IGCSE - Week 1 Vocabulary

1. Abase (Verb)
 Meaning: To cause to feel shame; hurt the pride of
 Example: Russian law says inmates must not be treated in a way that is "harsh" or
"abases human dignity".

2. Abate (Verb)
 Meaning: To lessen (something) in force or intensity
 Example: The sky remained dark around us, but the clouds of dust abated somewhat.

3. Abdicate (Verb)
 Meaning: To relinquish or renounce a throne, or other high office or dignity; to renounce
sovereignty
 Example: “You should know that the king will soon abdicate his throne in favor of one of
his children,” Madoc says, looking at all of us.

4. Aberrant (Adjective)
 Meaning: Straying from the right way; deviating from morality or truth.
 Example: His lawyer told the court that Mr. Stacy’s heavy drinking and the psychological
effects of his accident accounted for his aberrant behavior.

5. Abeyance (Noun)
 Meaning: Suspension; temporary suppression; dormant condition.
 Example: The Tony Awards, held in abeyance since June 2020, were bestowed Sunday
night, with a splashy effervescence that seemed to declare: The best of times is now.

6. Abhor (Verb)
 Meaning: To regard (someone or something) as horrifying or detestable; to feel great
repugnance toward.
 Example: I abhor the rainbow stripe and would prefer something along the lines of a
simple skull and crossbones.

7. Abjure (Verb)
 Meaning: To reject with solemnity; to abandon forever; to repudiate; to disclaim.

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  Example: His new book, “Bad Faith,” offers a history of episodes in which fringe groups
abjured modern medicine, with deadly consequences.

8. Abrasive (Adjective)
 Meaning: Being rough and coarse in manner or disposition; causing irritation.
Example: My brother has never known how to get anyone’s attention without
being abrasive and blunt and loud.

9. Abreast (Adverb)
 Meaning: Informed, well-informed, familiar, acquainted.
 Example: The Journal Club proved to be an ideal way to keep the lab abreast of the latest
advances in physics, but over time the agenda reflected the lab’s own expanding
prominence.

10. Abridge (Verb)

 Meaning: To shorten or contract by using fewer words, yet retaining the sense; to
epitomize; to condense
 Example: Baby Kochamma, who had been put in charge of their formal education, had
read them an abridged version of The Tempest by Charles and Mary Lamb.

11. Abrogate (Verb)

 Meaning: To annul by an authoritative act; to abolish by the authority of the maker or her
or his successor; to repeal
 Example: He did not hesitate to abrogate Indian treaties, though he sometimes
expressed concern for Indian life.

12. Abstain (Verb)

 Meaning: To refrain from (something or doing something); keep from doing, especially
an indulgence.
 Example: Even when Ramadan arrived during the season and I had to play volleyball and
fence while fasting from sunrise to sunset, abstaining from food and water, I still didn’t
want to quit.

13. Abscission (Noun)

 Meaning: The act or process of cutting off.
 Example: Students worked with collaborative teams to develop innovative methods for
quantifying leaf color change and abscission in campus trees.

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14. Abscond (Verb)
 Meaning: To flee, often secretly; to steal away, particularly to avoidarrest or prosecution.
 Example: In 1995, the leader of a commercial expedition absconded with tens of thousands
of dollars of his clients’ money before the trip even gotoff the ground.

15. Abyss (Noun)

 Meaning: A bottomless or unfathomed depth, gulf, or chasm; hence, any deep,
immeasurable; any void space.
 Example: I wonder about the deep, wide abyss between good intentionsand concrete
action, and how many of them leapt across it.

16. Accede (Verb)

 Meaning: To agree or assent to a proposal or a view; to give way.
 Example: The Physical Review soon acceded to a system by which it would accept
articles on nuclear reactions but keep them in a vault, to be published after the
conclusion of the war.

17. Accretion (Noun)

 Meaning: The act of increasing, or the matter added, by an accession of parts externally;
an extraneous addition
 Example: Physicists grappled with the mysteries of subatomic behavior into the mid-
1920s, hoping that the steady accretion of observed results would lead them to the truth.

18. Acerbic (Adjective)

 Meaning: Sharp, harsh, biting.
 Example: He was a captivating lecturer — feisty, acerbic and challenging.

19. Acidulous (Adjective)

 Meaning: Slightly sour; Sharp; caustic.
 Example: "Bosh!" was his acidulous comment "I've caught the same fishin New Zealand
in broad daylight."

