back and sides of the head, but no part of the forehead
E.g. I told him in a new series of whispers, that he might as well buy me a gold gown and a silver bonnet at once.
n. small room, especially in which a lady may retire to be alone, or to receive intimate friends; a lady's private room
E.g. I know a woman whose first-floor rooms are very artistically furnished in blue and gray, whose boudoir is in rose and ivory, and whose sewing room is in softest gray.
n. rounded rock lying on surface of ground or embedded in soil
E.g. In geology, a boulder is a rock with grain size of usually no less than 256 mm (10 inches) diameter.
v. refrain from buying or using
E.g. To put pressure on grape growers to stop using pesticides that harmed the farm workers' health, Cesar Chavez called for consumers to boycott grapes.
n. fight; noisy quarrel or fight; loud party
E.g. Last week, two local men were killed in a brawl.
a. having loud, usually harsh, resonant sound; shameless
E.g. His entire premiership has become an exercise in brazen dishonesty.
n. young birds hatched at one time; young children of same mother, especially if nearly of same age
E.g. Only this insects produce one brood a year, whereas others produce seven or eight ones a year in our research.
n. creek; stream
E.g. At the bottom of the hill ran a little brook, and on the opposite side of it was a bank.
v. graze; skim or glance at casually
E.g. "How now, brown cow, browsing in the green, green grass." I remember lines of verse that I came across while I browse through the poetry section of bookstore.
a. not having sensation; senseless; inanimate; unconscious; without intelligence
E.g. That dog is a dangerous brute; it bites people.
n. small lightweight carriage; drawn by a single horse
E.g. A fine way to travel through Quebec City in Canada is by a horse buggy.
v. cause to curve outward; swell up; stick out; protrude
E.g. When the inserted balloon is filled with water, they bulge out in a variety of shapes.
n. humming or droning sound; a buzz; jumble or confused heap; confusion
E.g. Dressed in a yellow and black jumper like a charismatic bumble bee, she buzzes around the stage.
n. over-regulated administrative system
E.g. The Internal Revenue Service is the ultimate bureaucracy; taxpayers wasted so much paper filling out IRS forms to comply with the Paper-work Reduction Act.
n. hiding place; secret store of valuables or money
E.g. The detectives followed the suspect until he led them to the cache where he had stored his loot.
n. any plant of the order Cactacae, as the prickly pear and the night-blooming cereus
E.g. A novelty to foreign visitors, the cactus is as common on the Mexican plate as potatoes or rice in many other parts of the world.
n. corpse; dead body, especially one intended for dissection
E.g. In some states, it is illegal to dissect cadaver.
n. silvery, moderately hard metallic element
E.g. We need some calcium every day; it is essential element for bone health.
a. capable of performing calculations; shrewd; crafty
E.g. The savings from eliminating redundancy is not being subtracted in calculating the true cost.
a. emotionally hardened; unfeeling; toughened
E.g. He had worked in the hospital for so many years that he was callous to the suffering in the wards.
v. exploit natural surroundings to disguise something; conceal
E.g. In order to rescue Han Solo, Princess Leia decided to camouflage herself in the helmet and cloak of a space bandit.
a. related to dogs; dog-like; affecting or derived from dogs
E.g. They will then incubate the viruses in canine tissue cells to see how well they grow.
n. law or rule; decision, regulation, code, or constitution made by authority; books of the Bible officially accepted; a group of literary works
E.g. She kept the durable canon of American short fiction.
n. inclination or slope; slanted or oblique surface; jargon, especially of thieves; dialect
E.g. I strayed from my own voice and slipped into jargon, cant, or false sentiment.
v. leap or jump about in a sprightly manner; skip; spring
E.g. For herself, she did nothing but caper about in the front chambers, jump on and off the bedsteads.
n. unit of weight for precious stones; measure of fineness of gold
E.g. He gave her a three carat diamond mounted in a gold band.
n. the American reindeer, especially the common or woodland species
E.g. I think I'm going to finally go on a big hunt, and I think a caribou is the way to go.
n. destruction of life; savage and excessive killing of many people
E.g. The film The Killing Fields vividly depicts the carnage wreaked by Pol Pot's followers in Cambodia.
n. agent which brings about chemical change while it remains unaffected and unchanged
E.g. Many chemical reactions cannot take place without the presence of a catalyst.
v. supply what is needed or desired; provide food professionally for special occasion
E.g. The chef was happy to cater to the tastes of his highly sophisticated clientele.
n. private meeting of members of a party to select officers or determine policy
E.g. At the opening of Congress, the members of the Democratic Party held a caucus to elect the Majority Leader of the House and the Party Whip.
a. offhand or casual; given to haughty disregard of others
E.g. The disguised prince resented the cavalier way in which the palace guards treated him. How dared they handle a member of the royal family so unceremoniously!
n. overseer of morals; official responsible for removal of objectionable or sensitive content
E.g. Soldiers dislike having their mail read by a censor but understand the need for this precaution.
n. branched, decorative lighting fixture that holds a number of bulbs or candles and is suspended from a ceiling
E.g. They hung a plug-in chandelier from a hook in the ceiling, and created a soothing eating area away from the kitchen.
a. in utter disorder; lacking visible order or organization
E.g. He tried to bring order into the chaotic state of affairs.
n. person, especially an older or married woman, who accompanies a young unmarried woman in public; a guide or companion to assist activity
E.g. His wife does not speak on her own in public, she says only what she is told what to say, and she had to have chaperon in her interview.
n. game in which participants act out a word or phrase for others to guess
E.g. In the classic game of charades, students mime action verbs while the others watch.
n. divine gift; great popular charm or appeal of political leader
E.g. Political commentators have deplored the importance of a candidate's charisma in these days of television campaigning.
a. possessing an extraordinary ability to attract; of or pertaining to a charisma
E.g. The death of Hannah Schneider, movie-star beautiful and charismatic, is the mystery at the heart of the novel.