| atonement |
the act of making reparation for a sin, crime, error, or the like. |
| benign |
causing little or no harm. |
| cantankerous |
irritable, stubborn, and quarrelsome. |
| chary |
not dispensing freely. |
| conduction |
the transmission or transfer, as of heat, electrical charges, or nervous impulses, through a medium. |
| derision |
mockery or ridicule. |
| effete |
marked by excessive refinement or delicateness of taste. |
| feckless |
weak or incompetent; ineffective. |
| fulminate |
to vehemently denounce or criticize something. |
| imbroglio |
a difficult, confused, or complicated situation, often involving a misunderstanding, disagreement, or quarrel. |
| ineluctable |
impossible to be avoided; inescapable. |
| inflection |
change that occurs in the form of words to show a grammatical characteristic such as the tense of a verb, the number of a noun, or the degree of an adjective or adverb. |
| neologism |
a new word, phrase, or usage. |
| periphrasis |
an indirect or roundabout way of phrasing something; circumlocution. |
| picayune |
having little value or significance; small; paltry. |