ESL Glossary

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30 June 1997

to boil down to something: is to come to the essence of the topic, the basic, fundamental part of it

to be attributed to something or someone: for example: "He attributed his cold to his having gone out in the rain without shoes and a hat." and "The play is attributed to Shakespeare, but it may have been written by one of his friends."

3 July 1997

supposedly: when we say something is "supposedly" true, we mean we doubt that it is true; however, it is rumored to be true, or some people publicly claim it is true.

fluff: unimportant airy matters or things

shrill: High-pitched and unpleasant in sound

inflammatory: (adj) An inflammatory topic is one that will inflame peoples' emotions, an emotional (and, therefore, not logical) "hot" topic

to play the devil's advocate: is to argue for a point of view that you don't believe in, for the purposes of discussion, to get other people to think about their point of view and make it stronger

everyman: a literary term for the hero of a story who is a common man

14 July 1997

tacky: literally means "not dry," referring to paint. Here it means thoughtless, inconsiderate, tasteless, unrefined "low-class"

to be fooled by someone or something: is to be deceived by someone or something: to believe a person is good, or smart, or honest, when he is not

21 July to ban something is to make it inaccessable and illegal to have. See the June vocabulary for a longer discussion of this word

29 July waiver: (noun) to get a waiver of a legal requirement is to get permission to not have the regulation apply to you. Often we get a waiver of fees: this means we don't need to pay a special fee because of our condition, usually a financial condition. To waive a regulation is to give permission for an individual to not have to comply with it.

"geekatorium:" is a made-up word. It is a combination of geek and the root word of

auditorium and natatorium, a place where people assemble. A geek is a social misfit of sorts. Originally it meant a drunk who bit the heads off of chickens and drank their blood in circus sideshow acts. It later came to mean a sort of social misfit, like a nerd: someone who didn't participate in sports and had a lot of quiet interests, wore glasses, and had a plastic pocket protector in his shirt to keep his pens in. Now a geek is someone who spends a lot of time at the computer (and may wear glasses and a pocket protector), but it isn't a negative term any more. A "geekatorium" is, then, a place where many people who spend a lot of time on their computers can assemble, via computer.

July Vocabulary: "People Are Talking About:"

Adjectives that are being applied to the 30 June fight and Tyson's actions are: despicable, embarrassing, appalling, disgusting, gross, disgraceful; people are saying they're appalled, disgusted, and incredulous; Tyson's actions are attributed to his fear of humiliation at the hands of a superior fighter.
• Notice the difference between adjectives that end in -ing and those that end in -ed:
  • Tyson's actions were embarrassing to everyone who watched.
    The people who watched were embarrassed by his actions;
    they were embarrassed for him (on his behalf because he doesn't have enough sense to be embarrassed himself).
  • Tyson's actions were appalling to everyone who watched.
    The people who watched were appalled by his actions.
    
  • Tyson's actions were disgusting to everyone who watched.
    The people who watched were disgusted by his actions.
  
  
• Other words that do not use the -ed and -ing forms take the same pattern, where one form (-ing) is the subject's effect on the object and the other form is the object's resulting feelings (-ed) about the subject.
  • Tyson's actions were incredible to everyone who watched.
    The people who watched were incredulous.

If you don't have a copy of the Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English, they are available right now at a big discount, in association with Amazon Books. If English is not your first language, it's the best dictionary you can ever have, and you will never outgrow it.

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