Vocabulary Set – 35

1. Votary – a devoted follower, adherent, or advocate of someone or something.

Synonyms: addict, adherent, admirer, aficionado, amateur, disciple, zealot

Antonyms: critic, detractor, enemy, opponent

Usage: He was a votary of John Keats

 

2. Totter – move in a feeble or unsteady way; be insecure or about to fail.

Synonyms: stagger, stumble, dodder, shuffle, shamble, falter, toddle, lurch

Antonyms: be still, calm, continue, correct, stabilize

Usage: She tottered off on her four-inch heel

 

3. Barbarism – absence of culture and civilization.

Synonyms: atrocity, barbarity, brutality, inhumanity, catachresis, coarseness

Antonyms: kindness, niceness, praise

Usage: War is the ultimate barbarism.

 

4. Murderous – extremely unpleasant

Synonyms: arduous, gruelling, strenuous, punishing, onerous, exhausting

Antonyms: pleasant, facile, tame, gentle

Usage: The team had a murderous schedule of four games in ten days

 

5. Impunity – exemption from punishment or freedom from the injurious consequences of an action.

Synonyms: immunity, dispensation, exception, exemption, liberty, privilege

Antonyms: denial, prohibition, imprisonment, incarceration

Usage: The impunity enjoyed by military officers implicated in civilian killings

 

6. Fanatic – filled with or expressing excessive zeal.

Synonyms: activist, bigot, devotee, enthusiast, extremist, fiend, freak, maniac

Antonyms: conservative, moderate

Usage: Because he is a football fanatic, he hasn’t missed any of his team’s home games in ten years.

 

7. Transpire – come to be known; be revealed.

Synonyms: arise, befall, ensue, betide, chance, develop, eventuate

Antonyms: stop, cause

Usage: The police sat in their cruiser and waited for a criminal act to transpire.

 

8. Anticipate – regard as probable; expect or predict.

Synonyms: assume, conjecture, divine, foreteprognosticate, prophesy 

Antonyms: doubt, dread

Usage: If we follow the timeline, we anticipate we should have the project completed before Monday

 

9. Intertwine – twist or twine together.

Synonyms: convolute, entwine, interlace, interweave, braid, reticulate

Antonyms: untangle, untwist. disconnect. dissociate. divide

Usage: A net made of cotton intertwined with other natural fibres

 

10. Clandestine – kept secret or done secretively, especially because illicit.

Synonyms: covert, fraudulent, surreptitious, cloak-and-dagger, illegitimate

Antonyms: aboveboard, authorized. honest.

Usage: From the van, the police watched as the clandestine drug deal occurred.

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