Vocabulary Week 3

Alexandra Versluijs (s3711463)

1. Abundance
Definition: the situation in which there is more than enough of something
Original sentence: It has become impossible for ordinary scholars to keep abreast of
what’s available in this age of electronic abundance—though D-Lib Magazine, an
online publication, helps by highlighting new digital sources and collections, rather as
material libraries used to advertise their acquisition of a writer’s papers or a collection
of books with fine bindings.
3 new sentences:
We had wine in abundance
Grapes and olives grow in abundance in the valley.
We all seem to have an abundance of those plastic grocery bags.

2. Adept
Definition: having a natural ability to do something that needs skill
Original sentence: But in recent years—as anyone who regularly uses Google
knows—they have become more adept at asking questions, and the search
companies have apparently induced the largest proprietary sites to become more
responsive.
3 new sentences:
She's very adept at dealing with the media
He’s adept at making people feel at ease.
He was adept at painting aquarelles.

3. Boon
Definition: something that is very helpful and improves the quality of life
Original sentence: The online records of the Patent and Trademark Office are a boon
for anyone interested in its spectacular panorama of the brilliance and lunacy of
American tinkerers.
3 new sentences:
Guide dogs are a great boon to the partially sighted.
Spring rains are a boon to local farmers.
The effect was a boon for the organization.

4. Coalesce
Definition: to combine into a single group or thing
Original sentence: Soon, the present will become overwhelmingly accessible, but a
great deal of older material may never coalesce into a single database.
 3 new sentences:
The theory is that galaxies coalesced from smaller groupings of stars.
Four individual vehicles could coalesce into one robot.
The rebel units coalesced into one army to fight the invaders.

5. Conjure up
Definition: to make a picture or idea appear in someone's mind
Original sentence: It will result not in the infotopia that the prophets conjure up but in
one in a long series of new information ecologies, all of them challenging, in which
readers, writers, and producers of text have learned to survive.
3 new sentences:
The ceremony conjured up images of her past.
For some people, the word "England" may still conjure up images of pretty gardens
and tea parties.
He conjured up a picture of his childhood.

6. Deft
Definition: skilful, clever, or quick
Original sentence: A deft impresario, Eusebius mobilized a team of secretaries and
scribes to produce Bibles featuring his new study aid; in the three-thirties, the
emperor Constantine placed an order with Eusebius for fifty parchment codex Bibles
for the churches of his new city, Constantinople.
3 new sentences:
Her movements were deft and quick.
He's very deft at handling awkward situations.
She answered the journalist's questions with a deft touch.

7. Disseminating
Definition: to spread or give out news, information, ideas, etc. to many people
Original sentence: Throughout the Middle Ages, the great monastic libraries engaged
in the twin projects of accumulating large holdings and, in their scriptoria, making and
disseminating copies of key texts.
3 new sentences:
One of the organization's aims is to disseminate information about the disease.
Blogs are another method for people to disseminate information.
His main function was to publish a paper to disseminate the teachings of the church.

8. Elicited
Definition: to get or produce something, especially information or a reaction
Original sentence: Google’s projects, together with rival initiatives by Microsoft and
Amazon, have elicited millenarian prophecies about the possibilities of digitized
knowledge and the end of the book as we know it.
 3 new sentences:
Have you managed to elicit a response from them yet?
They were able to elicit the support of the public.
Much use is made of character catchphrases to elicit audience reaction.

9. Erudite
Definition: having or containing a lot of knowledge that is known by very few people
Original sentence: For less erudite souls, simpler techniques abridged the process of
looking for information much as Wikipedia does now.
3 new sentences:
He's the author of an erudite book on Scottish history.
She is a scholarly and erudite person.
His poems are complex, erudite, and highly metaphorical.

10. Evoked
Definition: to make someone remember something or feel an emotion
Original sentence: Somehow, with little money or backing, he managed to write an
extraordinary book, setting the great American intellectual and literary movements
from the late nineteenth century to his own time in a richly evoked historical context.
3 new sentences:
That smell always evokes memories of my old school.
The smell of chalk always evokes memories of my school days.
The sights, the sounds and the smells evoke so many memories.

