Word Smart II Sentences I - Z

Incarnate

Nina's brother Ian, however, is so evil that some people consider him the devil _____. That is, they consider him to be the embodiment of the devil, or the devil in human form.

Media

The _____ instantly seized on the trial's lurid details.

Voracious

The _____ lions circling outside her tent made Patty hesitant to step outside.

Underpinning

The _____ of Shing and Dyan's long-lasting marriage was a shared enthusiasm for bowling.

Jubilation

The _____ of the crowd was palpable when the mayor announced that the rich old lady had given the town seven million dollars toward the construction of a new zoo.

Influx

The _____ of ugly clothes in the stores this fall can only mean that fashion designers have lost their minds once again.

Pristine

The _____ page in his typewriter seemed to taunt the struggling author, who couldn't think of anything whatsoever to write.

Interim

The _____ professor had an easier time with the unruly students than did his predecessor because he carried a large club to class with him every day.

Stipend

The _____ this university pays its teaching assistants is so low that some of them are forced to rummage for food in the dumpster behind McDonald's.

Wrathful

The _____ vampire lurched toward Marlene and bared his pointy fangs.

Savant

The abbot of the monastery is a great _____ in the fields of church history and religious art.

Impromptu

The actress did her best to pretend her award acceptance speech was _____, but everyone could see the notes tucked into her dress.

Tactical

The admiral made a _____ error when he ordered his men to drag their ships across the desert as part of the surprise attack.

Predominantly

The admiral's audience was composed _____ of penguins; there were a few polar bears here and there, but for the most part it was penguins, penguins, penguins.

Sordid

This is just about the most _____ cottage I've ever seen. Look at that mold on the walls! Look at the slime on the floor! When I track down that rental agent, I'm going to give her a piece of my mind.

Melancholy

Thomas always walks around with as _____ an expression as he can manage, because he thinks that a gloomy appearance will make him seem mysterious and interesting to girls.

Phantasm

Though Aaron seems confident, fear and insecurity hover in his background like _____ ready to haunt him again at any moment.

Nirvana

Though many thought the band's sound was annoying, listening to it sent me to a state of pure _____.

Juncture

"At this _____, we can't predict when she'll come out of the coma," the doctor said soberly.

Muse

"Beatrice, you are my _____. You inspire all my best poetry," John said to his pet guinea pig.

Nonchalant

"I don't care that my car was stolen," Blanca said in a _____ voice. "Daddy will buy me a new one."

Infraction

Driving seventy miles an hour in a thirty-mile-an-hour zone is what Fred would call a minor _____ of the traffic laws, but the policeman did not agree, and Fred's license was suspended for a year.

Secession

Edward's mother refused to recognize his _____. She made him clean up the basement, too.

Tryst

"I'm perfectly happy for alley cats to have a little romance in their lives," groaned Barry, "but why do their _____ always have to be under my bedroom window?"

Spate

"The recent _____ of pickpocketing in the area makes me think that Gotham's citizens are ignoring our public awareness ad campaign," bemoaned Police Commissioner Gordon.

Inimical

All that makeup you wear is _____ to a clear complexion; it smothers your pores and prevents your skin from breathing.

Municipal

All the _____ swimming pools closed after Labor Day because the city didn't have the staff to keep them open any longer.

Materialistic

All young children are innocently _____; when they see something that looks interesting, they don't see why they shouldn't have it.

Tedious

Although some find the composer's work brilliant, others find it _____; for example, there is his seven-hour composition in which a single note is played over and over.

Rampant

Crime was _____ in the high school building; every locker had been broken into.

Wrath

Dawn's _____ knew no bounds when she realized that Ron had started the dishwasher during her shower.

Quizzical

Josh gave Jennifer's waistline a _____ glance as she reached for her third piece of pie.

Precarious

Juliet is earning a ______ living as a strolling knife-sharpener; her position would be considerably less _____ if more people were interested in having their knives sharpened by someone strolling down the street.

Lax

Mike is a rather _____ housekeeper; he washes dishes by rinsing them in cold water for a couple of seconds and then waving them gently in the air.

Modulate

Milhouse _____ his sales pitch when he realized that the hard sell wasn't getting him anywhere.

Objective

My life's one _____ is to see that my father never embarrasses me in public again.

Override

My mother _____ my decision to move into my girlfriend's house.

Pristine

My mother likes her kitchen so _____ that she'd really prefer that no one use it at all.

Quasi

Our invention was a _____ -success; it didn't do what we wanted it to do, but it also didn't blow up.

Stolid

Our local veterinarian no longer treats farm animals because the _____ expressions of cows make him feel uneasy and depressed.

Thwart

I wanted to do some work today, but it seemed as though fate _____ me at every turn; first someone on the phone tried to sell me a magazine subscription, then my computer's printer broke down, then I discovered that my favorite movie was on TV.

Skirmish

I was expecting a couple of _____ during the Scout camp-out - arguments about who got to shower first, and things like that - but not this out-and-out war between the girls in the different patrols.

Junction

I was supposed to turn left after the _____ of Elm Street and Apple Avenue, but I never found the spot where they intersected.

Neophyte

I'm not being fussy. I just don't like the idea of having my cranium sawn open by a _____ surgeon!

Porous

If my socks were not made of a _____ material, my feet would be soaking wet with perspiration.

Underlying

The _____ cause of the cult's disintegration was not faithlessness but homesickness on the part of its members.

Precocious

The _____ child could tie her shoes five minutes after she was born and tap dance before she was a month old.

Incumbent

The _____ dog warden would love to surrender his job to someone else, but no one else is running for the job.

Proclaimation

The king proclaimed that taxes would be raised throughout the realm. Mr. Bendel reported the king's _____ to his family.

Shibboleth

The old housewife's _____ that being cold makes a person more likely to catch a cold has been discredited by modern medical experts.

Revile

The president of the sorority _____ the newest member for not wearing enough makeup.

Jingoism

The president's aggressive foreign policy betrays the _____ that hides below his genial surface.

Opprobrious

The principal gave an _____ lecture about apathy, saying that the students' uncaring attitude was ruining the school.

Remuneration

There is a strong positive correlation between people's satisfaction with their jobs and their level of _____; the more they're paid, the better they like their work.

Resignation

There was _____ in Alex's voice when he announced at long last that there was nothing more that he could do.

Oust

Robbie was _____ from the Cub Scouts for forgetting his Cub Scout manual thirty-seven times.

Paroxysm

Sheldon flew into a _____ of rage and threw books across the room after finding that his apartment has been burglarized.

Impregnable

There's no point in trying to change Mr. Roberts's attitude about hairstyles; you will find that his belief in a link between long hair and communism is utterly _____.

Recidivism

There's not much evidence that imprisoning people reforms them; the rate of _____ among released convicts is high.

Peculiar

There's a _____ smell in this room. Are you wearing perfume made from floor wax and old socks?

Presage

They say a bad dress rehearsal _____ a good performance, but I have found that often a bad dress rehearsal is followed by an equally bad show.

Porous

They're advertising a paper towel so _____ that one sheet can soak up a whole sinkful of water.

Oligarchy

They've set up a virtual _____ in that country; three men are making all the decisions for twenty million people.

Jargon

This contract is full of legal _____; there are so many heretofores and whereinafters that I can't figure out where I'm supposed to sign it.

Protégée

Under the watchful eye of her mentor, the _____ flourished and eventually became the second female executive in the company.

Ludicrous

Wear glass slippers to a ball? Why, the idea is _____! One false dance step and they would shatter.

Mode

When a big tree fell across the highway, Draco shifted his Jeep into four-wheel _____ and took off across country.

Jargon

When he visited a tiny island off the coast of France, Phil commented, "I've studied French for twenty years, but I'll be damned if I can make out a word of the _____ on this island."

Impecunious

When his dream of making a fortune selling talking T-shirts evaporated, Arthur was left _____.

Sedentary

When people get older, they tend to become more _____; my octogenarian aunt even uses her car to visit her next-door neighbor.

Infrastructure

When people talk about "the nation's crumbling _____," they are usually referring to deteriorating highways, crumbling bridges, poorly maintained public buildings, and other neglected public resources.

Rapture

Winning an Oscar sent Dustin into a state of _____. "I can't believe this is happening to me!" he exclaimed.

Ineluctable

With slow but _____ progress, a wave of molasses crept across the room, silently engulfing the guests at the cocktail party.

Liaison

You mean you didn't know that the conductor and the first violinist have been having an affair? Believe me, that _____ has been going on for years.

Pummel

You often have to _____ bread dough in order to knead it correctly.

Infuse

The couple's redecoration job somehow managed to _____ the whole house with garishness; before, only the kitchen had been garish.

Infringe

The court ruled that the ugly color of Zeke's neighbor's house did not _____ on any of Zeke's legal rights as a property owner.