20. Acme (Noun)

 Meaning: A high point - the highest point of any range, the most developed stage of any
process, or the culmination of any field or historical period.
 Example: “Even though Donald Trump is no longer president, I believe the latest round”
of attacks are the acme of Trump’s rhetoric, she says.

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21. Acumen (Noun)
 Meaning: Quickness of perception or discernment; penetration of mind; the faculty of
nice discrimination.
 Example: He showed his business acumen by selling the compasses relatively cheaply
and charging a healthy tuition fee to anyone whowanted to know how to use it.

22. Adhere (Verb)

 Meaning: To stick; to become joined or united.
 Example: Converts were required to attend weekly meetings and to
adhere to a strict code of conduct.

23. Admonish (Verb)

 Meaning: To inform or notify of a fault; to rebuke gently or kindly, but seriously
 Example: And once more the court admonished the witness: “Answer yes or no, do you
have an opinion?”

24. Adulterate (Verb)

 Meaning: To make less valuable or spoil (something) by addingimpurities or other
substances.
 Example: Shady dealers along the supply chain frequently adulterate
olive oil with low-grade vegetable oils and add artificial coloring.

25. Adumbrate (Verb)

 Meaning: To give a vague outline.
 Example: I muttered that in fragments, but the lines only adumbrated
the longing without revealing its hidden fount.

26. Adverse (Adjective)

 Meaning: Unfavorable; actively opposing one's interests or wishes; working in an
opposing direction.
 Example: The prince should be on guard against them and fear them asif they were
declared enemies, because they will always help to bring about his downfall in adverse
times.

27. Advocate (Verb)

 Meaning: To plead in favour of; to defend by argument, before a tribunalor the public; to
support, vindicate, or recommend publicly.

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  Example: That autumn, on October 14, 1964, I heard that Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. had
been awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for advocating a policy of nonviolence.

28. Aerie (Noun)

 Meaning: The nest of a bird of prey; Any high and remote but commanding place.
 Example: He ran full speed downhill for the West Branch of the Delaware, looking at
rocks and trees for white streaks of bird excrement that marked a peregrine falcon aerie.

29. Aesthetic (Noun)

 Meaning: The artistic motifs defining a collection of things, especially works of art; more
broadly, their vibe.
 Example: His aesthetics, as he repeatedly defined them, encompassed “everything
involved in the process — the workers, the politics, the negotiations, the construction
difficulty, the dealings with hundreds of people.”

30. Affable (Adjective)

 Meaning: Friendly, courteous, sociable.
 Example: A writer for Chicago magazine described Barack as “a tall, affable
workaholic,” suggesting that he should someday run for office, an idea that he simply
shrugged off.

31. Affectation (Noun)

 Meaning: An attempt to assume or exhibit what is not natural or real; false display;
artificial show.
 Example: The Hymn is written objectively, simply, without a touch of
affectation.

32. Aggrandize (Verb)

 Meaning: To make great; to enlarge; to increase.
 Example: Trump’s goal was to rid the place of Obama supporters and climate change
analysts, and to aggrandize the oil and coal sectors.

33. Aggregate (Verb)

 Meaning: To bring together; to collect into a mass or sum.
 Example: Leukocytes become more actively phagocytic, release lysosomal enzymes, turn
sticky, and aggregate together in dense masses, occluding capillaries and shutting off
the blood supply.

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34. Alacrity (Noun)
 Meaning: A cheerful readiness, willingness, or promptitude; joyous activity; briskness
 Example: The soldiers advanced with alacrity to meet the enemy.

35. Albeit (Conjunction)

 Meaning: Although, despite
 Example: He was making progress, albeit rather slowly

36. Alienate (Verb)

 Meaning: To estrange; to withdraw affections or attention from.
 Example: I neither wanted to offend the secretaries nor alienate my newcolleague, so I
settled on what seemed to me the most prudent course of action: I declined to have any
tea at all.

37. Alleviate (Verb)

 Meaning: To make light, to lessen, to mitigate
 Example: After his return, he became head of the anthropology department at Cornell
University, from which position he led its celebrated efforts to alleviate poverty in the
Andes.

38. Aloof (Adverb)

 Meaning: At a distance, apart.
 Example: I was determined to remain aloof until I knew his feelings for me.

