| aberration |
a deviation from what is considered normal or right; irregularity. |
| abeyance |
temporary suspension or cessation. |
| abstruse |
difficult to comprehend or understand; esoteric; arcane. |
| adulteration |
the act or process of making worse or impure by adding unnecessary or inferior ingredients. |
| atonement |
the act of making reparation for a sin, crime, error, or the like. |
| austerity |
a tightened or stringent economy, as when there are high taxes, frozen wages, and shortages of consumer goods. |
| diatribe |
a bitter, abusive attack in speech or writing. |
| equipoise |
a state of balance or equal weight, importance, or the like; equilibrium. |
| eulogy |
a spoken or written tribute, especially to honor a dead person; high praise; formal commendation. |
| gambit |
a tactic or maneuver designed to gain an advantage, especially one that involves some sacrifice on one's part. |
| 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. |
| libertine |
acting without restraint; dissolute; amoral. |
| malapropism |
the humorous or ridiculous misuse of a word, especially by using a word that sounds similar to the correct word, but whose meaning is inappropriate. |
| mésalliance |
marriage with someone of lower social standing than oneself. |
| periphrasis |
an indirect or roundabout way of phrasing something; circumlocution. |