Conjunction

The Ham Radio Club and the Chess Club are working in _____ to prepare the second annual Nerds' Jamboree.

Rout

Brighton High School's debate team _____ the team from Pittsford, leaving the Pittsford captain sobbing among his note-cards.

Pastoral

Bruce is writing the _____ movement of his symphony now. The harps will symbolize the gentle patter of rain pattering down on the fields and spoiling everyone's vacation.

Revel

Tammy _____ in every bite of the forbidden dessert; it had been so long since she had eaten chocolate cake that she wanted it to last as long as possible.

Wizened

Having only seen wizards in the movies, I expected Mervin to be bent and _____ with age, but actually he was young and quite attractive.

Traumatic

Having their carpets cleaned is a _____ experience for people who believe that their carpets have suffered enough.

Obtrusive

I like to walk up and down the halls of my dorm checking up on my friends' grades after midterms. People call me _____, but I think of myself as caring and interested.

Loathsome

I loathe eggplant in every form. It is so _____ to me that I won't even look at it.

Interloper

I love deer in the wild, but when they get into my backyard I can't help thinking of them as _____.

Regimen

Mrs. Stewart is having trouble following the new _____ her doctor gave her; she can handle the dieting and exercise, but sleeping on a bed of nails is hard for her.

Placebo

Mrs. Walters is a total hypochondriac; her doctor prescribes several _____ a week just to keep her from calling him so often.

Reprobate

My Uncle Bob was a well-known old _____; he spent most of his time lying drunk in the gutter and shouting obscenities at women and children passing by.

Jaunt

My uncle never stays home for long; he's always taking off on _____ to hot new vacation spots.

Sovereignty

The disgruntled Californians declared _____ over some rocks in the middle of the Pacific Ocean and declared their intention of establishing a new nation.

Temporize

"All right, all right, I'll open the safe for you," Clarence _____, hoping that the police would arrive soon. "But in order to do it, I'll need lots of hot water and some birthday candles."

Override

Greed _____ common sense yesterday as thousands of frenzied people drove through a major blizzard to catch the post-holiday sales.

Suffuse

A crimson blush _____ the timid maiden's ivory cheeks as she realized that she had forgotten to put on clothes before leaving the house.

Rampant

A rumor the princess is expecting triplets is running _____ through the village; by noon, everyone in the county will have heard it.

Intermittently

Alan's three-year-old is only _____ polite to grown-ups; sometimes he answers the questions they ask him, and sometimes he throws blocks at them

Lyrical

Albert is almost _____ on the subject of baked turnips, which he prefers to all other foods.

Underlying

Albert seems dopey at first, but there's a keen intelligence _____ those vacuous mannerisms of his.

Palatable

Rather than telling Frank that his essay was worthless, Hilary told him that his essay was not quite worthy of his talents; by diluting her criticism she made it more _____ to Frank.

Platonic

Ravi and Gina's marriage is entirely _____; they live in separate cities, and they seldom even speak to each other.

Vie

Sheryl _____ with her best friend for a promotion.

Supine

Shirley lay _____ on her deck chair, soaking up the sunshine and, in the process, turning her complexion into leather.

Invoke

The legislature passed a law restricting the size of the state's deficit, but it then neglected to _____ it when the deficit soared above the limit.

Override

The legislature threatened to _____ the governor's veto of the bill creating the state's first income tax.

Listless

The lettuce looked so _____ by the time I got around to making a salad that I threw it out and served tomatoes instead.

Threshold

Ambrose hung a sheaf of grain over the _____ of his house to keep demons away; to keep burglars away, he put a leghold trap just inside the door.

Impending

The scowl on her husband's face alerted Claire to an _____ argument.

Pandemic

The shortage of vaccine turned the winter flu epidemic into a _____.

Pungent

The simmering soup gave off a _____ aroma that stung the nostrils of the cook.

Rife

Below decks, this ship is _____ with rats and other pests.

Presentiment

"I knew the boat would sink," Aunt Louise said triumphantly. "I just had a _____ about it when I saw that leaky bottom."

Intervene

Don't hesitate to _____ if you see a cat creeping toward a bird; the cat is up to no good, and the bird will thank you for butting in.

Reactionary

Grandpa Gus is so _____ that he doesn't think women should be allowed to vote.

Intricate

It's always a mistake to put off assembling _____ toys until Christmas Eve.

Rueful

It's hard for Howie not to feel _____ when he remembers the way he fumbled the ball in the last two seconds of the game, ending his team's thirty-year winning streak.

Objective

It's hard for me to be _____ about her musical talent because she's my daughter.

Integral

Knitting needles are an _____ part of knitting a sweater. So is wool.

Pseudonym

"I'm going to use a _____ so as not to attract people's attention when I go out in public," announced the famous actor. "I'll call myself Rumblebumble Wart."

Inflammatory

Maxine's _____ speech about animal rights made her listeners so angry that they ran out of the building and began ripping the fur coats off passersby.

Redress

"Of course, there is no _____ for what you've suffered," the lawyer told his client, who was wearing a neck brace and pretending to limp. "Still, I think we should ask for seven and a half million dollars and see what happens."

Imbue

Henrietta soaked her white dress in a bathtub of tea to _____ it with a subtle tan color.

Tedium

Oh, God, another evening at Gwen's house - always the same bland food, always the same people with nothing to say, always the same slide show of Gwen's tropical fish! I don't think I can stand the _____.

Privation

Oh, come on, Karen! Not having an indoor swimming pool isn't exactly a _____, you know!

Impetuous

Olive's decision to drive her car into the lake to see whether it would float was an _____ one that she regretted as soon as water began to seep into the passenger compartment.

Viscous

I rapidly lost my thirst as I watched the water ooze from the tap in a _____, brownish stream.

Innuendo

I resent your _____ that I'm not capable of finishing what I start.

Rapturous

Omar doesn't go in for _____ expressions of affection; a firm handshake and a quick punch on the shoulder is enough for him.

Nonchalant

Omar was acting awfully _____ for someone who had just been invited to dinner at the White House; he was yawning and using a corner of the invitation to clean his nails.

Throttle

"If that cat jumps onto the counter one more time, I'm going to _____ her," said Bryce, rising grimly to his feet.

Systemic

"_____ circulation" is another term for the circulatory system in vertebrates.

Rampant

A _____ horde of squealing fans swarmed the rock star.

Voluminous

Hidden in the folds of her _____ skirts are a potted plant, a small child, an electric fan, three pairs of snowshoes, and a bag of breath mints.

Predecessor

His _____ had been so beloved by the nation that the new president resigned himself to being viewed as inferior.

Seamless

His excuse is _____, I have to admit; I know he's lying, but I can't find a hole in his story.

Limpid

In bad writing, eyes are often described as "_____ pools."

Modulate

Please _____ your voice, dear! A well-bred young lady doesn't scream obscenities at the top of her lungs.

Subsidiary

Poor Carrie doesn't seem to realize that she's stuck in a _____ position for at least the near future; Mr. Vitale will never promote her unless someone quits, and no one's going to quit with the job market the way it is.

Purblind

Surgery is not a job for the _____; last week, the myopic Dr. Jones sewed his watch inside someone's abdomen.

Propagate

The Cold Sun Society is dedicated to _____ the theory that the sun is a huge iceball, and its members wear winter coats all year long to protect them from icy blasts of sunlight.

Lobby

The Raisin Growers' Union has been _____ Congress to make raisins the national fruit.

Peregrination

The baby made a wavering _____ around the room in search of all the raisins she had dropped during her previous wavering _____.

Turbid

The professor was easily able to refute my _____ argument in favor of not having a final exam.

Stupendous

To climb Mount Everest on a bicycle would be a _____ accomplishment.

Solidarity

To promote a sense of _____ among our campers, we make them wear ugly uniforms and wake them up early; they don't have a good time, but they learn to stick together because they hate our rules so much.

Wake

What started out as an honest, pull-no-punches discussion left terribly hurt feelings in its _____, and the participants didn't speak to one another for many days afterward.

Spate

When the _____ had abated, the villagers were horrified to discover how hard it is to remove mud from upholstered furniture.

Improvise

When the choir soloist forgot the last verse of the hymn, she hastily _____ a version of her own.

Intrigue

When the king learned of the duke's _____ against him, he had the duke thrown into the dungeon.

Obeisance

When the substitute teacher walked into the room, the entire class rose to its feet in mocking _____ to her.

Temporal

Why is it that _____ pleasures seem so much more fun than eternal ones? I'd rather eat a hot-fudge sundae than sit on a cloud playing a harp.

Paranoia

Worrying that one is going to die someday is not _____; it's just worrying, since one really is going to die someday.

Sovereign

Wouldn't the people in this country be surprised to learn that their _____ is not a human but a mynah bird?