39. Altruism (Noun)

 Meaning: The principle of living and acting for the interest of others.
 Example: The researchers discovered that when people are given a smallstipend for
donating blood rather than simply being praised for their altruism, they tend to donate
less blood.

40. Amalgamate (Verb)

 Meaning: To unite, to blend.
 Example: We still don’t know how small, simple societies actually evolve or
amalgamate into large, complex ones.

41. Ambiguous (Adjective)

 Meaning: doubtful; equivocal.
 Example: His plan seemed so ambiguous and meaningless now, in front of these
uniformed men.

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42. Ambivalent (Adjective)
 Meaning: Simultaneously experiencing or expressing opposing or contradictory feelings,
beliefs, or motivations.
 Example: He was vague and ambivalent on matters of policy.

43. Ameliorate (Verb)

 Meaning: To make better, or improve, something perceived to be in a negative condition.
 Example: Why is the American healthcare system so woefully inadequate, and what, if
anything, has been done to ameliorate this distressing state of affairs?

44. Amenable (Adjective)

 Meaning: Willing to respond to persuasion or suggestions.
 Example: She said her peers wanted her to bend the rules, but she wasn’t
amenable.

45. Amiable (Adjective)

 Meaning: Of a pleasant and likeable nature; kind-hearted; easy to like.
 Example: His amiable North Country personality cloaked a sharp legal mind and soaring
political ambition.

46. Amortize (Verb)

 Meaning: To wipe out a debt or liability gradually or in installments.
 Example: He added that the cost of the show would be amortized over 13 episodes.

47. Anachronism (Noun)

 Meaning: A person or thing which seems to belong to a different time orperiod of time.
 Example: The show’s uniformly tall and thin models seem an
anachronism in a world that increasingly celebrates body diversity.

48. Analgesia (Noun)

 Meaning: Medication that acts to relieve pain
 Example: “Along with the neglect of diagnosis, the lack of good analgesia marks
Mother Teresa’s approach,” he wrote in an article for the journal.

49. Analogous (Adjective)

 Meaning: bearing some resemblance to something else.

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  Example: Churchill’s place in history’s purgatory is analogous to that of Jefferson, a
flawed human who made the world better.

50. Anarchy (Noun)

 Meaning: A chaotic and confusing absence of any form of political authority or
government; Confusion; disorder.
 Example: “Rules are needed even more now. Without them there is
anarchy.”

51. Anathema (Noun)

 Meaning: Something which is vehemently disliked by somebody; a curse; a malediction.
 Example: He had a notoriously high failure rate, which of course made him the anathema
of Carter High School.

52. Annul (Verb)

 Meaning: To formally revoke the validity of; To dissolve marriage on the grounds that it is
not valid.
 Example: His desire to annul his existing marriage to Catherine of Aragon and marry
Anne instead led to a split with the Roman Catholic church

53. Anodyne (Noun)

 Meaning: any medicine or other agent that relieves pain.
 Example: They provided us deep pleasure, an anodyne to the squalor and clutter of the
street.

54. Anoint (Verb)

 Meaning: To choose or nominate somebody for a leading or otherwise important
position, especially formally or officially.
 Example: The Golden Globes anointed two best pictures: La La Land for musical or
comedy and Moonlight for drama.

55. Anomaly (Noun)

 Meaning: Something or someone that is strange or unusual.
 Example: “My dad was the only Asian in like a hundred-mile radius. The next town over
was like ninety-six percent African American, so I saw nonwhite people all the time, but I
was definitely an anomaly.”

56. Antagonize (Verb)

 Meaning: To work against; to oppose

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  Example: They conducted their duties humbly and reticently, with aminimum of fuss,
and went to great lengths not to antagonize anyone.

57. Antedate (Verb)

 Meaning: To occur before an event or time; to exist further back in time.
 Example: However, most of the older residences in Fredericksburg
antedate the fire, and are of an earlier Colonial period.

58. Antipathy (Noun)

 Meaning: A feeling of dislike (towards someone/something)
 Example: I was also quite religious, and the party’s antipathy to religion put me off.

59. Antithetical (Adjective)

 Meaning: directly opposed or contrasted; mutually incompatible.
 Example: His wrong-headed beliefs are antithetical to everything we stand for as a
community.

60. Apathy (Noun)

 Meaning: Lack of emotion or motivation; lack of interest or enthusiasm towards
something
 Example: Despite congressional apathy and obstruction, the suffragists remained
steadfast.

