26 June 2015

• Obliterate: To remove or destroy all traces of; do away with, destroy completely
• Death may be the great equalizer, but Americans have long believed that during this life, " the spread of education would do more than all things else to obliterate factitious distinctions in society." (Andrew Delbanco) 
• Couple recalled their hurried trip to Ethiopia in the hope Samya might have survived or that she or her effects might be recoverable. But the plane and its passengers were obliterated on impact. (Edward Helmore).  (Added on 17 June 2019)
• Factitious: Not spontaneous or natural; artificial; contrived
• Death may be the great equalizer, but Americans have long believed that during this life, " the spread of education would do more than all things else to obliterate factitious distinctions in society." (Andrew Delbanco) 
• Recuperate: To recover from sickness or exhaustion; regain health or strength
• We gave them white sheets to recuperate in if they survived, and when they didn't, those white sheets became their shrouds.  (Mohammed Hanif) 
• Patois: A regional form of language, especially of French, differing from the standard, literary form of the language. 
• Kotler reads the academic work of Thomas Piketty and other economists but expresses his argument in the more accessible patois of a columnist such as Thomas Friedman. (Deepali Srivastava)