Verity

You could hardly doubt the _____ of her story, especially when she had documents to prove her point.

Rarefied

Your book is too _____ to reach a mass audience; why don't you take out the Old French epics and throw in a few car chases or something?

Protégé

"I would like you to meet my _____, Dirk Simpson," said Miss Charlton. "I am training him to manage my estate and will leave the bulk of my fortune to him when I pass away."

Infraction

"I'm warning you, Prudence," said the headmistress. "Even the slightest _____ of school rules will get you expelled."

Raucous

"If you don't stop that _____ behavior, I'll - I'll put you in the corner!" said the new teacher in a quavering voice as the students got increasingly rowdy.

Repose

"Something attempted, something done, has earned a night's _____" is a favorite saying of Ruby's grandmother; it means she's tired and wants to go to bed.

Tactical

"Tell me about that, Georgina," began Mr. Hopp - and then, realizing that the use of her first name so early in the evening had been a _____ blunder, he quickly added, "Miss Bringhurst, I mean."

Plausible

"You're going to have to come up with a more _____ alibi," Doris told her drunken husband sternly after he told her he had been working late and then fell face forward into the living room.

Scorn

"Your clothes are totally pathetic, Dad," said Reba, her voice dripping with _____. Her father gave her a scornful look and said, "Do you really believe I care what a five-year-old thinks of the way I dress?"

Presuppose

A high score does not _____ good play by either team; sometimes sloppy teams run up a big score through carelessness.

Progenitor

A single rabbit may be the _____ of hundreds of offspring in his lifetime.

Wane

A trip to Greece did little to revive Barry's _____ interest in Greek history; in fact, it strengthened his new conviction that Greece was boring.

Temporize

An important skill required of television newscasters is an ability to _____ during technical difficulties so that viewers don't become bored and switch channels.

Motif

Andrea's new apartment is okay-looking, but it would be more impressive if owls weren't the main decorative _____.

Reclaim

Anthony was able to _____ his briefcase from the lost-and-found after accurately describing its contents to the clerk.

Patina

Antiques dealers don't refer to the tarnish on old silver as tarnish; they call it _____, and say that it adds value to the silver.

Perpetuate

By calling his secretary Fluffy, Quentin helped _____ the stereotype of office personnel as unskilled employees.

Quasi

Claire makes all her own clothes; as a result, she always looks _____ -fashionable instead of truly stylish.

Punitive

Claude designs clothes so tight that wearing them is almost _____.

Titillation

Despite the _____ of the advertising, the movie itself was such a turkey that it failed after the first weekend.

Usurer

Eight-year-old Chuck is quite a little _____; if a kid in his class borrows a dime for milk money, Chuck makes him pay back a quarter the next day.

Verge

Eleanor has been on the _____ of tears ever since her mother told her that she would not be allowed to attend the prom.

Stalwart

Ernie has been a _____ friend through thick and thin, even when I used to pretend not to recognize him as I passed him in the hall.

Prurient

Gael's love of exotic foods almost amounted to _____; she eats them with an eagerness that can only be described as lust.

Insuperable

Henry believes that no task is _____; the key to success, he says, is to break the task into manageable steps.

Nomenclature

I'd become a botanist in a minute, except that I'd never be able to memorize all that botanic _____.

Ratify

If the latest version of the disarmament treaty isn't _____ soon, we must prepare for the possibility of war.

Sedentary

If you want to stay in shape with that _____ job, you'll have to make sure to get lots of exercise in your spare time.

Pliable

If you work the modeling clay until it is _____, you will find that it is easier to mold into shapes.

Nemesis

In Greek mythology, _____ was the goddess of divine retribution. If you were due for a punishment, she made sure you got it.

Susceptible

In The Wizard of Oz, the emotionally _____ Tin Man begins to cry every time a remotely sad thought passes through his hollow head.

Veneer

In general usage, a _____ is any thin outward surface.

Liaison

In her new job as _____ between the supervisor and the staff, Anna has to field complaints from both sides.

Unilateral

In my family, there was _____ agreement on the subject of curfews; my parents agreed that I should be home by midnight, and I did not.

Inalienable

In my household, we believe that people are born with an _____ right to have desserts after meals.

Stolid

In professional football, the _____ performers sometimes have longer careers than the flashy superstars, who have a tendency to burn themselves out after a few years.

Tryst

In romance novels, the characters never have mere dates; they have _____.

Verdant

In springtime, the _____ hills seem to whisper, "Skip school and come for a walk!"

Tumult

In the _____ of the rock concert, Bernice was unable to find her dropped contact lens.

Millennium

In the first _____ after the birth of Christ, humankind made great progress - but pre-sweetened cereals didn't appear until close to the end of the second millennium.

Partition

In the temporary office there were plywood _____ rather than real walls between the work areas.

Quaint

In this town people have the _____ custom of throwing their plates at the hostess when they've finished eating.

Remission

Isabel's cancer has been in _____ for several years now - long enough for most people to have trouble remembering the dark period when she was gravely ill.

Inadvertent

Isabelle's _____ laughter during the sad part of the movie was a great embarrassment to her date.

Incumbent

It is _____ upon me, as Lord High Suzerain of the Universe, to look out for the welfare of all life forms.

Infringement

It is a clear _____ of copyright to photocopy the entire text of a book and sell copies to other people.

Toxic

It is now clear that cigarettes are _____ not only to smokers but also to nonsmokers who breathe in exhaled smoke.

Iridescent

It's strange to think that plain old gasoline can create such a lovely _____ sheen on the water's surface.

Stratagem

Jordan has devised a little _____ to test whether the Easter Bunny really exists; the next time he writes him a letter, he's going to drop it in the mailbox without showing it to his parents first.

Repugnant

Kelly's roommate, a classical music major, found Kelly's love of hip-hop totally _____.

Quintessential

Lacey is the _____ volunteer; she works twenty-three hours per day on different charitable causes.

Mode

Lannie's _____ of economizing is to spend lots of money on top-quality items that she thinks will last longer than cheap ones.

Rout

Last week's basketball game was a _____, not a contest; our team lost by a margin of more than fifty points.

Pathos

Laura's dog gets such a look of _____ whenever he wants to go for a walk that it's hard for Laura to turn him down.

Ingratiate

Licking the hands of the people he met did not _____ Rashid with most of the guests at the cocktail party, although he did make a favorable impression on the poodle.

Motley

Louise's friends are a _____ group of artists, bankers, and sanitation engineers.

Sectarian

Milly has grown so _____ since becoming a Moonie that she can't really talk to you anymore without trying to convert you.

Punctilious

Mr. Richards's secretary drives him crazy with her _____ habit of going through his correspondence and correcting grammatical errors in the letters people send to him.

Precocity

Mr. and Mrs. Sherman were alarmed by the _____ of their son; at age fourteen, he was busy planning for his retirement.

Quell

Only his girlfriend could _____ Whit's wrath at not having been chosen for the varsity team.

Inadvertent

Paula's snub of Lauren was entirely _____; she hadn't meant to turn up her nose and treat Lauren as though she were a piece of furniture.

Opprobrium

Penny brought _____ on herself by robbing the First National Bank and spray painting naughty words on its marble walls.

Uncanny

People often say that the similarity between Ted's and Fred's mannerisms is _____, but since the two men are identical twins who have lived together all their lives, it actually isn't all that unusual.

Queue

People were so eager for tickets that they started to _____ up the night before the box office opened.

Successor

People who hadn't liked the old minivan were pleased by its _____ because the manufacturer had eliminated most of the engineering flaws that had plagued the earlier vehicle.

Medium

Phil is an unusual artist; his preferred _____ is sand mixed with corn syrup.

Perpetrator

Police officers sometimes refer to the _____ of a crime simply as the "perp."

Redeem

Reverend Coe is obsessed with _____ the souls of the people who play cards. His favorite tactic is crashing a bridge party and asking, "Who will bid for the _____ of your souls?"

Posterity

Richard necessarily paints for _____; nobody alive has any interest in his pictures.

Intimate

Rosie said she was fine, but her slumped, defeated-looking posture _____ otherwise.

Marginal

Sam satisfied the _____ requirements for the job, but he certainly didn't bring anything more in the way of talent or initiative.

Insouciant

Sebastian delighted in observing the _____ play of children, but he didn't want any children of his own.

Skirmish

Soldiers on both sides felt insulted when the CNN reporter referred to their recent battle as a "_____."

Seclusion

Some people can study better with other people around, but I need total _____ and an endless supply of coffee.

Prelude

Stretching exercises should be a _____ to any long bout of exercise; stretching muscles before exerting them helps protect them from injury.

Thesis

Stu is writing his senior _____ on Anglo-Saxon building techniques, a topic he's fairly certain no one else in the senior class will be working on; the thesis of his thesis is that Anglo-Saxon building techniques were more sophisticated than modern scholars generally believe.

