31 May 2015

• Disquiet: Lack of calm, peace, or ease; anxiety; uneasiness
• Disquiet in Daska. (Dawn) 
• Contentious: Causing, involving, or characterized by argument or controversy.  
• Corporate Sustainability, is however, a contentious issue. (CMR) 
• Novel: Of a new kind; different from anything known or seen before 
• The resulting innovations are often systematic and demand novel combinations of partner resources, capabilities and intellectual capital. (CMR) 
• Perusal: The act of perusing; scrutiny, survey 
• A perusal of newspapers, magazines and corporate news releases reveals that almost every type of business decision is classified as strategic. (Ram Shivakumar) 
• Nebulous: Hazy; vague; indistinct; or confused 
• Strategic decision making is difficult because the problems that firms confront are nebulous. (Ram Shivakumar)
• Reticent: Reluctant; or restrained 
• It built the first digital camera but was reticent to shift resources away from print photography. (Ram Shivakumar) 
• Proximate: Next; nearest; immediately before or after in order, place,  occurrence, etc.
• For this to happen, management has to translate long-term vision into a set of proximate goals and plans. (Ram Shivakumar) 
• Amorphous: Lacking definite form; having no specific shape; formless
• The " Political Incrementalism" model assumes that the firm's goals are amorphous. (Ram Shivakumar)  

30 May 2015

• Lionize:  To treat (a person) as a celebrity
• Media tend to lionize large companies.  (HBR)
• Triage: The determination of priorities for action
• Filtering your e-mails will make it easier and faster to triage and review the messages that do make it to your in-box. (Alexandra Samuel)
• "Urgent" is different from "as soon as possible," or "immediately," "priority". Ask any doctor who has to perform triage. (Sarah Kass)  
• Primer: Any book of elementary principles
• Taken together, their solutions offer a useful primer on how we can begin to tackle this huge and growing problem.  (HBR, June 2015)
• Disparate: Distinct in kind; essentially different; dissimilar
• We suspected that their disparate backgrounds would lead them to offer dramatically different advice, and we were right. (HBR, June 2015)

29 May 2015

• Plaudit: An enthusiastic expression of approval
• In 2003 he officiated in the world cup, emerging with his reputation enhanced, and his test debut followed in October of that year, immediately winning plaudits for making sound decisions in tough matches in Bangladesh and Sri Lanka. (Martin Williomson) 
• Eddie: A current at variance with the main current in a steam of liquid or gas, especially one having a rotary or whirling motion. 
• What we see is multicolored patterns of fluid motion, looking like eddies in a river or clouds in a sunset. (Freeman Dyson)  

20 May 2015

• Parlance: A way or manner of speaking; vernacular; idiom; speech, especially a formal discussion or debate
• Not surprisingly, corporate thinking about the sustainability of the Earth as a planetary system came into more common parlance with the ‘the Spaceship Earth’ metaphor, which was popularized by many statesmen and scientists in the 1960s. (Timothy W. Luke) 
• Intersperse: To scatter here and there or place at intervals among other things
• In deviance research scholars have asserted that while personal and relational characteristics can explain interspersed and isolated incidents of deviance, its rate is primarily influenced by the overarching social structure.  (Charalampos Mainemelis) 

19 May 2015

• Ruse: A trick, stratagem, or artifice; an action intended to mislead, deceive, or trick
• He forbore, in the end, to do so, having hit on the ruse of publishing his paper as an advertisement. (Walter Gratzer)
• Apogee: The highest or most distant point; climax 
• But it is nonsense to do it on the theoretical ground that the period which marked the apogee of the individual, and so on, has ended. (Saul Bellow)  
• Imbibe: To take or receive into the mind knowledge, ideas, or the like
• He is accustomed to keeping quiet, and if he wants to imbibe an atmosphere, he must blend in with the crowd. (Patrick Modiano) 
• Egregious: Extraordinary in some bad way; glaring; flagrant
• Owning a human being became debt's most egregious manifestation. (Harris Irfan) 
• Once again, Pakistan has spectacularly failed a basic test of humanity. This one, not on account of frenzied mob playing judge, judge, jury, and executioner but simply because a callous state chose-willfully and deliberately-not to right an egregious wrong committed against one of its weakest and most disadvantaged citizens. (Dawn-14 June 2015) 
• Panache: A grand or flamboyant manner; verve; style; flair
• Here is a book about global high finance written with lyricism and panache of any best-selling author of literary fiction. (Kathleen Dupre) 

18 May 2015

• Monger: A person who is involved with something in a petty or contemptible way.
• Next to Norman Miller, who did equally well on the spouse-mongering front, Bellow was a worker of slow, monkish application, always tied, seldom happily, to a university department, and agonizing over a book. (Andrew O'Hagan)

17 May 2015

• Impecunious: Having little or no money; penniless; poor.
• Although this may seem like a lot to an impecunious hack like me, I'm told it's actually a bargain. (Irfan Hussain) 
• Hideous:
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• Staid: Of settled or sedate character; not flighty or capricious;  fixed; settled; or permanent
• In their late 30s or early 40s, most were staid and stable family men who had come to university, expecting to get a higher degree and hence a higher pay grade. (Pervez Hoodbhoy) 
• Abominable: Repugnantly hateful; detestable; loathsome  
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12 May 2015

