| apprehensive |
feeling fearful about future events. |
| canny |
difficult to fool or take advantage of; shrewd; wary; clever. |
| cognomen |
a last name; surname. |
| credulous |
disposed to believe, especially on scanty evidence; gullible. |
| disinter |
to dig up or remove from a place of burial; exhume. |
| extort |
to extract or obtain (money or the like) by force, threats, or abuse of authority. |
| goad |
something that spurs a person to action; stimulus. |
| harbinger |
someone or something that signals or foreshadows a later arrival or occurrence; herald; forerunner. |
| insularity |
the condition of being closed to new ideas or outside influences; narrow-mindedness. |
| ligature |
a band or tie. |
| mésalliance |
marriage with someone of lower social standing than oneself. |
| nostrum |
a favorite but unproven scheme or theory, offered as a remedy for social or political problems; panacea. |
| sepsis |
infection, especially by pus-forming bacteria in the blood or tissues. |
| transpose |
to exchange the position or order of (two things). |
| voluble |
characterized by a steady flow of words; fluent; talkative. |