Lyrical

The Jeffersons' _____ description of the two-week vacation in Scotland made the Washingtons want to pack their bags and take off on a Scottish vacation of their own.

Menagerie

The Petersons have quite a _____ at their house now that both the cat and the dog have had babies.

Stratagem

The Pied Piper's _____ was successful; entranced by the sound of his pipe, the rats followed him out of town and never came back.

Predispose

The fact that Selma grew up in the desert probably _____ her to working with cactuses.

Jaunty

The happy young girl walked down the street with a _____ step.

Seamless

The most interesting thing Beth said all evening was that her new, _____ underpants were considerably less bulky than the kind she had formerly worn.

Wary

The mouse cast a _____ eye out of its hole and, seeing no cat, scampered into the living room.

waive

The murder suspect _____ his right to have a lawyer present during his questioning, saying that he had nothing to hide.

Sweeping

The new CEO's promise to bring _____ change to the company basically amounts to him saying, "A lot of you had better be ready to get the ax."

Punctilious

The new architect was hardly _____; when he drew the plans for the new skyscraper, he forgot to put in any floors.

Resurrection

The new chairman brought about the _____ of the company by firing a few dozen vice presidents and putting a lock on the office supplies.

Mystic

The swirling fog and the looming stalactites gave the cave a _____ aura, and we felt as though we'd stumbled into Arthurian times.

Redeem

The troubled company _____ its employees' shares for fifty cents on the dollar.

Vie

The two advertising agencies _____ fiercely for the Lax-Me-Up account, which was worth $100 million a year in billings.

Plunder

The victorious soldiers _____ the town until there was nothing left to steal.

Salutation

Unable to recognize the man coming toward her, Lila waved her hand in _____ and hoped the gesture would fool him into thinking she knew who he was.

Pummel

Unable to think of a clever rejoinder to her brother's taunts, Tracy decided to _____ him.

Oscillate

We watched the hypnotist's pendulum _____ before our eyes, and soon we became sleepy.

Implication

When you said I looked healthy, was that really meant as an _____ that I've put on weight?

Sanction

Without the _____ of the historical commission, Cynthia was unable to paint her house purple and put a flashing neon sign over the front door.

Solidarity

Working on New Year's Eve wasn't as depressing as Russell had been fearing; there was a sense of _____ in the newsroom that was at least as enjoyable as any New Year's Eve party he had ever been to.

Palatable

You can certainly drink hot chocolate with lobster souffle if you want to, but champagne might be a more _____ alternative.

Listless

You've been acting _____ today. Are you sure you're feeling well?

Punitive

Zoe's father was incredibly _____; once, he grounded her for breathing too loudly.

Toil

_____ in the hot sun all morning had made Arnold tired and thirsty.

Porosity

_____ is not a desirable quality in an umbrella.

Pluralism

_____ is the only hope for American society; our country is made up of too many different kinds of people for a single culture to prevail.

Repress

_____ painful memories is often psychologically harmful; the painful memories tend to pop up again when one is least prepared to deal with them.

Intermittent

_____ rain showers throughout the day kept the lawn too wet for croquet.

Toxic

_____ residues from pesticides can remain on or in fruits and vegetables even after they have been washed with soap.

Stalwart

"Don't forget," Elbert droned to Frieda, "that those brawny, _____ youths you seem to admire so much have little to recommend them, intellectually speaking."

Turmoil

"Ever since the baby was born we've been in kind of a _____," Donna said cheerfully, kicking a pair of dirty socks under the table as she led her visitor on a tour of the house.

Salutation

"Hello, you stinking, stupid swine" is not the sort of warm, supportive _____ James had been expecting from his girlfriend.

Insouciantly

"I don't care whether you marry me or not," Mike said _____. "I've decided to join the circus anyway."

Stoutly

"I don't mind walking home over Haunted Hill," the little boy said _____.

Sophomoric

"I expect the best man to be _____ - but not the groom. Now, give me that slingshot, and leave your poor fiancee alone!" the minister scolded Andy at his wedding _____.

Underscore

"I hate you!" Ryan shouted. To _____ his point, he added, "I think you stink!"

Platonic

"Let's keep our relationship _____ for a while," Ken told his would-be girlfriend. "After all, we only met five minutes ago, and it won't be dark for several hours."

Rationale

"My _____ is simple," the doctor explained as he rummaged around in his drawer for a larger spoon. "If one dose of medicine is good, fifty doses must be better."

Predecessor

"My _____ left this office rather messy," Mr. Griggs apologized as he led his associates past a pile of dusty boxes.

Sarcastically

"Nice outfit," Martin said _____ as he eyed his sister's faded bathrobe, fluffy slippers, and knee-high nylons.

Predicament

"Now, let's see. How will I escape from this _____?" asked Monty as he stared at the tiger charging toward him.

Vanquish

"Nyah, nyah, we _____ you!" the unsportsmanlike soldiers sang as their enemies retreated.

Tepidly

"Oh, I guess I'll go to the prom with you," Mona said _____, "but I reserve the right to change my mind if something better comes along."

Woe

"Oh, _____ is me," moaned Libby. "I'm turning forty tomorrow, and no one has planned a surprise party for me!"

Stint

"Please don't _____, ladies," wheedled the con man as he waved his jar around drunkenly. "Every penny you give me goes to support the orphanage."

Revulsion

"Please don't talk about dead lizards while I'm eating," said Sally with _____.

Propound

"This evening," began the scientist, "I plan to _____ my hypothesis that trees grow because invisible giants pull them out of the ground."

Karma

"This house has an evil _____," the same baby-sitter told her charges. "Children who don't go to bed on time end up with a mysterious curse on their heads."

Vagary

"This meal was a little _____ of your father's," said Mrs. Swain grimly as she sat the children down to plates of steak topped with whipped cream.

Shackle

"Throw off the _____ of your restrictive upbringing and come skinny-dipping with me!" shouted Andy as he stripped off his clothes and jumped into the pool, but everyone else just stood quietly and stared at him.

Repartee

"Toilethead" is four-year-old Max's preferred _____ to almost any question.

Serene

"Try to look _____, dear," said the pageant director to the girl playing the Virgin Mary. "Mary should not look as though she wants to punch Joseph out."

Retort

"Twinkle, twinkle, little star - what you say is what you are," Leslie _____ hotly when her playmate called her a doo-doo brain.

Render

"We can _____ some form of financial assistance, if that is what you desire," the official suggested delicately.

Sordid

"What a _____ little story I read in the newspaper this morning," Aunt Helen said to her nephew. "Do you think they'll ever find the man who?" She whispered the rest into his ear so that her impressionable young niece wouldn't hear the terrible things the man had done.

Plight

"What a _____ you're in," Claudia observed as she watched her sister cowering in a corner surrounded by rabid dogs.

Skittish

"Why are you so _____ tonight?" the baby-sitter asked the young children. "Is it my pointed teeth, or is it the snake in my knapsack?"

Skirmish

A _____ broke out at the hockey game when a player threw a punch at the opposing team's goalie.

Melee

A _____ broke out on the football field as our defeated players vented their frustrations by sticking their tongues out at the other team's cheerleaders.

Sumptuous

A _____ feast awaited the travelers when they reached the great hall of the king's castle.

Stupendous

A _____ pile of laundry awaited Phyllis when she returned from her business trip; she had forgotten to tell her children that they should do their own wash while she was gone.

Prattle

A baby's _____ is utterly adorable unless you have to listen to it all day long.

Tepid

A baby's bathwater should be _____, not hot; you can test it with your elbow before you put the baby in.

Reclaim

A century ago, turning a swamp into cropland was called _____ it; now it is called destroying wetlands.

Wizened

A few _____ apples were all we found on the tree; all the nice ones had already been picked.

Stark

A lump rose in Bly's throat when she saw the view out her apartment window for the first time; the room faced a _____, deserted alley whose only adornment was a rusty old fire escape.

Nullify

A moment after the ceremony, the bride asked a lawyer to _____ the prenuptial contract she had signed the day before; she no longer felt that $50,000 a month in alimony would be enough.

Quell

A mutiny arose when the cafeteria ran out of ice cream, but the food service manager _____ it by offering chocolate pudding instead.

Ordinance

According to a hundred-year-old local _____, two or more people standing on a street corner constitutes a riot.

Regime

According to rules issued by the new _____, anyone caught wearing red shoes will be arrested and thrown into the penitentiary.

Mores

According to the _____ of that country, women who wear revealing clothing are lewd and licentious.

Inalienable

According to the religion Jack founded, all left-handed people have an _____ right to spend eternity in paradise; needless to say, Jack is left-handed.

