| abeyance |
temporary suspension or cessation. |
| apocryphal |
of dubious authorship or authority. |
| baleful |
threatening harm; full of malice; ominous. |
| canard |
a deliberately false story or rumor, usually defamatory to someone. |
| chary |
not dispensing freely. |
| engender |
to create or give rise to. |
| flout |
to show scorn or contempt for, especially by openly or deliberately disobeying. |
| forswear |
to give up or renounce, often with an oath or pledge. |
| gullible |
believing almost anything; easily tricked. |
| immaculate |
not dirty; completely clean. |
| 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. |
| invidious |
tending to arouse feelings of resentment or animosity, especially because of a slight; offensive or discriminatory. |
| maverick |
a person who thinks and behaves independently, especially one who refuses to adhere to the orthodoxy of the group to which he or she belongs. |
| parlance |
manner of speaking or writing, especially word choice; vernacular. |
| spurn |
to reject, refuse, or treat with scorn; disdain; despise. |