Vocabulary Definitions List #8

1. Abeyance: temporary disuse or inactivity
2. Ambivalent: simultaneous and contradictory feelings; having mixed feelings or contradictory ideas about something or someone
3. Beleaguer: trouble, harass; surround and harass with difficulties
4. Carte blanche: full discretionary power; Complete freedom to act as one wishes or thinks best; a blank check
5. Cataclysm: event that brings great changes; A large-scale and violent event in the natural world; A sudden violent upheaval, esp. in a political or social context
6. Debauch: to lead away from virtue or excellence; (noun) A bout of excessive indulgence in sensual pleasures, esp. eating and; (verb) Destroy or debase the moral purity of; corrupt; deprave
7. Éclat: ostentatious (pretentious) display; publicity; Brilliant display or effect
8. Fastidious: having high and often capricious (fickle) standards; difficult to please; Very attentive to and concerned about accuracy and detail.
9. Gambol: to skip about in play
10. Imbue: Inspire or permeate with a feeling or quality
11. Inchoate: Just begun and so not fully formed or developed; rudimentary
12. Lampoon: (verb) Publicly criticize (someone or something) by using ridicule or sarcasm; (noun) A speech or text criticizing someone or something in this way
13. Malleable: Able to be hammered or pressed permanently out of shape without breaking or cracking; easily influenced
14. Nemesis: The inescapable or implacable agent of someone's or something's downfall.
15. Opt: Make a choice from a range of possibilities
16. Philistine: A person who is hostile or indifferent to culture and the arts, or who has no understanding of them
17. Picaresque: Of or relating to an episodic style of fiction dealing with the adventures of a rough and dishonest but appealing hero
18. Queasy: Nauseated; feeling sick
19. Refractory: (adj.) Stubborn or unmanageable;
20. Savoir-faire: The ability to act or speak appropriately in social situation