Ratify

According to the rules of P.S. 49, the student council president cannot take office until the entire student body has _____ his election. That is why P.S. 49 has never had a student council president.

Subsidiary

Acme Corp's main business is manufacturing boomerangs, but it has _____ that make everything from tennis balls to french fries.

Resign

After collecting several hundred rejection slips, Darla finally _____ herself to the fact that her novel would never be published.

Seamless

After lots of revision, Jennifer succeeded in reworking the two halves of her novel into a _____ whole.

Integral

After opening the case, Harry discovered why his new computer didn't work: Several _____ parts, including the microprocessor, were missing.

Sect

After the schism of 1949, the religious denomination split up into about fifty different _____, all of them with near identical beliefs and none of them speaking to the others.

Toxic

After the storm, the beach was covered with spilled oil, spent nuclear fuel, contaminated medical supplies, and other _____ wastes.

Impregnable

Again and again, the army unsuccessfully attacked the fortress, only to conclude that it was _____.

Objective

Although the judges at the automobile show were supposed to make _____ decisions, they displayed a definite bias against cars with tacky hood ornaments.

Reveler

Amanda thought that all her guests had gone home, but then she found one last drunken _____ snoring in her bedroom closet.

Suffrage

Amazing though it seems today, _____ for women was a hotly contested issue at the beginning of the twentieth century. Many men - and many women, for that matter - seriously believed that choosing among political candidates would place too great a strain on women's supposedly feeble intellects, and women were not guaranteed the right to vote until 1920.

Larcenous

Amy and Tim felt almost irresistibly _____ as they walked through their rich aunt's house admiring paintings and antiques that they hoped to inherit someday; it was all they could do to keep from backing their car up to the front door and making off with a few pieces of furniture.

Partition

Ann and David used a wall of bookcases to _____ off a study from one corner of their living room.

Wary

Ann is _____ about picking up the telephone these days; she is afraid that a collection agency may be on the other end.

Jocular

Annabelle's _____ nature was evident in the grin that was almost always on her face.

Pluralism

Anne's reading habits reflected a healthy _____; she read all the classics, but she also enjoyed murder mysteries and historical novels.

Prowess

Annie is famous all across the country for her _____ on horseback; in fact, some people say she's one of the most talented trick riders in the world.

Odyssey

Any adolescent making the _____ into adulthood should have a room of his own, preferably one that's not part of his parents' house.

Titillate

Appetizers are supposed to _____ people's appetites, not stuff them to the gills.

Intimate

Are you _____ that I'm not strong enough to lift these measly little barbells?

Marginally

Arnie was _____ better off after he received a ten-dollar-per-week raise.

Repose

As Carol struggled to pack the enormous crates, her husband lolled back on the sofa in an attitude of _____; as a matter of fact, he was sound asleep.

Wane

As the moon grows full, it is said to wax; as it turns into a sliver, it is said to _____.

Replicate

At his weekend house in the country, Arthur tried to _____ the cozy English cottage in which he had been raised; his first step was to replace the asphalt shingles with thatch.

Impunity

Babies can mash food into their hair with _____; no one gets angry at them because babies aren't expected to be polite.

Redeem

Barbara will never _____ herself in her boss's eyes until she returns every single paper clip she "borrowed."

Licentious

Barney's reputation as a _____ rake makes the mothers of teenage girls lock their doors when he walks down the street.

Propagation

Because there are so many endangered plants nowadays, many gardeners have become interested in the _____ of rare seeds to keep old strains from disappearing.

Quiescent

Clear your brain of all irrelevant thoughts; let your mind become _____. Then, and only then, will you truly be ready to learn why I should take over the world.

Medium

Coaxial cable is the _____ by which cable television programming is distributed to viewers.

Loathsome

Cold water is so _____ to Edward that no one knows why he even joined the Polar Bear Club.

Impeach

Congress is still trying to decide whether to _____ the president for spilling fingerpaint in the Oval Office.

Wane

Congressman Boote's political influence _____ dramatically following his announcement that he had been kidnapped by creatures in a flying saucer.

Subside

Cornelia's homesickness _____ rapidly, and by the end of the first week, she found that she had come to prefer being at camp to being at home.

Lobby

Could I possibly _____ you for a moment about the possibility of turning your yard into a parking lot?

Panegyric

Dan has been in advertising for too long; he can't say he likes something without escalating into _____.

Rhapsodize

Danielle _____ about the little dog, saying that she had never seen a more beautiful, friendly, fabulous little dog in her entire life.

Stint

David's eyes glowed as he beheld his hot fudge sundae; the waiter certainly had not _____ on the hot fudge, which was flowing out of the bowl and onto the tablecloth.

Predominate

Deep discounts _____ the week before Christmas as retailers tried frantically to boost sales at the end of a disappointing holiday season.

Provocation

Despite the bully's _____, Tony refused to be drawn into a fight.

Warranty

Did the store provide any kind of _____ with that vacuum cleaner? I hope so because it's already broken.

Vigilance

Distracted by the loud noise in the hallway, the guard let his _____ slip for a moment, and the prisoner quickly escaped.

Scant

Don't _____ me on mashed potatoes - you know they're my favorite.

Rebuff

Don't be surprised if Willie _____ your advances; if you want him to kiss you, you're just going to have to invest in some false teeth.

Lavish

Don't you think Miss Woodstone is a little too _____ with her praise? She slathers so much positive reinforcement on her students that they can't take her seriously at all.

Voluptuous

Doreen's figure has passed the point of _____ and reached the point of fat.

Menagerie

Doug referred to his office as "the _____" because his co-workers acted like animals.

Inimitable

Dressed in a lampshade and a few pieces of tinsel, Frances managed to carry off the evening in her usual _____ style.

Inquisition

During the Spanish _____, people were substantially better off if they were not found to be heretics. The Spanish inquisitors weren't fond of heresy.

Parable

Early religious lessons were often given in the form of _____ because the stories made the lessons easier to understand.

Savant

Ed is an idiot _____; he can't speak, read, or dress himself, but he is capable of playing intricate piano pieces after hearing them just once.

Stint

Ed would have done a _____ in the military, but he didn't like the thought of having to keep his sergeant's shoes polished.

Loath

Edward was _____ to stir out of his house on the freezing cold morning, even though he had signed up to take part in the Polar Bear Club's annual swim.

Spurn

Elizabeth _____ Jeff's apologies; she could see that he wasn't sorry at all, and that he was, in fact, on the verge of laughing.

Trauma

Ella needs some spoiling right now to help her recover from the _____ of her parents' divorce.

Jocular

Even her husband's _____ mood doesn't cheer up Angela on her birthday.

Lyrical

Even the sound of traffic is _____ to the true city lover.

Infuse

Everyone in the wedding party was nervous until the subtle harmonies of the string quartet _____ them with a sense of tranquillity; of course, they had also drunk quite a bit of champagne.

Substantiate

Experts from the transit department were unable to _____ the woman's assertion that little men from the center of the earth had invaded the subway system and were planning to take over the world.

Scant

Finding the recipe too bland, she added a _____ tablespoonful of lemon juice to the mixture.

Surmise

Gazing at the group with a practiced eye, the tour guide _____ that 25 percent of the tourists would want to see famous people's houses, 25 percent would want to visit museums and cathedrals, and the remaining 50 percent would spend most of the tour wondering when they would have a chance to go to the bathroom.

Sovereign

Getting those kids to school safely should be the bus driver's _____ concern, but I'm afraid he's really more interested in finding a place to stop for a doughnut as soon as he has finished his route.

Insufferable

Gretchen's husband is an _____ boor; he chews with his mouth open and wipes his nose on the tablecloth.

Underscore

Harold's terrible hunger _____ the importance of remembering to eat.

Paranoid

Harry told Sally that she was _____ to believe her dinner guests hated her cooking; in fact, her guests enjoyed her lasagna.

Listless

Harry's _____ prose style constantly threatens to put his readers soundly to sleep.

Larceny

Helping yourself to a few cookies is not exactly _____, but just try explaining that to Aunt Edna, who believes that if people want to eat in her house they should bring their own food.

Inviolate

Her morals are _____ even after four years in college; in fact, she was a senior before she even saw a keg of beer.

Rhapsodize

Hugh never has a kind word to say about anything, so when he _____ about the new restaurant we figured that we probably ought to try it.

Rue

I _____ the day I walked into this place; nothing even remotely good has happened to me since then.

Inclined

I am _____ to postpone my study of vocabulary in order to take a nap right now.

Loath

I am _____ to pull my finger out of the dike, because I am afraid that the countryside will flood if I do.

Reactionary

I am a _____ on the subject of candy; I believe that the old, established kinds are the best.

Pundit

I can never decide what the most important issues of the day are, so I let the _____ who write the columns on the editorial page tell me.

