English Vocab (160-176)
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Created by:
earlhoover on April 12, 2010
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43 terms
Terms | Definitions |
|---|---|
 pastoral | (adj) rustic, bucolic, evokes the idyllic charm and serenity of a shepherd's life. |
| patent | (adj) obvious, exposed to view. |
| pathological | (adj) caused by disease in either the mind or body. |
| pathos | (noun) the quality in human experience or any art form that evokes compassion. |
| patrician | (noun) an aristocrat (adj) aristocratic, highborn. |
| paucity | (noun) scarcity, poor supply. |
| pedant | (noun) a person who shows off his or her learning, a nitpicker who insists on strict adherence to formal rules and overemphasizes minor details, an obsessive stickler. |
| pedestrian | (adj) commonplace, dull, unimaginative. |
| pejorative | (adj) disparaging, belittling (noun) a word or expression that disparages, belittles, talks down, puts down, or badmouths. |
| penchant | (noun) an inclination, strong liking. |
| penultimate | (adj) next to last. |
| perfidious | (adj) faithless, disloyal, treacherous. |
| perfunctory | (adj) describes anything done routinely, as a duty, without interest or enthusiasm. |
| peripatetic | (adj) describes people who travel about from place to place. |
| peripheral | (adj) touching upon the incidental rather than the essential aspects of a subject. |
| pernicious | (adj) very injurious. |
| perspicacious | (adj) discerning, gifted with keen insight. |
| peruse | (verb) to read something through carefully, to go over ever work. |
| pervasive | (adj) spreading about like an odor. |
| petulant | (adj) unjustifiably impatient, prone to irritation over trifles, easily annoyed. |
| philistine | (noun or adj) a lowbrow, one who not only lacks culture and is smugly indifferent to it, but tends to attack it |
| placebo | (noun) a substance prescribed by a doctor as though it were medicine, which in fact has no medicinal value, and is given either for its psychological effect in humoring a patient, or in a controlled experiment to test a real medicine. |
| placid | (adj) calm, serene, tranquil. |
| plaintive | (adj) expressing sorrow, grief, or melancholy, or sounds sorrowful. |
| plangent | (adj) resounding in a mournful way. |
| platitude | (noun) a trite remark. |
| ponderous | (adj) applies to anything heavy or unwieldy, or to things like speeches and writings that are labored. |
| pontificate | (verb) to speak pompously, hold forth in a dogmatic way. |
| portend | (verb) to foreshadow. |
| portmanteau | (noun) a traveling bag of a special sort. |
| pragmatic | (adj) dealing with situations from a practical point of view. |
| prate | (verb) to babble, to talk too much. |
| prattle | (verb) to babble, to chatter away (noun) the babble or chatter of children, etc. |
| precipitate | (adj) headlong or sudden (verb) to hasten, bring about prematurely. |
| precipitous | (adj) very steep. |
| prescience | (noun) foreknowledge. |
| presentiment | (noun) a feeling that something is about to happen, with the implication that the something is bad or evil; a foreboding. |
| prestidigitator | (noun) a magician, especially one practicing sleight of hand. Figuratively it indicates great or surprising skill. A lawyer who can concoct a case or a defense out of no hard evidence at all is considered this. |
| prevaricate | (verb) to lie, or at least to speak evasively. |
| proclivity | (noun) an inclination, a tendency or proneness to something, an affinity. (synonym - penchant) |
| procreate | (verb) to beget (offspring), to generate. |
| prodigal | (adj) recklessly extravagent, wasteful. Also, profuse, abundant. |
| prodigious | (adj) enormous, or amazing and marvelous, depending on the context. |
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