• Inanity: Lack of sense, significance, or ideas; silliness
• And nowhere was the triumph of inanity more complete than in Keynes's homeland, which is going to polls as I write this. (Paul Krugman) 
• Inchoate: Not yet completed or fully developed; rudimentary
• The party of war may also have sent Igor Strelkov and his merry band of murderers into eastern Ukraine last spring, to turn an inchoate set of local protests into the beginnings of a civil war. (Keith Gessen)
• Can you feel an inchoate multipolar world? Well, just look right here at the BRICS 2015 Ufa declaration. The EU is hardly featured in the BRICS declaration and not by accident. (Pepe Escobar) 
• Profligacy: Reckless extravagance
• Fiscal profligacy caused the economic crisis of 2008-2009. (Paul Krugman)
• Sine qua non:  an indispensable condition, element, or factor; something essential
• This linear path was the yuppie sine qua non, the mark of a serious person who climbed the ladder. (Arthur C. Brooks)
• Ghemawat argues that a high degree of commitment is a sine qua non for strategic decision making but is silent on the decision's implications for the firm's scope. (Ram Shivakumar) 
•  Hamster-wheel: Doing or saying the same thing over and over; repetitious.
• In contrast, purposelessness — no matter how closely tied to worldly prosperity — generally defines a hamster-wheel life, alarmingly bereft of satisfaction. (Arthur C. Brooks)
• Sisyphean: Endless or unavailing, as labor or task.
• “Find a fun job” sounds vaguely Sisyphean. (Arthur C. Brooks)
  
  

9 May 2015

• Ne plus ultra: The highest point; acme; the most intense degree of a quality or state 
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•  Feckless: Ineffective; incompetent; futile
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• Insouciant: Free from concern, worry or anxiety; carefree; nonchalant 
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• Inexorable: Unyielding; Unalterable 
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Mollify: To soften in feeling or temper, as a person; pacify; appease

• Though their appointments had always been the prime minister's prerogative, PTI Chairman Imran Khan also needed to be mollified. (Dawn 25/11/2022) 

Decrepitude: Decrepit condition; dilapidated state; feebleness especially from old age

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• Piquant: Pungent or sharp in taste; stimulating; interesting; or attractive 
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• Anomie: A state or condition of individuals or society characterized by a breakdown or absence of social norms and values, as in the case of uprooted people. 
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• Interloper: A person who interferes or meddles in the affairs of others; a person who intrudes into a region, field or trade without a proper license 
• Callow: Immature or inexperienced
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• Soporific: Causing or tending to cause sleep; sleepy; drowsy
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•  Puissance: Power, might, or force
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• Somnolent: Sleepy; drowsy; tending to cause sleep
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• Rudiments: The elements or first principles of the subject
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•  Vapid: Lacking or having lost life, sharpness or flavor; insipid; flat
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•  Politic: Shrewd or prudent in practical matters; tactful; diplomatic
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8 May 2015

• Vitriol: Something highly caustic or severe in effect; as criticism. 
• Vitriol is not effective replacement for reasoned argument. (Max McKeown) 

7 May 2015

• Climactic: Pertaining to or coming to a climax 
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6 May 2015

• Doyen: A senior member as in age, rank, or experience, of a group class, quantity of food taken or provided for one occasion  of eating.
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• Arcane: Known or understood by very few; mysterious; secret; esoteric. 
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• Insidious: Intended to entrap or beguile; stealthily treacherous or deceitful.
• But part of what makes social media insidious is that the companies that profit from your attention have succeeded with a masterful marketing coup: convincing our culture that if you don't use their products you might miss out. (Carl Newport in Deep Work) 

4 May 2015

• Repast: A quantity of food taken or provided for one occasion  of eating.
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• Concoct: To prepare or make by combining ingredients, especially in cookery.
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• Levity: Lightness of mind, character, or behavior; lack of appropriate seriousness or earnestness
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• Clump: a small, close group or cluster, especially of tress of other plants. 
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• Sacrilege: The violation or profanation of anything sacred or held sacred.
• I find it sacrilegious to pass over a word,  whose meaning I do not know, without looking for its meaning in the dictionary.  (Masood Ahmed)

3 May 2015

• Mimesis: Imitation of the real world, as by re-creating instances of human actions and events or portraying or objects found in nature. 
• The Indian English novel since Rushdie has pursued " a mimesis of form, where the largeness of the book  allegorizes the largeness of the country it represents." (Amit Chaudhuri) 
• Ellipsis: Omission of parts of a word or sentence 
• There are plenty of Indian writers who have "hoped to suggest India by ellipses rather than by all-inclusiveness". 

1 May 2015

• Fiduciary: (Law) a person to whom property and power is entrusted for the benefit of another. 
• We can have many reasons for our conservational efforts- not all of which are parasitic on our own living standards and some of which turn precisely on our sense of values and of fiduciary responsibility.  (Amartya Sen)
• Dour: Sullen, gloomy; extremely serious and stern, severe
• In some such way in Bombay, I broke down and gave my dour journal up; and looked around to make another kind of start.  (V. S. Naipal)
• Heretic: Anyone who does not conform to an established attitude, doctrine or principle.
• Mahbub ul Haq, a heretic among economists, died on July 16th, aged 64.  (Economist)
• Seer: A person who prophesies future events; prophet
• Just as Lee Kuan Yew emerged from the confines of Singapore to become seer of Asia, so Mr. Haq became accepted as one of the visionaries of International Development. (Economist)