Sententious

I can stand a boring lecture, but not a _____ one, especially when I know that the professor giving it has absolutely nothing to brag about.

Occult

I don't mind having a roommate who's interested in _____ rituals, but I draw the line at her burning chicken feathers under my bed.

Vacuous

I don't think that woman understands a word you're saying; her expression is as _____ as a rabbit's.

Lax

I hate to say it, but Carol's standards are too _____; anyone who would hire a slob like Mike as a housekeeper can't be serious about wanting a clean house.

Olfactory

I have a sensitive _____ nerve. I can't be around cigarettes, onions, or people with bad breath.

Taint

I'm sure my mother-in-law meant well, but as far as I'm concerned her peacemaking efforts are _____ by my knowledge that she tried to pay her daughter not to marry me.

Spectrum

If the _____ of political beliefs were an actual line, Rob's views would occupy a point slightly left of center. He's liberal enough to irritate his parents, but too conservative to earn the total trust of his leftist friends.

Oust

If the patrons at O'Reilly's get rowdy, the bartender _____ them with a simple foot-to-behind maneuver.

Impeach

If the president proves to be a man of unimpeachable honor, he will not be _____.

Jargon

If you pad a term paper with big words and convoluted phrases, your professor may say you've been writing _____.

Revile

In Dickens's Oliver Twist, poor Oliver is _____ for daring to ask for more gruel.

Privation

In wartime, most people readily accustom themselves to a level of _____ that they would never accept under ordinary circumstances.

Pregnant

India's message to her boyfriend contained only one sentence, yet that one sentence was _____ with meaning ("I am pregnant").

Suffice

Instruction in reading and writing alone will not _____ to prepare our children for the real world; they must also be given a solid grounding in mathematics, and a passing familiarity with the martial arts.

Paragon

Irene is a such a _____ of virtue that none of her classmates can stand her; they call her a goody-goody.

Plausible

Irene's excuse is hardly _____; how could a parakeet chew up someone's homework?

Warrant

It is illegal for the police to enter someone's home uninvited unless they have a search _____.

Protocol

It isn't exactly _____, but diplomats' children can generally behave as badly as they want and not get punished for it.

Phlegmatic

It must be true that opposites attract; Debbie becomes upset at the slightest provocation, while Webbie is so _____ that nothing seems to bother him at all.

Propagate

It shocked the nation when Tom gave up his career in professional basketball and devoted his life to _____ tree fungi.

Procure

It took a lot of effort and know-how to _____ Oreos at the health spa, but Stuart bribed the chief chef.

Zeitgeist

It's interesting to see how Americans always assume the _____ changes automatically with the arrival of a new decade. The eighties were allegedly the decade of greed; then, on the first day of 1990, greed supposedly went out of style, and old-fashioned niceness became the order of the day. What did all those formerly greedy people do with their stuff?

Impeach

It's not fair to _____ my morals just because I use swear words every once in a while.

Titillate

It's really cruel to _____ a friend's curiosity by starting to share a choice piece of gossip and then abruptly saying, "No, I really shouldn't spread this around."

Sect

Jack dropped out of college and joined a religious _____ whose members were required to live with animals and surrender all their material possessions to the leaders of the sect.

Loutish

Jake's _____ table manners disgust everyone except his seven-year-old nephew, who also prefers to chew with his mouth open.

Woe

Jamie gazed up at his mother with a look of _____, pointing to the ant farm he had just dropped on the carpet.

Tryst

Jane and Greg were always arranging _____ that didn't work out; either it rained when they were going to meet under the stars or Greg's parents came home early when they were going to meet in his backyard swimming pool.

Quaint

Janet had always longed to live in a _____ old cottage, so when she bought her split-level ranch house she glued moss and hollyhocks all over the outside.

Raucously

Jed laughed _____ when his sister toppled off her chair.

Retort

Jeff can never think of a good _____ when he needs one; the perfect line usually comes to him only later, usually in the middle of the night.

Impetuous

Jeremy is so _____ that he ran out and bought an engagement ring for a girl who smiled at him in the subway.

Idiom

Jerry didn't get along very well with the people in the computer department because he didn't understand their _____.

Uncanny

Jessica has an _____ ability for sniffing out the most expensive item in a store.

Posture

Jessica is always _____ about the plight of farm workers, even though she has never set foot on a farm in her life.

Temporal

Jet lag is a kind of _____ disorientation; rapid travel across several time zones can throw off a traveler's sense of time.

Impending

Jim's _____ fiftieth birthday filled him with gloom; he was starting to feel old.

Self-made

John is a _____ man; everything he's accomplished, he's accomplished without benefit of education or support from powerful friends. Like most self-made men, John can't stop talking about how much he's managed to accomplish despite his humble origins.

Wake

Jonathan loves to stand at the back of the ferry so he can watch the churning, roiling _____ behind the boat.

Spate

Julia has received a _____ of media coverage in the days since her new movie was released; last week, her picture was on the covers of both Time and Newsweek.

Serenity

Kelly was a nervous wreck for an hour before the guests arrived, but as soon as the doorbell rang she turned into _____ itself.

Revel

Ken is _____ in luxury now that he has finally come into his patrimony.

Vignette

Lauren decorated the top of each thank-you note with a tiny _____ of a dolphin leaping gracefully out of the water.

Unsubstantiated

Lawrence's entire scientific career is built on _____ theories; a case in point is his ten-year study of communication between rocks.

Predicament

Lisa's kitten is always having to be rescued from one _____ or another; yesterday, she got stuck inside a hollow log, and the day before, Lisa closed her in the automatic garage door.

Patina

Long use and exposure to sunlight give old furniture a _____ that is impossible to reproduce in modern imitations; the color of a new piece never looks quite as rich and dark as the color of an old one.

Preponderance

Looking around the well-dressed crowd at the ball, Richard was surprised to notice a _____ of women wearing baseball caps.

Warrant

Mac's writing doesn't _____ a second glance; it's unreadable garbage.

Paranoia

Margaret's _____ has increased to the point where she won't even set foot out of the house because she is afraid that the people walking by are foreign agents on a mission to assassinate her.

Occult

Marie has been interested in the _____ ever since her stepmother turned her butler into a gerbil.

Peculiar

Marlene's way of pronouncing "orange" is _____ to a tiny region in Upstate New York.

Quotidian

Marvin's diary was dull to read; it was filled almost entirely with thoroughly _____ observations about meals and the weather.

Peregrination

Matthew's _____ across Europe have given him a vaguely continental accent and a walletful of unusable currency.

Mystic

Michaela the _____ stared into her clouded crystal ball and remarked, "Time to get out the Windex."

Predominant

Miranda's speech ranged over many topics, but its _____ subject was the need for more vending machines in the student lounge.

Vigilant

Miss Grimble is _____ against grammatical errors; when she spots a misplaced modifier, she pounces like a tiger.

Interlude

Miss Prince's School for Young Ladies is so genteel that during games they call halftime "the _____."

Interim

Miss Streisand will not be able to give singing lessons until her laryngitis is better. In the _____, Miss Midler will give lessons instead.

Puritanical

Molly was so anxious not to be thought _____ that she told the Hell's Angels she would love to spend the week with them in Las Vegas.

Mania

Molly's _____ for cleanliness makes the house uncomfortable - especially since she replaced the bedsheets with plastic dropcloths.

Mania

Molly, the woman with the _____ for cleanliness, could also be said to be a maniac for cleanliness, or to be a cleanliness maniac.

Suppress

Mom and Dad _____ our brief show of rebellion by threatening to hold our hands in public if we didn't behave.

Intrigue

Monica loves _____; she's never happier than when she's reading a long, complicated spy story.

Stout

Mr. Barton was built a little bit like a beach ball; he was _____ in the middle and skinny at either end.

Predisposition

Mr. Bigelow had a strong _____ against eating lunch, but when he saw the sumptuous banquet laid out in the conference room, he pushed his way to the head of the line and made a pig of himself.

Presentiment

My _____ that I was about to be fired turned out to be incorrect; my boss had asked to see me only because he wanted to tell me that he had given me a raise.

Lavish

My father _____ so many birthday presents on his relatives that they panic when it's time for them to give him something in return.

Slake

My hairdresser's admiration _____ my fear that shaving my head hadn't been the best move.

Inclination

My natural _____ at the end of a tiring morning is to take a long nap rather than a brisk walk, even though I know that the walk would be more likely than the nap to make me feel better.

Odyssey

My quick trip up to the corner hardware store to buy a new shower head turned into a day-long _____ that took me to every plumbing-supply store in the metropolitan area.

Usury

My sister said she would lend me ten dollars if I would clean her room for a week, a bargain that I considered to be _____.

Obviate

My worries about what to do after graduation were _____ by my failing three of my final exams.

