Vocab 64

1.       Vent (v): When you vent, you let something out, whether it’s hot air or your feelings. If you vent your feeling, you let out a strong and sometimes angry emotion and just say what you think.

You might vent your rage when your brother once again gets out of doing his chores. You also might vent to air it out. It’s too hot inside your car, vent it by opening a window.

E.g: Please don’t shout – there’s no need to vent your frustration/rage/anger on me.

2.       Assemblage (n): It is a bunch of parts, pieces or people collected together into an organized group, always for some specific purpose.

E.g: A varied assemblage of birds was probing the mud for food.

3.       Captive (n): A person or animal whose ability to move or act freely is limited by being closed in a space; a prisoner, especially a person held by the enemy during a war.

E.g: When the town was recaptured, we found soldiers who had been captives for several years.

4.       Beverage (n): It is any type of drink. It’s something you might offer a guest in your house; it’s also the favourite moniker of the companies that manufacture both soda and juice – they call themselves a beverage company.

E.g: Hot beverages include tea, coffee and hot chocolate.

5.       Euthanasia (n): The act of killing someone who is very ill or very old so that they do not suffer any more.

E.g: Although some people campaign for the right to euthanasia, it is still illegal in most countries.

6.       Glimpse (n): If you had a brief or incomplete look at something, you had a glimpse.

E.g: I only caught (= had) a fleeting glimpse of the driver of the getaway car, but I doubt I would recognize her If I saw her again.

7.       Pell-mell (adj): When things are messy, wacky, crazy, and all over the place, they are pell-mell – chaotic.

If your room is a mess, with clothes everywhere, it’s pell-mell. If people are running in every direction and yelling, that’s a pell-mell situation.

E.g: At the sound of the alarm bell, the customers ran pell-mell for the doors.

8.       Algae (n): Ever walk in the ocean and feel your feet slipping and sliding along the rocks? That slimy green stuff under your feet is algae, a nonflowering plant that grows in the water and has no stems, roots, or leaves.

9.       Illegible (adj): When your friend scribbles a note to you and you can’t figure out what it says, it’s because her handwriting is illegible – it’s unreadable.

The adjective illegible is often used to describe handwriting, because people tend to have their own styles and sometimes write in a pretty messy way. But it can also refer to printed words that are faded or for some other reason difficult to read. If you leave a book open in the rain, the print will probably become illegible. If you are walking in an old graveyard, the writing on the tombstones is often illegible.

10.   Meteorologist (n): One who studies different patterns of weather or you can say one who studies processes in the earth’s atmosphere that cause weather conditions.

11.   Totalitarianism (n): If the government has complete and absolute power over the people, that’s totalitarianism. This is a repressive, unfree type of society.

We live in democracy, where the people have a say and elect officials. The opposite is totalitarianism: here society is ruled by dictator, and there is very little or no freedom.

12.   Octogenarian (n): A person who is aged eighty or more but less than ninety.

13.   Edible (adj): If it’s edible, you can eat it. Many things that you may not want to eat are, in fact edible. Certain insects are edible, which just means that you consume them without getting sick.

Long before there were complex labels on our packages of food, human predecessors were living in caves and sampling various plants and animals for their survival, all the while learning the hard way whether or not certain things were either edible or poisonous.

14.   Livery (n): A livery is a place that will take care of your horse, for a fee. You will mostly see this use now in historic novels – especially the kind where a cowboy rides into town and stables his horse at the livery. You can also say a place for hiring horses.

The noun livery also refers to a uniform sometimes worn by male servants, like doormen, footmen, and chauffeurs. Your cousin works for a prominent and wealthy family, and he is required to wear the livery of that family when he is on duty.

15.       Loom (n): Loom has two distinct meanings. First, it’s a tool for weaving. Second, it means to appear or stand over someone in a threatening way. The future loomed grim. The shadow loomed above us.

Compiled By: Amit Chaudhary
Source: Vocabulary.com, Cambridge dictionary.com