61. Apocryphal (Adjective)

 Meaning: Of doubtful authenticity, or lacking authority.
 Example: In one possibly apocryphal story, doctors once trained a homeless man to do
routine lab tests because there was no one else available.

62. Apostate (Noun)

 Meaning: A person who has renounced a religion or faith.
 Example: Labeling Mr. Daoud an apostate and “an enemy of religion,” he called on the
Algerian state to impose a public execution of Mr. Daoud for the “war he is leading
against God and the prophet.”

63. Apostle (Noun)

 Meaning: A pioneer or early advocate of a particular cause, prophet of a belief.
 Example: As the apostle of publicity for publicity’s sake, Trump has adopted the
practices of reality TV, building his reputation on insults, humiliation and a discourse of
provocation and hate.

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64. Appease (Verb)
 Meaning: To make quiet; to calm; to dispel anger or hatred.
 Example: “Let me explain, sir,” she began, trying to appease Nathan’s father.

65. Appreciable (Adjective)

 Meaning: Large enough to be estimated; perceptible; considerable.
 Example: The sudden illness or death of farmers, spraymen, pilots, and others exposed to
appreciable quantities of pesticides are tragic and should not occur.

66. Apposite (Adjective)

 Meaning: Well suited to the circumstance or in relation to something.
 Example: As Cole is an art connoisseur, it is apposite to compare his book with the old
masters that he has studied.

67. Apprise (Verb)

 Meaning: To notify, or to make aware; to inform.
 Example: She asked him, “Would you please wait until seven p.m., to allow me to
apprise my corporate headquarters of recent developments?”

68. Approbation (Noun)

 Meaning: Approval or official recognition.
 Example: Their cause enjoys such unquestioning approbation that few complain or even
notice.

69. Appropriate (Adjective)

 Meaning: Suitable or fit; proper; socially correct.
 Example: Remarkably, in the United States, a life sentence is deemed perfectly
appropriate for someone whose only crime is a first-time drugoffense.

70. Arbiter (Noun)

 Meaning: A person or object having the power of judging and determining.
 Example: “He is the arbiter of all disputes and no provision is made for an appeal from
his decision,” the Tribune reported.

71. Arbitrary (Adjective)

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  Meaning: Based on individual discretion or judgment; not based on any objective
distinction, perhaps even made at random.
 Example: The choice of coordinates is arbitrary; one can use any three well-defined
spatial coordinates and any measure of time.

72. Arcane (Adjective)

 Meaning: Obscure, mysterious.
 Example: The paper, with dozens of tables and arcane symbols to denotetraits and
variants, was challenging even for statisticians.

73. Archaic (Adjective)

 Meaning: Old-fashioned, no longer in ordinary use.
 Example: I opened the book with some apprehension, wondering what
archaic spelling and punctuation I would face.

74. Ardent (Adjective)

 Meaning: Expressing passion, spirit, or enthusiasm.
 Example: Jane Eyre, who had been an ardent, expectant woman—almosta bride, was a
cold, solitary girl again: her life was pale; her prospects were desolate.

75. Arduous (Adjective)

 Meaning: Difficult; hard to climb.
 Example: He is on his own journey, one that will be arduous and long, filled with
missteps and stumbles.

76. Arrogate (Verb)

 Meaning: To appropriate or lay claim to something for oneself withoutright.
 Example: Success has either earned him that right, or else he arrogated
it to himself.

77. Articulate (Verb)

 Meaning: To speak clearly; to explain.
 Example: A million questions rush through her head and she cannotproperly
articulate any of them.

78. Artifact (Noun)

 Meaning: An object made or shaped by human hand or labor; A finding or structure in an
experiment that is not a true feature of the object underobservation, but is a result of an
experimental error.
 Example: The dig produced many Roman artifacts.

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  Example: The spot on his lung turned out to be an artifact of the X-rayprocess.

79. Artless (Adjective)

 Meaning: Free of artificiality; natural.
 Example: This pendant has artless charm.

80. Ascertain (Verb)

 Meaning: To find out definitely; to discover or establish.
 Example: As soon as we ascertain what the situation is, we can plan howto proceed.

81. Ascetic (Noun)

 Meaning: One who is devoted to the practice of self-denial, eitherthrough seclusion or
stringent abstinence.
 Example: Female ascetics find shelter in a wide variety of establishments and vary greatly
in the degree to which they travel.