Nemesis

Nacho-flavored tortilla chips are the dieter's _____; one bite, and you don't stop eating till the bag is gone.

Vanquish

Nancy finally _____ her nail-biting habit by coating her nails with a distasteful chemical.

Reprimand

Ned's governess threatened to _____ him and his friends if they continued to throw water balloons at the neighbor's house.

Vogue

Never throw away old clothes; outdated styles inevitably come back in _____.

Threshold

No matter how many times I see home videos of a new groom dropping his bride when he tries to carry her over the _____, I still laugh.

Resignation

No one had expected that Warren would take being kicked off the team with so much _____; he simply hung up his uniform and walked sadly out of the locker room.

Stolid

Not a ripple of emotion passed across her brother's _____ countenance when she told him that his best friend had just asked her to marry him. "That's nice," he said, without looking away from the TV.

Rapture

Nothing could equal the Americans' _____ on spotting a Burger King in Calcutta; they had been terrified that they were going to have to eat unfamiliar food.

Inclination

Nudists have an _____ to ridicule people who wear clothes, while people who wear clothes have the same inclination toward nudists.

Paranormal

Numerous _____ events have occurred in that house since the Austins bought it; last night, an umbrella opened itself and began flying around the room, and just this morning the dining-room table turned into a little man with a long gray beard.

Teem

On a clear night high in the mountains, the sky _____ with stars.

Verge

On the _____ of the pond is a mushy spot where it's not safe to skate.

Tortuous

On the _____ path through the woods to the tent, one or two of the Cub Scouts always managed to get lost.

Replicate

Other scientists were unable to _____ Harold's startling experimental results, and in short order Harold was exposed as a fraud.

Sally

Our cat made a lightning-fast _____ into the TV room, then dashed out of the house with the parakeet squawking in his mouth.

Meticulous

Patrick is _____ about keeping his desk clean; he comes in early every morning to polish his paper clips.

Presage

Patty's sullen looks _____ yet another family battle.

Materialistic

People are always going on and on about today's _____ society, but the craving to own more stuff has probably been with us since prehistoric times.

Pungent

Peter's parents are such bland eaters that every time they come to dinner he purposely serves them some incredibly _____ dish.

Tepid

Pizza is best when it's served piping-hot, while some salads taste better _____ or at room temperature.

Query

Please save any _____ for the end of the lecture, or the professor will lose his train of thought and start singing the national anthem.

Stupor

Polls indicated that the new anchorman was sending viewers into a _____ of boredom, so he was quickly replaced by a baton twirler and relegated to doing the weather report.

Resurrection

Polly's tablecloth has undergone quite a _____; the last time I saw it, she was using it as a dress.

Syntax

Poor _____ is the same thing as bad grammar, ain't it?

Spurn

Preschoolers usually _____ their parents' attempts to serve them healthy meals; they turn up their noses at nice, wholesome fruits and vegetables and ask where the chips are.

Meander

Professor Jones delivered a _____ lecture that touched on several hundred distinct topics, including Tina's hairstyle, the disappearance of the dinosaurs, Latin grammar, and quantum mechanics.

Livid

Proof of George's clumsiness could be seen in his _____ shins; he bumped into so many things as he walked that his lower legs were deeply bruised.

Millennium

Purists say that the new _____ began in 2001, but the fear of widespread computer problems actually made 2000 the more important new year.

Ingratiate

Putting tacks on people's chairs isn't exactly the best way to _____ yourself with them.

Meticulous

Putting together a dollhouse is too _____ a job for a three-year-old child; there are too many small parts and too many details that have to be attended to.

Pungent

Rachel's wit is a little too _____ for me; there is a tinge of cruelty in the jokes she tells about her friends.

Litany

Ruth's _____ of complaints about her marriage to Tom is longer than most children's letters to Santa.

wake

Ryan's old friends turned his _____ into a party on the assumption that if he had been present he would have been the first to break out the beer.

Posterity

Samantha is saving her diaries for _____; she hopes that her daughters and granddaughters will enjoy them.

Retrospective

Seeing an advertisement for a _____ of his films made the director feel old.

Pliable

Sharon was so _____ that she would instantly change her mind whenever anyone disagreed with her.

Rivet

Shayla has the most _____ green eyes I've ever seen - or perhaps those are contact lenses.

Momentum

She starts out small, with just a little whimpering. Then her bad mood picks up _____, and in no time at all she's lying on the floor kicking and screaming.

Litany

She's so defensive that if she suspects even a hint of criticism, she launches into a _____ of her accomplishments.

Predispose

Since the little boy was used to moving, he arrived in the new neighborhood already _____ to make new friends.

Mire

So many cars had driven in and out of the field that the grass had turned to _____.

Intervene

So much had happened to Debbie in the _____ years that she felt a little nervous on her way to her twenty-fifth high school reunion.

Scant

Soap and water are in _____ supply around here. You'll be able to take a shower only once per month.

Render

Steve's funny faces _____ his sister incoherent with laughter.

Revamp

Susan is _____ her resume to make it seem more impressive; she's getting rid of the part that describes her work experience, and she's adding a part that is entirely made up.

Tortuous

Sybil had to use _____ reasoning to persuade herself that it was really all right to shoplift, but after a bit of mental gymnastics she was able to accomplish the task.

Impoverishment

The Great Depression led to the _____ of many formerly well-off families in America.

Solace

The Red Sox just lost the pennant, and there is no _____ for baseball fans in the city of Boston tonight.

Patina

The Statue of Liberty's distinctive green color is due to its _____; the statue is made of copper, not cheese.

Subsidiary

The Watsons pay their kids both a weekly allowance and a _____ sum for doing particular chores; the system worked until the children decided they would rather be broke than do chores.

Materialistic

The _____ bride-to-be registered for wedding presents at every store in town, including the discount pharmacy.

Noisome

The _____ brown liquid seeping out of the floor of my bathroom certainly isn't water. At any rate, it doesn't taste like water.

Intricately

The _____ carved prism cast a beautiful rainbow across the ceiling.

Titular

The _____ head of the company is Lord Arden, but the person who's really in charge is his secretary; she tells him whom to hire, whom to fire, and whom to meet for lunch.

Lobbyist

The _____ held his thumb up as the senator walked passed him to indicate how the senator was supposed to vote on the bill that was then before the Senate.

Peculiar

The _____ look in his eye just before he opened the door was what tipped me off to the surprise party awaiting me inside.

Melancholy

The _____ music in the restaurant basically killed what was left of my appetite; the songs made me feel so sad I didn't want to eat.

Marginal

The _____ notes in Sue's high school Shakespeare books are really embarrassing to her now, especially the spot in Romeo and Juliet where she wrote, "How profound!"

Zenith

The _____ of my career as a singer came when I was asked to give a recital in Carnegie Hall for the royal family, the president, Madonna, and a boy in high school whom I'd always had a crush on; since then, it's all sort of been downhill.

Specter

The _____ of old Miss Shaffer still haunts this house, making mysterious coughing noises and leaving tattered issues of TV Guide in unexpected spots.

Preponderance

The _____ of onions in the stew made us suspect that our host had been trying to save money when he made it because onions were its least expensive ingredient.

Specter

The _____ of the Great Depression continued to haunt the Reeses, making them reluctant to spend money on anything that seemed even remotely frivolous.

Sanction

The baby-sitter wasn't sure whether it was okay for Alex to knock over Andy's block tower, so she called the boys' parents and received their _____ first.

Scant

The beggar has _____ food and _____ clothes.

Proclaim

The blossoms on the cherry trees _____ spring from every branch.

Precarious

The boulder was balanced in a _____ position over the lip of the cliff, and it threatened to fall at any moment onto the heads of the heedless skiers below.

Turbid

The boys were reluctant to jump into the _____ water; mud stirred up by the flood had turned the water in their swimming hole the color of chocolate milk.

Solace

The broken-hearted country-western singer found _____ in a bottle of bourbon; then he wrote a song about finding solace in a bottle of bourbon.

Muster

The camp counselor _____ the girls in her cabin for bunk inspection. She really had to _____ up all her courage to do it, because the girls were so rowdy they never did what she told them. Luckily, the cabin passed _____; the camp director never noticed the dust under the beds.

Importune

The ceaseless _____ of her children finally drove Sophie over the brink; she stuffed the entire brood in the car and left them with her mother-in-law.

Motif

The central _____ in Barry's first novel seems to be that guys named Barry are too sensitive for other people to appreciate fully.

Imperative

The children couldn't quite accept the idea that cleaning up the playroom was _____; they said they didn't mind wading through the toys strewn on the floor, even if they did occasionally fall down and hurt themselves.

Listless

The children had been dragged to so many museums that by the time they reached the dinosaur exhibit, their response was disappointingly _____.

Shackle

The circus trainer used heavy iron chains to _____ his bears when they weren't performing.

