26 June 2019

• Pathos: A quality that evoked pity or sadness. 
• A photo captures the pathos of migrants that risked it all. (Azam Ahmed and Kirk Semple)

17 June 2019

• Rebarbative: Unattractive; objectionable
• These essays are much denser than her prose fiction, although not rebarbatively so. (Bidisha).
• Auteur: A film director who influences their films so much that they rank as their author.
• Kapur still has a reputation as a great auteur; Devi was pursued through the courts and assassinated in 2001.(Bidisha).
• Posse: A group of people who have a common characteristic or occupation.  
• In the 1970s, Whyte and the posse of young volunteers set out to determine how the design of the city-in particular, New York City-worked or failed to work for urban dwellers. (Alexandra Horowitz in On Looking pg 140). 
• The terrifying aura of his renown and competence are with him even when he is without his posse of house surgeons and head nurses. (Bapsi Sidhwa in Ice-Candy Man, pg 4). (24 Nov 2020).

12 June 2019

• Scrooge: A miserly person. 
• Scrooge posing as Mother Teresa: How hypocritical social responsibility strategies hurt employees and firms. 
• Agglomeration: A mass or collection of things; an assemblage. 
• I had kept this up in Geneva, reciting any agglomeration of letters I came across: MARTINI, PICON, ESSO, HELVITIA. (Orhan Pamuk). 
• Ersatz: (of a product) made or used as a substitute, typically an inferior one, for something else; not real or genuine 
• Even the success of Green parties in the 2019 European elections fits the formula: it is not be taken as a sign of ecological awakening; it was more an ersatz vote, the preferred franchise of all those who clearly perceive the insufficiency of the hegemonic politics  of the European establishment and reject the nationalist-populist reaction to it, but are not ready to vote for a more radical left. (Zizek)

10 June 2019

• Reverie: A state of being pleasantly lost in one's thoughts; daydream 
• He was almost in a trance, staring at the fielder on the boundary and had to be yanked out of his reverie by Mark Wood, who hugged him. (Sriram Veera)
• Scourge: A person or thing that causes great trouble or suffering; a cause of wide or great affliction.  
• The role of private sector in tackling scourges such as modern slavery, human trafficking and child labor, will also be important to consider in the context of development. (Richard Welford). 
• Reification: 
• Giving credit to Freud for bringing dreams into the field of “human meanings” after centuries of having been considered the nonsense of consciousness, Foucault nevertheless believes that this reification of the unconscious has neglected something he finds more significant, namely, the relation of meaning and image. 
• Rhapsody: 
•  What Freud missed to see, according to Foucault, is that dream is more than a rhapsody of images―it is a specific form of experience, “an imaginary experience”46

9 June 2019

• Nostrum: A medicine sold with false or exaggerated claims and with no demonstrable value; quack medicine; a scheme, theory, device etc., especially one to remedy social or political ills; a panacea. 
• Unfortunately, although this nostrum is appealing, it is also unrealistic at present. (CMR). 

8 June 2019

• Surmise: Suppose that something is true without having evidence to prove it
• The Democrats' outrage has been further fueled by the suspicion that behind the president's uncritical embrace of the Saudis are his hopes for personal enrichment from the relationship-a reasonable surmise in light of the Saudi habit of booking entire floors of his Washington hotel when delegations come to town. (Steven Simon; Daniel Benjamin) 

1 June 2019

• Unencumbered: Not having any burden or impediment. 
• We wrote the letter because we sought to fulfill our mission unencumbered. (Mary Ann Glynn)