Fall Vocab List #8

1. abeyance: temporary inactivity, cessation, or suspension
2. ambivalent: having mixed feelings about someone or something; being unable to choose between two (usually opposing) courses of action
3. beleaguer: to surround with military forces; to surround or beset, as with troubles
4. carte blanche: unconditional authority, full discretionary power
5. cataclysm: any violent upheaval, especially one of a social or political nature
6. debauch: to corrupt by sensuality, intemperance, etc.; seduce/to corrupt or pervert; sully
7. eclat: brilliance of success, reputation, etc./showy or elaborate display/acclamation, acclaim
8. fastidious: excessively critical, particular, demanding; hard to please/requiring or characterized by excessive care or delicacy; painstaking
9. gambol: to skip about, as in dancing or playing; to frolic
10. imbue: to impregnate or inspire, as with feelings, opinions, etc.
11. inchoate: not yet completed or fully developed; rudimentary/just begun, incipient/not organized, lacking order
12. lampoon: a sharp, often virulent satire directed against an individual or institution/a work of literature, art, or the like, ridiculing severely the character or behavior of a person, society, etc.
13. malleable: capable of being extended or shaped by hammering or by pressure from rollers/adaptable or tractable
14. nemesis: something a person cannot conquer, achieve, etc./an opponent or rival a person cannot best or overcome
15. opt: to make a choice; choose
16. philistine: a person who is lacking in or is hostile or smugly indifferent to cultural values, intellectual pursuits, aesthetic refinement, etc., or is contentedly complacent in ideas or taste (n.)//lacking in or hostile to culture (adj.)
17. picaresque: pertaining to, characteristic of, or characterized by a form of prose fiction, originally developed in Spain, in which the adventures of an engagingly roguish hero are described in a series of usually humorous or satiric episodes that often depict, in realistic detail, the everyday life of the common people
18. queasy: inclined to or feeling nausea, as the stomach, a person, etc.; tending to cause nausea, nauseating; uneasy or uncomfortable, as feelings, the conscience, etc.
19. refractory: hard or impossible to manage; stubbornly disobedient/resisting ordinary methods of treatment
20. savoir-faire: knowledge of just what to do in any situation; tact

**Sentences/paragraphs coming at a point when I have more time...