Category: Word of the Day

Definition: (adjective) Lacking strength or energy; spiritless; weak.

Synonyms: feeble.

Usage: He was a weak, nerveless fool, devoid of energy and promptitude.

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Definition: (adjective) Working, acting, or speaking with effortless ease and fluency.

Synonyms: eloquent, silver-tongued, smooth-spoken, fluent, silver.

Usage: Those facile and brilliant phrases and ideas struck me as the finest things I had yet known in literature, and I borrowed the book and read it through.

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Definition: (adjective) Lacking a backbone or spinal column; not vertebrate.

Synonyms: spineless.

Usage: The sixth grade class groaned in unison as the students learned that they would be dissecting worms during their study of invertebrates.

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Definition: (noun) An employee of a department store who supervises sales personnel and assists customers.

Synonyms: shopwalker.

Usage: Although Bill thoroughly enjoyed the raise associated with his promotion to floorwalker, he disliked answering customer complaints and sometimes wished he had remained a cashier.

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Definition: (adjective) Not lasting or durable; not permanent.

Synonyms: temporary.

Usage: After weeks of carefully constructing the beautiful sand mandala, the Tibetan monks quietly swept it away in a ceremony emphasizing the impermanent nature of existence.

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Definition: (noun) Concentration of emotional energy on an object or idea.

Synonyms: charge.

Usage: Freud thought of cathexis as a psychic analog of an electrical charge.

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Definition: (adjective) Showing lack of emotional involvement.

Synonyms: detached, uninvolved.

Usage: Mrs. Smith was not easily impressed by excuses, and she adopted a degage pose on the arm of the easy chair as her son tried to explain why he missed dinner.

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Definition: (adjective) Characterized by abject fear; cowardly.

Synonyms: recreant.

Usage: The cowardly shopkeeper angered the revolutionaries with his craven proposal to raise the white flag and surrender.

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Definition: (noun) The act of distributing by allotting or apportioning; distribution according to a plan.

Synonyms: parceling, assignation, allocation, allotment.

Usage: The apportionment of seats in the House of Representatives is based on the relative population of each state.

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Definition: (adjective) Blemished by imperfections of the skin.

Synonyms: acned, pimpled.

Usage: She tormented her brother about his pustulate complexion until she herself developed a severe case of acne.

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