82. Ascribe (Verb)

 Meaning: To attribute a cause or characteristic to someone or something.
 Example: One may ascribe these problems to the federal government;however, at this
stage it is unclear what caused them.

83. Aseptic (Adjective)

 Meaning: Free of disease-causing microbes.
 Example: The lack of aseptic tools during surgery has resulted in many deaths.

84. Asperity (Noun)

 Meaning: The quality of being harsh or severe in the way one speaks or behaves toward
people; Something that is harsh and difficult to endure.
 Example: Sir Richard’s asperity invariably made the young man morenervous.

85. Aspersion (Noun)

 Meaning: An attack on somebody's reputation or good name.
 Example: Their influence has already cast aspersions and suspicions on many of the
Democratic candidates for president.

86. Assail (Verb)

 Meaning: To attack with harsh words or violent force.

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  Example: Our ears were assailed by her joyous efforts on her newsaxophone.

87. Assiduous (Adjective)

 Meaning: Hard-working, diligent or regular (in attendance or work);industrious.
 Example: Klein rose to prominence in the 1960s by assiduous
application of accounting methods to the music industry.

88. Assuage (Verb)

 Meaning: To lessen the intensity of, to mitigate or relieve.
 Example: People tend to assuage their guilt by accusing others of theirown
transgressions.

89. Attenuate (Verb)

 Meaning: To lessen the intensity of, to mitigate or relieve hunger, emotion, pain etc.
 Example: By the second wave in the fall, mutations had attenuated the coronavirus,
many people were immune and drugs were showneffective in treating it and even in
reducing infection.

90. Attuned (Adjective)

 Meaning: Having been changed to fit in with a particular context or to be in sync with a
phenomenon.
 Example: He was so attuned to my every movement I was sure he was reading my mind.

91. Audacious (Adjective)

 Meaning: Showing willingness to take bold risks; recklessly daring.
 Example: Taking an audacious step, he booked a train east, got off in Detroit, and
somehow talked his way into a meeting with Will Durant, chief of Buick Automobiles and
future founder of General Motors.

92. Augment (Verb)

 Meaning: To grow; to increase; to become greater.
 Example: The augmented piles of clothes have been put away, and the windows have
been opened to dispel the diminished air.

93. Augury (Noun)

 Meaning: An omen or prediction; a foreboding; a prophecy.

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  Example: The auguries of the imminent government spending review all suggest that
the cuts will fall disproportionately upon those already most economically
disadvantaged.

94. August (Adjective)

 Meaning: Awe-inspiring, majestic, noble, venerable.
 Example: As early as 1932, Sproul sponsored him for membership in the Bohemian Club,
the most august organization of prominent citizens in San Francisco.

95. Austere (Adjective)

 Meaning: Grim or severe in manner or appearance; lacking decoration.
 Example: The interior of the church was as austere as the parishioners were dour.

96. Autonomous (Adjective)

 Meaning: Acting on one's own or independently.
 Example: It is amazing that such an institution, exerting so much influence on academic
science, has been able to remain so absolutely autonomous.

97. Avarice (Noun)

 Meaning: Excessive or inordinate desire of gain; greed for wealth.
 Example: I ask the teacher what he thinks about Leo Tolstoy's relationship to the church,
which excommunicated him after he denounced their bureaucracy, rituals and avarice.

98. Aver (Verb)

 Meaning: To assert the truth of something; to affirm something with confidence; to
declare something in a positive manner.
 Example: Many politicians, she averred, have little information or understanding of the
issue.

99. Avert (Verb)

 Meaning: To ward off, or prevent, the occurrence or effects of.
 Example: How can the danger be averted?

100. Avid (Adjective)

 Meaning: Enthusiastic; keen; eager; showing great interest in something or desire to do
something
 Example: He is an avid fan of 1960s sci-fi movies.

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101. Axiom (Noun)
 Meaning: An established principle in some artistic practice or science that is universally
received.
 Example: The axiom that a man is innocent until proved guilty by a courtof law has been
flagrantly ignored once again in the State of Mississippi.

102. Badger (Verb)

 Meaning: To pester, to annoy persistently; press.
 Example: He kept badgering her about her bad habits.

103. Baleful (Adjective)

 Meaning: Portending evil; ominous.
 Example: He backed against a wall, his eyes lowered in a baleful glare.

