Vocabulary

Meaning: 

Adjective.

• abstaining from marriage and sexual relations, typically for religious reasons.

Example:

Priests vow to remain celibate, physicians vow to do no harm, and letter carriers vow to swiftly complete their appointed rounds despite snow, sleet, and split infinitives.

Meaning:

Verb.

• To feel, to explore by touch.

Example:

One of the functions of language is to help us palp them—to help us extract and remember the important features of our experiences so that we can analyze and communicate them later.

Meaning:

noun. 

• unlikely chance occurrence, especially a surprising piece of luck.

Example:

Such an existence is so difficult for most of us to imagine, so alien to our normal experience, that we are tempted to dismiss it as a fluke—an unfortunate, rare, and freakish aberration brought on by traumatic head injury.

Meaning:

Verb.

• ask questions of (someone, especially a suspect or a prisoner) closely, aggressively, or formally.

Example:

Whatever you imagined, it’s a pretty good bet that when I said spaghetti, you did not have an unrequited urge to interrogate me about the nuances of sauce and locale before envisioning a single noodle.

Meaning:

Adjective. 

• most noticeable or important.

Example:

Perhaps it isn’t surprising that the gritty details of babysitting that are so salient to us as we execute them were not part of our mental image of babysitting when we imagined it a month earlier, but what is surprising is how surprised we are when those details finally come into view.

Meaning:

Noun.

• a bold manner or a show of boldness intended to impress or intimidate.

Example:

Fischer’s and Eastman’s reactions to their respective situations seem so contrary, so completely inverted, that one is tempted to chalk them up to false bravado or mental abberration.

Meaning:

Noun.

• a departure from what is normal, usual, or expected, typically one that is unwelcome.

Example:

Fischer’s and Eastman’s reactions to their respective situations seem so contrary, so completely inverted, that one is tempted to chalk them up to false bravado or mental abberration.

Meaning:

Verb.

• Destroy completely.
• Kill (a pest).

Example:

Fortunately, his dreams of equity in the American workplace were not so easily exterminated.