The Century Vocabulary Builder · Chapter 17Exercise D
This chapter is not translated yet. You are reading the original.
In this exercise each group of synonyms is followed by quotations from authoritative writers in which the words are discriminatingly employed. Find the meaning of each italicized word in these quotations, and differentiate the word accurately from the others in that group. Substitute for it other words from the group, and observe precisely how the meaning is affected.
(So many of the quotations are from poetry that these will be printed as verse rather than, as in the preceding exercises, in continuous lines like prose.)
<Affront, insult, indignity.>
A moral, sensible, and well-bred man Will not affront me,—and no other can. An old affront will stir the heart Through years of rankling pain.
The way to procure insults is to submit to them. A man meets with no more respect than he exacts.
It is often better not to see an insult than to avenge it.
Even a hare, the weakest of animals, may insult a dead lion.
To a native of rank, arrest was not merely a restraint, but a foul personal indignity.
<Dishonor, disgrace, ignominy, infamy, obloquy, opprobrium>.
His honor rooted in dishonor stood, And faith unfaithful kept him falsely true.
It is hard to say which of the two we ought most to lament,—the unhappy man who sinks under the sense of his dishonor, or him who survives it.
Could he with reason murmur at his case Himself sole author of his own disgrace?
Whatever disgrace we may have deserved, it is almost always in our power to re-establish our character.
When in disgrace with fortune and men's eyes I all alone beweep my outcast state.
Their generals have been received with honor after their defeat; yours with ignominy after conquest.
Wilful perpetuations of unworthy actions brand with most indelible characters of infamy the name and memory to posterity.
And when his long public life, so singularly chequered with good and evil, with glory and obloquy, had at length closed forever, it was to Daylesford that he retired to die.
Great opprobrium has been thrown on her name.
<Fame, honor, renown, glory, distinction, reputation, repute, celebrity, eminence, notoriety>.
Let fame, that all hunt after in their lives, Live register'd upon our brazen tombs.
Men have a solicitude about fame; and the greater share they have of it, the more afraid they are of losing it.
Fame is no plant that grows on mortal soil, . . . . . . . . But lives and spreads aloft by those pure eyes And perfect witness of all-judging Jove; As he pronounces lastly on each deed, Of so much fame in heaven expect thy meed.
When faith is lost, when honor dies, The man is dead.
The Athenians erected a large statue of Aesop, and placed him, though a slave, on a lasting pedestal, to show that the way to honor lies open indifferently to all.
I could not love thee, dear, so much, Loved I not honor more.
That nation is worthless which does not joyfully stake everything on her honor.
By heaven methinks it were an easy leap To pluck bright honor from the pale-fac'd moon.
That merit which gives greatness and renown diffuses its influence to a wide compass, but acts weakly on every single breast.
Speak no more of his renown, Lay your earthly fancies down, And in the vast cathedral leave him, God accept him, Christ receive him.
The young warrior did not fly; but met death as he went forward in his strength. Happy are they who dies in youth, when their renown is heard!
The paths of glory lead but to the grave.
Glory long has made the sages smile; 'tis something, nothing, words, illusion, wind.
Not once or twice in our rough island-story The path of duty was the way to glory.
He was a charming fellow, clever, urbane, free-handed, with all that fortunate quality in his appearance which is known as distinction.
Never get a reputation for a small perfection if you are trying for fame in a loftier area.
One may be better than his reputation or his conduct, but never better than his principles.
I see my reputation is at stake My fame is shrewdly gor'd.
CASSIO. Reputation, reputation, reputation! O! I have lost my reputation. I have lost the immortal part of myself, and what remains is bestial. My reputation, Iago, my reputation! IAGO. As I am an honest man, I thought you had received some bodily wound.
You have a good repute for gentleness and wisdom. Celebrity sells dearly what we think she gives.
Kings climb to eminence Over men's graves.
Notoriety is short-lived; fame is lasting.
<Hatred, hate, animosity, ill-will, enmity, hostility, bitterness, malice, malevolence, malignity, rancor, resentment, dudgeon, grudge, spite>.
The hatred we bear our enemies injures their happiness less than our own.
Hate is like fire; it makes even light rubbish deadly.
He generously forgot all feeling of animosity, and determined to go in person to his succor.
That thereby he may gather The ground of your ill-will, and so remove it.
No place is so propitious to the formation either of close friendships or of deadly enmities as an Indiaman.
There need be no hostility between evolutionist and theologian.
Shall we be thus afflicted in his wreaks, His fits, his frenzy, and his bitterness?
Speak of me as I am; nothing extenuate, Nor set down aught in malice.
Every obstacle which partisan malevolence could create he has had to encounter.
His flight is occasioned rather by the malignity of his countrymen than by the enmity of the Egyptians.
Where the soul sours, and gradual rancor grows, Imbitter'd more from peevish day to day.
