ClassyU

Sunday, October 13, 2013

Vocabulary #8

1) Abase: (v) to lower; to put or bring down; degrade

2) Abdicate: (v) to give up a throne, right, power, claim, or responsibility 

3) Abomination: (n) anything greatly disliked; detestation 

4) Brusque: (adj) abrupt in manner; rough

5) Saboteur: (n) a person who commits or practices sabotage 

6) Debauchery: (n) excessive indulgence in sensual pleasures; intemperance

7) Proliferate: (v) to increase in number or spread rapidly and often excessively

8) Anachronism: (n) someone or something that is not in it's correct historical or chronological time

9) Nomenclature: (n) a set or system of names or terms by an individual or community; the names or terms comprising a set or system

10) Expurgate: (v) to purge or cleanse of moral offensiveness; to amend by removing words deemed offensive

11) Bellicose: (adj) inclined or eager to fight; aggressively hostile; belligerent; pugnacious

12) Gauche: (adj) lacking social grace; awkward; crude; tactless

13) Rapacious: (adj) inordinately greedy; predatory; extortionate

14) Paradox: (n) a self-contradictory and false proposition

15) Conundrum: (n) anything that puzzles; a riddle whose answer involves a pun or play on words

16) Anomaly: (n) someone or something that is abnormal or does not fit in; peculiarity; abnormality; exception 

17) Ephemeral: (adj) lasting a short time; short-lived

18) Rancorous: (adj) full of or showing rancor (hatred)

19) Churlish: (adj) boorish; rude; mean

20) Precipitous: (adj) extremely steep


The play Hamlet starts off with two watchmen explaining a conundrum of seeing King Hamlet's ghost to Horatio.  Horatio witnesses the ghost and decides to report this anomaly to Prince Hamlet. King Claudius is acting churlish as he tells his people to stop being depressed over the death of King Hamlet and instead, be happy over the fact he has married Gertrude. Hamlet is rancorous because his mother's grieving of his father was ephemeral since she has married Claudius just two months after his death. Claudius gives Hamlet a brusque talking to when he states everybody dies and he should stop his grieving immediately. Meanwhile, Ophelia tells her brother, Laertes, and her father, Polonius, she likes Hamlet but they act as if Hamlet is an abomination. Laertes then goes on to abase Hamlet and tell Ophelia to steer clear of him. Hamlet meets the ghost of his father who tells him that he has been murdered by Claudius. Perhaps Claudius had been rapacious and wanted to be king so badly, he didn't mind murdering his own brother. Hamlet becomes a saboteur as he starts to plot ways to gain revenge for his father's death.

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