| abeyance |
temporary suspension or cessation. |
| apocryphal |
of dubious authorship or authority. |
| askance |
with distrust or suspicion. |
| attenuate |
to cause to be thin, rarefied, or fine. |
| exegesis |
a critical explanation or interpretive analysis, especially of religious texts. |
| guttural |
articulated in the back of the mouth; velar. |
| halcyon |
tranquil; peaceful; calm. |
| heterodox |
deviating from an officially approved belief or doctrine, especially in religion. |
| intelligentsia |
the elite class of highly learned people within a society, or those who consider themselves part of such a class. |
| linguistics |
(used with a singular verb) the scientific and historical study of the form and structure of human language. |
| maladroit |
not skillful; clumsy; tactless. |
| prolix |
wordy and boringly long. |
| pusillanimous |
shamefully timid; cowardly. |
| scabrous |
characterized by a rough or scaly surface, as the leaf of a plant. |
| sepsis |
infection, especially by pus-forming bacteria in the blood or tissues. |