Fatima Rahim
Period 2
September 13, 2010
Vocabulary 1
Jingoist - the spirit, policy, or practice of jingoes; bellicose chauvinism
Lothario - a man who obsessively seduces and deceives women
Maverick - an unbranded range animal; an independent person who refuses to follow the usual
standards or customs of the group
Nemesis - something that a person cannot conquer, achieve, etc;
an opponent or rival whom a person cannot best or overcome
Philanderer - to be sexually unfaithful to one's wife
Philippic - any of the orations delivered by Demosthenes, the Athenian
orator, in the 4th century b.c., against Philip, king of Macedon.
Procrustean - pertaining to or suggestive of Procrustes; tending to produce conformity by violent
or arbitrary means.
Protean - readily assuming different forms or characters; extremely variable
Pyrrhic - consisting of two short or unaccented syllables
Quixotic - extravagantly chivalrous or romantic; visionary, impractical, or impracticable;
impulsive and often rashly unpredictable
Saturnine - sluggish in temperament; gloomy; taciturn
Solecism - a nonstandard or ungrammatical usage, as unflammable and they was
Spoonerism - the transposition of initial or other sounds of words, usually by accident, as in a blushing
crow for a crushing blow
Sybarite - a person devoted to luxury and pleasure
Tawdry - gaudy; showy and cheap
1) The jingoist city wanted to go to war against the United States because they favored the
Chinese.
2) My neighbor, Mr. Borano, is a lothario because he is now going on his third wife in two years.
3) The man who was on strike at our office was infuriated for being called a maverick.
4) I instantly shuddered as I walked in the room and saw my nemesis standing right across from
me.
5) I shook my head in disgust as I walked in on a philanderer committing sins right in his wife’s
bedroom.
6) The teacher had an expressionless look on her face as she graded the students on their Philippic
orals.
7) Our past president was a procrustean who never listened to the view of our citizens or other
respective others.
8) I did not like the main character of this book because he was protean, never listening but
assuming.
9) The war in this book was a definite pyrrhic because the number of men they lost was tragic.
10) I used to be best friends with her but as soon as we got to high school she became very quixotic.
11) For some reason I was not having a good day and I was feeling very saturnine.
12) When I visited Texas this summer, I realized quickly that they speak very solecistically.
13) Spoonerism is something that happens to everybody at least once a month.
14) My uncle moved to Hawaii because he said the United States is too stressful and he is a sybarite.
15) The necklace my boyfriend bought for me looked very tawdry and I was not impressed.