11. Explicated
Definition: to explain something in detail, especially a piece of writing or an idea
Original sentence: . But he also composed a magnificent reference work, the
“Adages,” in which he laid out and explicated thousands of pithy ancient sayings—
and provided subject indexes to help readers find what they needed.
3 new sentences:
This is a book which clearly explicates Marx's later writings.
She tried to explicate hidden references and connections.
His books have sought to explicate the ideals of human social, political, and
economic activity.

12. Germinal
Definition: of, relating to, or occurring in the earliest stage of development
Original sentence: Kazin later recalled, “Anything I had heard of and wanted to see,
the blessed place owned: first editions of American novels out of those germinal
decades after the Civil War that led to my theme of the ‘modern’; old catalogues from
long-departed Chicago publishers who had been young men in the eighteen-nineties
trying to support a little realism.”
 3 new sentences:
He was active in the germinal stages of the space program.
It was only the most germinal idea, to start writing a book, originally.
The book originated from those germinal times.

13. Hallmark
Definition: a typical characteristic or feature of a person or thing
Original sentence: Fast, reliable methods of search and retrieval are sometimes
identified as the hallmark of our information age; “Search is everything” has become
a proverb.
3 new sentences:
Simplicity is a hallmark of this design.
An independent press is one of the hallmarks of a free society.
This explosion bears all the hallmarks of a terrorist attack.

14. Ingenious
Definition: (of a person) very intelligent and skilful, or (of a thing) skilfully made or
planned and involving new ideas and methods
Original sentence: But scholars have had to deal with too much information for
millennia, and in periods when information resources were multiplying especially fast
they devised ingenious ways to control the floods.
3 new sentences:
He is so ingenious.
She devised an ingenious solution to the problem
He came up with an ingenious plan to deal with them.

15. Obscurity
Definition: the state of not being known to many people
Original sentence: No over-all logic determined which texts were reprinted on paper,
which were filmed, and which remained in obscurity.
3 new sentences:
He rose from relative obscurity to worldwide recognition.
He was briefly famous in his twenties but then sank into obscurity.
She worked in obscurity for years.

16. Outstrips
Definition: to be or become greater in amount, degree, or success than something or
someone
Original sentence: The current era of digitization outstrips that of microfilm, in
ambition and in achievement.
3 new sentences:
The demand for food in the war zone now far outstrips supply.
Car dealers worry that demand will outstrip their supply.
 Almost immediately ticket sales began to outstrip the capacity of her theatre.

17. Pithy
Definition: (of speech or writing) expressing an idea cleverly in a few words
Original sentence: But he also composed a magnificent reference work, the
“Adages,” in which he laid out and explicated thousands of pithy ancient sayings—and
provided subject indexes to help readers find what they needed.
3 new sentences:
She came up with a pithy quote.
The studies are pithy and easily read, without a great deal of jargon.
The article is short, pithy, and oddly placed.

18. Provoked
Definition: to cause a reaction, especially a negative one
Original sentence: But they will never provide all the copies of, say, “The Wealth of
Nations” and the early responses it provoked.
3 new sentences:
The prospect of increased prices has already provoked an outcry.
These murders have provoked outrage across the country.
He was trying to provoke me into a fight.

19. Quirks
Definition: an unusual habit or type of behaviour, or something that is strange and
unexpected
Original sentence: But Google also uses optical character recognition to produce a
second version, for its search engine to use, and this double process has some
quirks.
3 new sentences:
You have to get used to other people's quirks and foibles.
There is a quirk in the rules that allows you to invest money without paying tax.
It’s just one of the quirks of living there.

20. Redress
Definition: to put right a wrong or give payment for a wrong that has been done
Original sentence: The Internet will do much to redress this imbalance, by providing
Western books for non-Western readers.
3 new sentences:
They finally asked for redress of several grievances caused by the misrule of Chris.
They were unsuccessful in obtaining redress from the government.
We must assist them in the redress of wrongs.