Peace in their mouthes, and all rancor and vengeance in their hartes [hearts].
For them the gracious Duncan have I murder'd; Put rancors in the vessel of my peace Only for them.
Her resentment against the king seems not to have abated.
Mrs. W. was in high dudgeon; her heels clattered on the red-tiled floor, and she whisked about the house like a parched pea upon a drum-head.
If I can catch him once upon the hip, I will feed fat the ancient grudge I bear him.
Men of this character pursue a grudge unceasingly, and never forget or forgive.
And since you ne'er provoked their spite, Depend upon't their judgment's right.
<Marriage, matrimony, wedlock>. (With this group compare the matrimonial group in Exercise C, above.)
Marriages are made in heaven.
Hasty marriage seldom proveth well.
A man finds himself seven years older the day after his marriage.
Let me not to the marriage of true minds Admit impediments.
Marriage is the best state for man in general; and every man is a worse man in proportion as he is unfit for the married state.
Matrimony—the high sea for which no compass has yet been invented.
Wedlock's a lane where there is no turning.
What is wedlock forced, but a hell, An age of discord and continual strife?
<Mercy, clemency, lenity, leniency, lenience, forbearance>.
Teach me to feel another's woe, To hide the fault I see; That mercy I to others show, That mercy show to me.
The quality of mercy is not strain'd, It droppeth as the gentle rain from heaven Upon the place beneath: it is twice bless'd; It blesseth him that gives and him that takes; * * * * * And earthly power doth then show likest God's When mercy seasons justice.
Clemency is the surest proof of a true monarch.
Lenity will operate with greater force, in some instances, than vigor.
All the fellows tried to persuade the Master to greater leniency, but in vain.
It will be necessary that this acceptance should be followed up by measures of the utmost lenience.
There is however a limit at which forbearance ceases to be a virtue.
<Pity, sympathy, compassion, commiseration, condolence>.
Careless their merits or their faults to scan, His pity gave ere charity began.
For pity melts the mind to love.
For pitee renneth [runneth] soon in gentle herte [heart].
Our sympathy is cold to the relation of distant misery.
Man may dismiss compassion from his heart, but God will never.
It is unworthy a religious man to view an irreligious one either with alarm or aversion; or with any other feeling than regret, and hope, and brotherly commiseration.
Their congratulations and their condolences are equally words of course.
<Poverty, want, need, destitution, indigence, penury>.
Is there for honest poverty That hings [hangs] his head, and a' that?
Not to be able to bear poverty is a shameful thing, but not to know how to chase it away by work is a more shameful thing yet.
Stitch! stitch! stitch! In poverty, hunger, and dirt, And still with a voice of dolorous pitch, Would that its tone could reach the Rich, She sang this "Song of the Shirt!"
Poverty is dishonorable, not in itself, but when it is a proof of laziness, intemperance, luxury, and carelessness; whereas in a person that is temperate, industrious, just and valiant, and who uses all his virtues for the public good, it shows a great and lofty mind.
Want is a bitter and hateful good, Because its virtues are not understood; Yet many things, impossible to thought, Have been by need to full perfection brought.
Hundreds would never have known want if they had not first known waste.
O! reason not the need; our basest beggars Are in the poorest thing superfluous: Allow not nature more than nature needs, Man's life is cheap as beast's.
The Christian inhabitants of Thessaly would be reduced to destitution.
It is the care of a very great part of mankind to conceal their indigence from the rest.
Chill penury repress'd their noble rage, And froze the genial current of the soul.
Chill penury weighs down the heart itself; and though it sometimes be endured with calmness, it is but the calmness of despair.
Where penury is felt the thought is chain'd, And sweet colloquial pleasures are but few.
<Regret, compunction, remorse, contrition, penitence, repentance>.
Regrets over the past should chasten the future.
He acknowledged his disloyalty to the king with expressions of great compunction.
Through no disturbance of my soul, Or strong compunction in me wrought, I supplicate for thy control.
God speaks to our hearts through the voice of remorse.
To err is human; but contrition felt for the crime distinguishes the virtuous from the wicked.
Christian penitence is something more than a thought or an emotion or a tear; it is action.
Repentance must be something more than mere remorse for sins; it comprehends a change of nature befitting heaven.
<Stubborn, obstinate, pertinacious, intractable, refractory, contumacious>.
For fools are stubborn in their way, As coins are harden'd by th' allay; And obstinacy's ne'er so stiff As when 'tis in a wrong belief.
They may also laugh at their pertinacious and incurable obstinacy.
He who is intractable, he whom nothing can persuade, may boast himself invincible.
There is a law in each well-order'd nation To curb those raging appetites that are Most disobedient and refractory.
He then dissolved Parliament, and sent its most refractory members to the Tower.
If he were contumacious, he might be excommunicated, or, in other words, be deprived of all civil rights and imprisoned for life.