| appose |
to place next to or side by side; juxtapose. |
| astringent |
a substance or drug that contracts body tissue and slows discharge or secretion. |
| cynosure |
a thing or person that is the center of attention and admiration. |
| denigrate |
to deny the worth of; sneer at; belittle. |
| diatribe |
a bitter, abusive attack in speech or writing. |
| dissimulate |
to hide one's true feelings, intentions, or the like by pretense or hypocrisy. |
| epicure |
a person who has cultivated tastes, as in food or wine; connoisseur. |
| espouse |
to take up, hold, or commit oneself to (a cause, idea, or belief); embrace. |
| exegesis |
a critical explanation or interpretive analysis, especially of religious texts. |
| extirpate |
to get rid of completely, as if by pulling up the roots; root out. |
| inflection |
change that occurs in the form of words to show a grammatical characteristic such as the tense of a verb, the number of a noun, or the degree of an adjective or adverb. |
| peroration |
the concluding part of a speech in which there is a summing up of the principal points. |
| profligate |
totally given over to immoral and shameful pursuits; dissolute. |
| surcingle |
a girth or belt that wraps around the body of a horse to secure a saddle, pack, or the like to its back. |
| travesty |
something so grotesque or inferior as to seem a parody. |