Lesson XVI

CAESAR’S ENGLISH II

• incongruous: incompatible• malevolence: ill will• ambiguous: uncertain• felicity: great happiness• irrevocable: unalterable

• Vex: Irritate• Abyss: A Bottomless Depth• Prostrate: Lying Flat• Articulate: Express Clearly• Martyr: One Who Suffers

CAESAR’S ENGLISH XVI

• Spanish: incongruo• (in-KONG-gru-us)

• The English adjective incongruous means incompatible, lacking congruity. Things are incongruous when they don’t go together. Thomas Hardy wrote in The Return of the Native that “The incongruity between the men’s deeds and their environment was great.”

INCONGRUOUS: INCOMPATIBLE

• Spanish: malevolencia• (mal-LEV-o-lence)

• Malevolence, from the Latin malevolens, is ill (mal) will (vol); it is an evil intention to do harm. Sherlock Holmes, in Arthur Conan Doyle’s The Hound of the Baskervilles, says that “I have not finally made up my mind whether it is a benevolent or a malevolent agency which is in touch with us.” And in Emily Bronte’s Wuthering Heights, we read, “What malevolence you must have to wish to convince me that there is no happiness in the world.”

MALEVOLENCE: ILL WILL

• Spanish: ambiguo

• (am-BIG-yo0-us)

• Our English adjective ambiguous (the noun is ambiguity) refers to the kind of uncertainty we feel when there are multiple possible meanings, and we aren’t sure which one is meant. A very clear meaning is unambiguous. In Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet, we see the request to “Seal up the mouth of outrage for a while, ‘til we can clear these ambiguities.”

AMBIGUOUS: UNCERTAIN

• Spanish: felicidad

• (feh-LISS-ih-tee)

• The English noun felicity comes from the Latin felix, happy. The adjective form is felicitous. Felicity is great happiness. One of the clearest uses of felicity comes from Benjamin Franklin’s Autobiography: “I grew convinced,” Franklin wrote, “that truth, sincerity, and integrity in dealings between man and man were of the utmost importance to the felicity of life.”

FELICITY: GREAT HAPPINESS

• Spanish: irrevocable

• (ir-re-VOKE-able)

• The English adjective irrevocable refers to something that can not (ir) be called (voc) back (re)--can not be revoked. In A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man James Joyce wrote that “a definite and irrevocable act of his threatened to end forever, in time and in eternity, his freedom.”

IRREVOCABLE: UNALTERABLE

• Spanish: articular

• är tiky litˈ ə• To pronounce distinctly and carefully;

enunciate; To speak clearly and distinctly.

• Example: She's an intelligent and articulate speaker.

• Example: He was very articulate about his feelings on the subject.

ARTICULATE: EXPRESS CLEARLY

• Spanish: vejar

• veks

• to bring trouble, distress, or agitation to; to bring physical distress to; to irritate or annoy by petty provocations

• Example: The restaurant is vexed by slow service

• Example: A headache vexed him all morning.

VEX: TO IRRITATE

• Spanish: prostata

• präs trātˈ ˌ• stretched out with face on the ground

in adoration or submission; lying flat

• Example: The police found the body in a prostrate position.

PROSTRATE: LYING DOWN

• Spanish: abismo

• bisəˈ• the bottomless gulf, pit, or chaos of the

old cosmogonies; an immeasurably deep gulf or great space; intellectual or moral depths

• Example: looking down at the dark ocean from the ship's rail, the cruise passenger felt as though he was staring into anabyss

ABYSS: A BOTTOMLESS DEPTH

• Spanish: martir

• märt rˈ ə• a person who voluntarily suffers death as

the penalty of witnessing to and refusing to renounce a religion; to put to death for adhering to a belief, faith, or profession

• Example: martyr to asthma all his life — A. J. Cronin

• Examples of Martyrs:

• Joan of Arc

• Jesus

• Martin Luther King Jr.

• Nelson Mandela

MARTYR: ONE WHO SUFFERS

CAESAR’S CLASSIC WORDS CHALLENGE

1. From James Baldwin’s Go Tell It on the Mountain

The cat turned to watch them, with yellow, ___________ eyes.

a. malevolent

b. ambiguous

c. incongruous

d. irrevocable

CAESAR’S CLASSIC WORDS CHALLENGE

1. From James Baldwin’s Go Tell It on the Mountain

The cat turned to watch them, with yellow, ___________ eyes.

a. malevolent

b. ambiguous

c. incongruous

d. irrevocable

2. From Robert Penn Warren’s All the Kings Men

It was an ____________, speculative look.

a. malevolent

b. ambiguous

c. irrevocable

d. felicitous

2. From Robert Penn Warren’s All the Kings Men

It was an ____________, speculative look.

a. malevolent

b. ambiguous

c. irrevocable

d. felicitous

3. From Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice

They were one of those ______________ and impossible married couples.

a. ambiguous

b. irrevocable

c. incongruous

d. malevolent

3. From Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice

They were one of those ______________ and impossible married couples.

a. ambiguous

b. irrevocable

c. incongruous

d. malevolent

The Grammar of Vocabulary: ambiguous, an adjective.

Caesar’s order was not ambiguous; it was clear.