| agog |
highly excited and full of anticipation. |
| ambidextrous |
able to use both the left and right hands with equal skill. |
| assuage |
to make less severe or more bearable; alleviate. |
| benign |
causing little or no harm. |
| colloquialism |
a word or phrase typically used in conversational, informal, or regional speech or writing, hence sometimes considered inappropriate in formal writing. |
| derelict |
failing to fulfill one's responsibilities or obligations; remiss. |
| doyen |
the senior or highest-ranking male member of a group. |
| elide |
to leave out or slur, as a syllable or letter, in pronunciation. |
| encomium |
a formal expression of praise. |
| eulogy |
a spoken or written tribute, especially to honor a dead person; high praise; formal commendation. |
| intelligentsia |
the elite class of highly learned people within a society, or those who consider themselves part of such a class. |
| pedantic |
making or characterized by an excessive display of learnedness, or overly insistent on scholarly details and formalities. |
| reprisal |
injury inflicted in retaliation for injury received, as in war; revenge. |
| solipsism |
the self-centered habit of interpreting and judging all things exclusively according to one's own concepts of meaning and value. |
| vitiate |
to harm the quality of; mar; spoil. |