Month: May 2007

#2 – Abrogate

Dictionary.com has a great service called “Word of the day”. I use to subscribe to it until I realized I would skip days. I ended up with about 200 days that I was behind. I still recommend it if you can keep up.

abrogate AB-ruh-gayt, transitive verb:
1. To annul or abolish by an authoritative act.
2. To put an end to; to do away with.

He also knows that failure to secure a clear unionist majority will leave the UUP [Ulster Unionist Party] leader vulnerable to those pressing for an assembly manifesto which would effectively threaten to abrogate the agreement.
— “Politeness could not mask gulf within the UUP”, Irish Times, May 20, 1998

Source: Dictionary.com/Word of the Day Archive/abrogate

Abjure – The First Word

I just noticed that it’s been almost a month since I posted last.

So I think I’ll try something new to keep my postings going. Everyday (theoretically), I will post the meanings to those 100 words list.

Most likely, I’ll use Dictionary.com for the meanings. Without further ado, the first word is:

abjure

abjure ab-JUR, transitive verb:
1. To renounce under oath.
2. To renounce or reject solemnly; to recant; to reject; repudiate.
3. To abstain from; to shun.

abjure, on his knees, his heretical views that the Earth moves around the Sun.
— Alan Gurney, Below the Convergence

100 Words Every High School Graduate Should Know, And I barely know

I just saw this list of words that they say every parent should know. Since I’m having my first child here in a month, I thought it best to brush on this list since I know about 40 of those words.

Link to 100 Words Every High School Graduate Should Know published by Houghton Mifflin Company

Here are the words again: 

abjure
abrogate
abstemious
acumen
antebellum
auspicious
belie
bellicose
bowdlerize
chicanery
chromosome
churlish
circumlocution
circumnavigate
deciduous
deleterious
diffident
enervate
enfranchise
epiphany
equinox
euro
evanescent
expurgate
facetious
fatuous
feckless
fiduciary
filibuster
gamete
gauche
gerrymander
hegemony
hemoglobin
homogeneous
hubris
hypotenuse
impeach
incognito
incontrovertible
inculcate
infrastructure
interpolate
irony
jejune
kinetic
kowtow
laissez faire
lexicon
loquacious
lugubrious
metamorphosis
mitosis
moiety
nanotechnology
nihilism
nomenclature
nonsectarian
notarize
obsequious
oligarchy
omnipotent
orthography
oxidize
parabola
paradigm
parameter
pecuniary
photosynthesis
plagiarize
plasma
polymer
precipitous
quasar
quotidian
recapitulate
reciprocal
reparation
respiration
sanguine
soliloquy
subjugate
suffragist
supercilious
tautology
taxonomy
tectonic
tempestuous
thermodynamics
totalitarian
unctuous
usurp
vacuous
vehement
vortex
winnow
wrought
xenophobe
yeoman
ziggurat