Hatcher Dave - Fiske 250 Words Every High School Graduate Needs to Know

Copyright 2009 by FGC Associates LLC, Jane Mallison, David Hatcher Cover and internal design 2009 by Sourcebooks, Inc.

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Fiske, Edward B.

Fiske 250 words every high school graduate needs to know / by Edward B. Fiske, Jane Mallison, and David Hatcher.

p. cm.

1. Vocabulary. 2. High school graduatesLanguage. I. Mallison, Jane. II. Hatcher, David. III. Title. IV. Title: Fiske two-hundred fifty words every high school graduate needs to know.

PE1449.F5529 2009

428.1dc22

2008048509

Printed and bound in the United States of America.
VP 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

Chances are that you already know lots of words probably tens of thousands. And now you are about to learn even more.

Not that we blame youobviously, we're glad you're enlarging your hoard of words. You can probably already reel off some excellent reasons for learning more words: people with rich vocabularies make higher grades, score better on most standardized tests, and go on to be more successful in their chosen careers. They're also more interesting to talk to.

All these are valid reasons for expanding and refining your vocabulary. We'd like to add a couple more that we find equally valid.

One is that learning new words actually makes you smarter. You don't just seem smarter, you are smarter you know more. Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr., was right when he said a mind stretched by a new idea never goes back to its original dimensions. What's true for ideas is true for words. When you learn the word symbiosis, you become linked to the knowledge that plants and animals have worked out some fascinating and mutually beneficial ways to help each otherfrom the bird that cleans food fragments from the alligator's teeth to the tiny mite that clings to the bottom of an ant's foot (getting a bit of food from the ant's system, and perhaps serving as an athletic shoe to cushion the host's soles).

But getting smarter through learning words isn't limited to the acquisition of technical terms. As a friend once said, If you know the names of the wildflowers, you're more likely to see them. That principle works for words as well. Once you learn the adjective louche, for example, you'll be able to recognize, to pinpoint, a variety of decadent slyness that you might earlier have tossed in the catchall basket labeled weird.

Here's one more reason, often overlooked but for us among the most importantyou can learn words for the pure pleasure of it, for the joy of discovery, of finding out what the words mean, how they sound, maybe when they were born, where they come from, and how they've changed over the years. (Did you know a bonfire was once a bone fire?)

Isn't it a pleasure to know that there's a word for the pesky person who delights in catching others' errorsand triumphantly pointing them out? That person's a doryphore (DOR-a-fore). Or what about the fact that crapulous describes someone with a hangover?

And you doubtless know someone who talks too muchway too much. The person who goes on and on, sending out a seemingly unending flow of words, is suffering (or making us suffer) from logorrhea(LOG-uh-REE-uh).

So you have lots of reasons for expanding and deepening your vocabulary, and the words we've chosen for this book run the gamut. We think they'll help you satisfy all your reasons for learning new words, and that you'll find them interesting, useful, and fun.

Feel free to dive into this book anywhere you like, but if you start at the beginning, you'll recognize a pattern of four chapters organized by themes, followed by a grab bag chapter, and a quiz over five chapters. If you complete the entire book (congratulations!), you'll have encountered two hundred words in the thematic chapters, learned fifty from the grab bag chapters, and taken five quizzes to reinforce your confidence that you've mastered them all.

This book follows the style and format of its parent book, Fiske WordPower, which contains one thousand words. So when you're ready for lots more, move on to Fiske WordPower, by Edward B. Fiske, Jane Mallison, and Margery Mandell (Sourcebooks, 2006). You'll find hundreds of new words theresome practical, some intriguing, some bothand you'll recognize a few familiar friends you first met here.

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* We've also written a sibling book with a completely different set of words, Fiske 250 Words Every High School Freshman Needs to Know. The words there are slightly easier than those in the book you're holding nowtake a look.

Comin'-at-ya! That's, more or less, the literal meaning of aggressive. Whether actual or just implied, the words below all involve some form of attack.

Scathe (rhymes with bathe)

This means to harm or injure and comes into English from Old Norse; those Vikings knew a thing or two about scathing. Today, you'll see it mostly in the two forms illustrated below.

• While Henrik would never hit a member of his family, hisscathingcomments are brutal enough.
• The powerful force of Hurricane Katrina left no resident of New Orleansunscathed.

Lacerate (LASS-er-ate)

This word refers to ripping or tearing, whether literal or figurative.

• The pit-bull attack left Jeff with deeplacerationson his shin.
• The English translation of Jonathan Swift's self-written Latin epitaph refers to death as the onlyplace where his heart would not belaceratedby a fierce indignation.

Disparage (dis-PAIR-idge)

Though not as cruel as scathe or lacerate, this verb refers to a withering belittlement of someone or something. (The root word is related to the word peer, so if you're dis-peered, you're being made less of an equal than the speaker.)

• Because Angela is insecure about her abilities, she finds it important todisparagethe ideas of others, even before they've been given a hearing.