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v. to decrease; reduce.
NASA announced that it would delay the launch of the manned spacecraft until the radiation from the solar flares abated. |
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v. to give up a position, right, or power.
Romulus Augustus, the last Western Roman emperor, was forced to abdicate the throne in 476 A.D., and the Germanic chieftain Odovacar became the de facto ruler of Italy.
The appeals judge has abdicated his responsibility to review the findings of the high court. |
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adj. deviating from what is normal.
When a person's behavior becomes aberrant, his or her peers may become concerned that the individual is becoming a deviant.
Aberration is the noun form. |
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n. temporary suppression or suspension.
A good judge must hold his or her judgment in abeyance until all the facts in a case have been presented. |
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adj. miserable; pitiful.
John Steinbeck's novel The Grapes of Wrath portrays the abject poverty of many people during the Great Depression. |
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v. to reject; abandon formally.
Most members of the Religious Society of Friends(commonly known as the Quakers or Friends) abjure the use of violence to settle disputes between nations.
For a foreigner to become a U.S. citizen, he or she must take an oath abjuring allegiance to any other country and pledging to take up arms to defend the United States. |
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n. the act of cutting; the natural separation of a leaf or other part of a plant.
Two scientists, Alan G. Williams and Thomas G. Whitham, have hypothesized that premature leaf abscission is an adaptive plant response to herbivorous attack.
The verb abscise means to cut off or away.
The surgeon abscised a small growth on the patient's hand. |
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v. to depart secretly.
A warrant is out for the arrest of a person believed to have absconded with three million dollars. |
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adj. moderate in appetite.
Some research suggests that people with an abstemious lifestyle tend to live longer than people who indulge their appetites. |
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n. the giving up of certain pleasures.
The monk's vow of abstinence includes intoxicating substances. |
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adj. very bad.
The abysmal failure of the free market system in Russia has led some people to argue that the planned economy of the Soviet Union, while not perfect, was better suited to Russia's history and culture than Western-style capitalism. |
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n. growth in size or increase in amount.
In the 1960's, the American geophysicist Harry Hess conceived the idea of sea-floor spreading, a process in which the new crust in the ocean is continually generated by igneous processes at the crests of the mid-oceanic ridges, causing a stead accretion of the crust. |
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v. to accumulate; grow by additions.
Regulating the growth of large companies when the begin to become monopolistic is a difficult task for government in a capitalist country; if it limits monopolies too much, the nation's firms could become less competitive than foreign companies that enjoy the advantages accruing from greater monopolies. |
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adj. uncompromising; unyielding.
Despite widespread opposition to his plan, the political party's leader is adamant that the party must move to the center to appeal to moderate voters. |
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n. something added, attached, or joined.
Speed walking, cross-country running and marathons are normally regarded as adjuncts of track and field athletics since races in these sports are not normally held on a track. |
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v. to caution or reprimand.
The judge admonished the jury to discount testimony that had been ruled inadmissible. |
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v. to corrupt or make impure.
The unscrupulous company sells an adulterated version of the drug, and doesn't inform consumers that they are getting a less efficacious drug than they think they are getting. |
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adj. relating to beauty or art.
Members of the English aesthetic movement, such as Oscar Wilde, were proponents of the doctrine of art for art's sake, which is the belief that art cannot and should not be useful for any purpose other than that of creating beauty.
n. conception of what is artistically beautiful.
The Gothic aesthetic dominated European art and architecture from approximately the twelfth to the fifteenth century.
n. a branch of philosophy dealing with beaty and art, and standards in judging them.
n. someone who cultivates a special sensitivity to beauty. |
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adj. pretentious, phony.
It has been argued that the emphasis on so-called "proper English" leads to unnatural and affected speech. |
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n. fondness; liking; similarity
The female students in the class felt an affinity for the ancient Greek playwright Euripides because he sympathized with women, slaves and other despised members of his society. |
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v. to make larger or greater.
One of the concerns of the framers of the US Constitution was that one branch of the government would try to aggrandize itself at the expense of the others. |
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adj. amounting to a whole; total.
The aggregate wealth of a country includes private as well as public resources and possessions.
v. to collect into a mass.
Portals are Web sites designed to aggregate information and are used as a starting point on the Web.
n. collective mass or sum. |
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n. cheerful willingness; eagerness; speed.
The football coach was pleased to see the team get to work on the task of improving its tackling skills with alacrity. |
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n. medieval chemical philosophy based on changing metal into gold; a seemingly magical power or process of transmutation.
Alchemy was the forerunner of the modern science of chemistry. |
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v. to lesson; ease; soothe.
Improvements in antivirus software have allayed many people's fears of having their computers "infected" with malicious software. |
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v. to relieve; improve partially.
According to some commentators, one of the weaknesses of capitalism is that, although it is very efficient at increasing absolute wealth, it is not as successful at alleviating relative poverty; thus, a person living in a slum in America may be reasonably well of by historical standards, but he might perceive himself to be poor compared to members of the bourgeoisie, whom he sees regularly buying luxury goods that he is not able to afford. |
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n. a combination; a mixture of two or more metals.
Scientists formulate alloys to create properties that are not possessed by natural metals or other substances. |
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n. the power to entice by charm.
Political groups in the US often lobby Congress to use the allure of America's vast market as an incentive for countries to pursue policies in accordance with American policies.
v. to entice by charm.
adj. alluring. |
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v. to combine into a unified whole.
In early 1999, six municipalities were amalgamated into an enlarged city of Toronto, Canada. |
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adj. unclear or doubtful of meaning.
The gender of the Mahayana Buddhist deity Avalokitesuara, the god of infinite mercy, is ambiguous in both China and Japan, where the god is sometimes called a goddess. |
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