104. Balk (Verb)

 Meaning: To refuse suddenly; to avoid.
 Example: When Stanton shared the first draft of the document with the other women,
even Mott balked at the suffrage resolution.

105. Balloon (Verb)

 Meaning: To increase or expand rapidly.
 Example: Prices will balloon if we don't act quickly.

106. Banal (Adjective)

 Meaning: Common in a boring way, to the point of being predictable; containing nothing
new or fresh
 Example: The footage is both banal and remarkable, for it captures the couple’s very first
meeting and conversations.

107. Bane (Noun)

 Meaning: A cause of misery or death.
 Example: Roads are the bane of trekkers, most of whom — myself included — want to
visit places where only their own two feet can take them.

108. Banish (Verb)

 Meaning: To send someone away and forbid that person from returning.
 Example: Books that were not of God were banished; they were a danger, powerful and
irresistible in their cunning.

109. Base (Adjective)

 Meaning: Inferior; unworthy, of poor quality.

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  Example: I’m not even going to repeat some of the things he used to say because they are
so horrifically base.

110. Baying (Verb)

 Meaning: To howl; to pursue noisily, like a pack of hounds.
 Example: The mob approached the castle, baying for royal blood.

111. Beatific (Adjective)

 Meaning: Blessed, blissful, heavenly.
 Example: She smiled a beatific smile, and the steam rose around her andcaught the light
of the candle and made a halo over her head.

112. Begrudge (Verb)

 Meaning: To be envious or covetous; to give reluctantly.
 Example: Eventually they start to develop a sort of begrudging respect for each other.

113. Belie (Verb)

 Meaning: To contradict, to show something to be false.
 Example: Her obvious nervousness belied what she said.

114. Belittle (Verb)

 Meaning: To knowingly say that something is smaller or less important than it actually is,
especially as a way of showing contempt or deprecation.
 Example: Don't belittle your colleagues.

115. Bellicose (Adjective)

 Meaning: Aggressive; hostile; showing or having the impulse to be combative.
 Example: In bellicose language, Mr. Putin also issued what appeared to be a warning to
other countries.

116. Belligerent (Adjective)

 Meaning: Aggressively hostile, eager to fight.
 Example: When Ms. Willis confronted him, he was belligerent.

117. Beneficent (Adjective)

 Meaning: Given to acts that are kind, charitable, philanthropic or beneficial.
 Example: Trump has also gone to pains to portray himself to supporters as a beneficent
mogul.

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118. Benign (Adjective)
 Meaning: Kind; gentle; mild; not harmful.
 Example: The universe seems neither benign nor hostile, merely indifferent to the
concerns of such puny creatures as we.

119. Bent (Adjective)

 Meaning: Determined or insistent.
 Example: He was bent on going to Texas, but not even he could say why.

120. Bereft (Adjective)

 Meaning: Deprived of, lacking, stripped of, robbed of.
 Example: As they sat their horses waiting, Renly's shadow knights pointed their lances
upward, so she rode through a forest of tall naked trees, bereft of leaves and life.

121. Besiege (Verb)

 Meaning: to assail or ply, as with requests or demands.
 Example: The city authorities and the Federal Aviation Agency were immediately
besieged by calls from worried citizens.

122. Bevy (Noun)

 Meaning: A small group of people.
 Example: A bevy of guests wanders into the hall from the dining room, sending the
cascade of rose petals adrift once more.

123. Bifurcate (Verb)

 Meaning: To divide or fork into two channels or branches.
 Example: Reflecting the bifurcated state of television, half of the outstanding program
nominees are on broadcast networks, and half are on cable channels.

124. Bilious (Adjective)

 Meaning: Irritable or bad tempered
 Example: He had an olive complexion, and small bright eyes, with dark lines underneath
which showed his bilious temperament.

125. Bilk (Verb)

 Meaning: To deceive or defraud, to cheat someone.
 Example: He pleaded guilty last year to bilking about $120 million from clients,
including the estate of Mr. Smith’s artist father.

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126. Blatant (Adjective)
 Meaning: Unashamed; loudly obtrusive or offensive.
 Example: To do so would have forced people to look elsewhere for a culprit — a search
that would have invited questions about the city’s blatant lack of emergency planning.

127. Bleak (Adjective)

 Meaning: Unhappy; cheerless; miserable; emotionally desolate.
 Example: He writes to his brother about art, and about how he tries to see beauty in the
bleak surroundings.

128. Blight (Noun)

 Meaning: Anything that impedes growth or development or spoils anyother aspect of
life.
 Example: “You told me they were to be eradicated. That they were a
blight on the natural world.”

129. Blithe (Adjective)

 Meaning: Casually careless or indifferent; showing a lack of concern.
 Example: She had a blithe disregard of cultures outside the UnitedStates.

130. Bogus (Adjective)

 Meaning: Counterfeit or fake; not genuine.
 Example: At the time, Trump had been hinting at a political run and championing the
bogus conspiracy theory that Obama was born in Kenya.

131. Bolster (Verb)

 Meaning: To brace, reinforce, secure, or support.
 Example: She was just trying to bolster my mood and keep my spiritsup—and maybe
my courage, too.

132. Bombastic (Adjective)

 Meaning: High-sounding but with little meaning.
 Example: It was funny but it didn’t have any impact because we alreadyknew that his
statements are crass and bombastic.

133. Bonhomie (Noun)

 Meaning: An atmosphere of friendliness and good cheer.
 Example: Brandon captured the experience in a photo essay that reflects the spirit and
bonhomie of the event.

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134. Boor (Noun)
 Meaning: An uncultured person.
 Example: Russian men are often stereotyped as boorish drunks, butSasha was solicitous
and gentlemanly.

135. Brandish (Verb)

 Meaning: To bear something with ostentatious show.
 Example: The policeman, still brandishing the bulky black book, leanedinto my father’s
ear and whispered something.

136. Brazen (Adjective)

 Meaning: Shamelessly shocking and offensive.
 Example: She was brazen enough to deny stealing the handbag even though she was
caught on CCTV camera doing so.

137. Bridle (Verb)

 Meaning: To check, restrain; To show hostility or resentment.
 Example: Immigrant-rights and religious organizations bridled at the plan to favor
highly skilled workers over relatives.

138. Brook (Verb)

 Meaning: To bear; endure; put up with; tolerate.
 Example: I will not brook any disobedience.

139. Browbeat (Verb)

 Meaning: To bully in an intimidating, bossy, or supercilious way.
 Example: Though the teacher browbeat all the children, they still actedout during the
lesson.

140. Bucolic (Adjective)

 Meaning: Relating to the pleasant aspects of rustic country life.
 Example: At home, he and David would take long walks aroundBerkeley and into the
bucolic woods of Northern California.

141. Buffer (Verb)

 Meaning: To isolate or minimize the effects of one thing on another.
 Example: We felt strongly the need to establish friendship as a buffer
against the invisible threat.

142. Bureaucracy (Noun)

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  Meaning: The body of officers and administrators, especially of a government.
 Example: I’d taught at New York University for a few years, and had seen a bit of the
academic bureaucracy.

143. Burgeon (Verb)

 Meaning: To grow or expand.
 Example: Gradually, the town burgeoned into a thriving city.

144. Burnish (Verb)

 Meaning: To make (someone or something) appear positive and highly respected.
 Example: Desperate to burnish her legacy, Louise pleads her case for higher status based
on her achievements on Earth as a philanthropist, artist, and occasional royal rebel.

145. Buttress (Verb)

 Meaning: To support something or someone by supplying evidence.
 Example: She would buttress her argument with recommendations from Dr. Hansen,
which later, when he was asked point-blank, turned out to have been made up.

146. Bygone (Adjective)

 Meaning: Having been or happened in the distant past.
 Example: They already knew a great deal about the prehistoric creatures that roamed the
Serengeti in bygone years.

147. Byzantine (Adjective)

 Meaning: Overly complex or intricate.
 Example: He quickly finds himself trapped in its Byzantine office politics.

148. Cacophonous (Adjective)

 Meaning: Containing, consisting of, or producing harsh, unpleasant or discordant sounds.
 Example: The combined sound of bells tolling and sirens wailing seemed not just a
cacophonous way to ring in the new year, but a sound that symbolized a new era in our
freedom struggle.

149. Calumny (Noun)

 Meaning: A false accusation or charge brought to tarnish another's reputation or
standing.

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  Example: To call me anti-American is a stupendous lie, a calumny.

150. Canard (Noun)

 Meaning: A false or misleading report or story
 Example: "Do you realize that this is an absolute canard, a lie? It isabsolute fiction.
There is no such list. It’s a fake," Peskov said.

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