Rife

The committee's planning sessions were _____ with backstabbing and petty quarrels.

Sectarian

The company was divided by _____ fighting between the research and marketing departments, each of which had its own idea about what the new computer should be able to do.

Intricate

The details of the agreement were so _____ that it took four lawyers an entire year to work them out.

Marginal

The difference in quality between these two hand towels is only _____.

Meticulous

The doctor paid _____ attention to his patients; he made careful notes of even tiny changes in their illnesses.

Inducement

The dusty, neglected-looking mannequins in the store window were hardly an _____ to shop there.

Triumvirate

The dying emperor appointed a _____ to succeed him because he wanted to make sure that no single person ever again held all the power in the realm.

Vignette

The editor at the publishing company told Mrs. Proutie that the _____ she had written about her garden would be unlikely to sell many more copies if published as a book.

Vivacious

The eighth-grade girls became bubbly and _____ whenever a cute boy walked by, but as soon as he was out of sight they settled back into their usual grumpy lethargy.

Warrant

The employment agency _____ that its temporary secretaries can type 100 words per minute and that they don't mind making coffee.

Spectrum

The entire _____ of acting theories is represented in this workshop, from the notion that all you have to do to act is act to the belief that you must truly become the character in order to be convincing.

Impede

The fact that the little boy is missing all his front teeth _____ his speaking clearly.

Mystic

The faint, far-off trilling of the recorder gave the music a _____ quality.

Titular

The family's _____ breadwinner is my father, but it's Mom's trust fund that actually puts food on the table.

Tumultuous

The fans' _____ celebration at the end of the football game left the field a muddy mess.

Skittish

The farm animals all seemed _____, and no wonder - a wolf was walking back and forth outside their pen, reading a cookbook and sharpening his knife.

Sally

The first sentence of the mystery is, "One fine morning, Randall Quarry _____ forth from his Yorkshire mansion and was never seen again."

Junta

The first thing the _____ did after seizing power was to mandate ice cream at breakfast.

Taint

The flavor of the rich, buttery sauce picked up a slight _____ from the mouse that had fallen into the sauceboat and drowned.

Improvisation

The forgetful choir soloist fortunately had a knack for _____.

Impenetrable

The fortress on the top of the hill was _____ to the poorly armed soldiers; although they tried for days, they were unable to break through its thick stone walls.

Phantasm

The fountain that seemed to be gurgling on the horizon turned out to be a _____; after hours and hours of driving, Meredith was still surrounded by nothing but sand.

Tedium

The initial excitement of summer vacation had gradually turned to _____, and by the end of August, the children were ready to go back to school.

Supplicant

The king has set aside a part of every day to hear the petitions of his _____, some of whom have journeyed hundreds of miles in order to ask him favors.

Spectral

The ladies in the Library Club were hoping to give the Halloween funhouse a thoroughly _____ atmosphere, but their limited budget permitted them to buy only a couple of rolls of orange and black crepe paper and some candy corn.

Incendiary

The lyrics of the heavy-metal star's songs are so _____ that his fans routinely trash the auditorium during his performances.

Sanction

The manager of the apartment complex won't _____ your flooding the weight room to make a swimming pool.

Query

The manuscript was so covered with _____ from her editor that Nancy could see that she had a major revision ahead of time.

Pluralistic

The members of a _____ society must accommodate themselves to a broad range of cultural peculiarities.

Presage

The meteorologist's record at _____ the weather was not impressive; he was correct only about half the time.

Rue

The middle-aged man _____ his misspent youth - all that time wasted studying, when he could have been meeting girls.

Sophomoric

The misbehaving tenth graders didn't mind being called _____; after all, they were sophomores.

Indict

The mob boss had been _____ many times, but he had never been convicted because his high-priced lawyers had always been able to talk circles around the district attorney.

Reminiscence

The older reporters spent much of their time _____ bitterly about how much better things had been during the previous regime, when the newspaper had been owned by a private family instead of a corporate conglomerate.

Ineluctable

The overmatched opposing football team could not halt our _____ progress down the field, and we easily scored a touchdown.

Quay

The party is being held on the _____; that means that at least five people will get pushed into the water at some point during the evening.

Pallor

The pediatrician was concerned by the child's _____ but could find no other symptoms of illness.

Pseudonym

The philandering couple used _____ when they checked into the hotel for the afternoon because they didn't want anyone to know what they were up to.

Throttle

The pilot's frantic _____ was to no avail; the engine would not respond because the airplane was out of fuel.

Plunder

The pirates' ship was loaded with _____, all of which had been stolen from merchant vessels.

Intersperse

The place mats are made of straw _____ with ribbon.

Verisimilitude

The plastics company had found a way to make fake leather of shocking _____.

Seclusion

The poet spent her final years in _____, remaining alone in a darkened room and listening to "Stairway to Heaven" over and over again.

Provocation

The police arrested the young man without _____; he had been doing nothing illegal.

Ratify

The powerless legislature had no choice but to _____ the edicts of the dictator.

Procurement

The practical joker seemed listless and depressed while he waited for the novelty company to ship his next _____ of exploding cigars.

Invidious

The racist candidate brought the crowd's simmering hatred to a boil with an _____ speech in which he referred to whites as "the master race."

Impoverish

The ravages of the tornado _____ many families in our town and placed a heavy strain on our local government's already limited resources.

Reprisal

The rebels issued a statement announcing that yesterday's kidnapping had been a _____ for last month's bombing of a rebel stronghold.

Impending

The reporter didn't seem to notice his rapidly _____ deadline; he poked around in his office as if he had all the time in the world.

Trenchant

The reporter's _____ questions about the national deficit unhinged the White House spokesman, and after stumbling through a halfhearted response, he declared the press conference over.

Perpetrator

The restaurant critic so disliked his meal at Pierre's restaurant that he referred to Pierre not as the meal's chef but as its _____.

Voluptuous

The restaurant's most popular dessert is called Sinfully _____ Chocolate Torte; each serving contains a pound each of chocolate and butter.

Jingoistic

The skinheads marched down the street, chanting, "Foreigners Go Home!" and other _____ slogans.

Ominous

The sky looks _____ this afternoon; there are black clouds in the west, and I think it is going to rain.

Insufferable

The smell of cigar smoke in this room is absolutely _____; I'm afraid I'll suffocate if I remain here for another minute.

Revelry

The sounds of _____ arising from the party below kept the children awake until all of their parents' guests had gone.

Melancholy

The spider webs and dead leaves festooning the wedding cake brought a touch of _____ to the celebration.

Nebulous

The stage lighting was so poor that you could see only a few _____ outlines of the set.

Parable

The story of the tortoise and the hare is a _____ about the importance of persistent effort.

Revamp

The struggling college's _____ curriculum offers such easy electives as Shakespeare's Furniture and Spelling for Spokes-models.

Neophyte

The student librarian was such a _____ that she reshelved all the books upside down.

Transfix

The students were _____ with disgust at the sight of their gym teacher setting up square dance equipment.

Ineradicable

The subway officials did their best to scrub the graffiti off the trains, but the paint the vandals had used proved to be _____; not even cleaning fluid would remove it.

Layman

The surgeon tried to describe the procedure in terms a _____ could understand, but he used so much medical jargon that I had no idea what he was talking about.

Obtrusive

The taste of anchovies would be _____ in a birthday cake; it would get in the way of the flavor of the cake.

Partition

The teacher's _____ of the class into "smarties" and "dumbies" may not have been educationally sound.

Repugnant

The thought of striking out on his own is absolutely _____ to Allan; he would much prefer to continue living in his old room, driving his parents' car, and eating meals prepared by his mother.

Primal

The throbbing music engendered a sort of _____ excitement in the crowd, causing people to bang their chests and jump up and down on their seats.

Inviolate

The tiny church remained _____ throughout the entire war; although bombs dropped all around it, not a stone in its facade was harmed.

Municipal

The town plans to build a _____ birdhouse to keep its pigeons off the streets.

Moratorium

The two countries agreed to a _____ on the production of new nuclear weapons while their leaders struggled to work out the terms of a permanent ban.

Pummeling

The unprepared football team suffered an embarrassing _____ in the opening round of the state tournament; they lost by a score of 58 - 0.

Lout

The visiting professor had been expecting to teach a graduate seminar, but instead he found himself stuck with a class of freshman _____ who scarcely knew how to write their own names.

Overture

The zoo bought a new male gorilla named Izzy to mate with Sukey, its female gorilla, but Sukey flatly rejected Izzy's romantic _____, and no new gorillas were born.

Insuperable

There are a number of _____ obstacles in my way, beginning with that mile-high boulder directly in my path.

Shrewd

There was a _____ look in the old shopkeeper's eye as he watched the city slickers venture into his country store and calculated the percentage by which he would be able to overcharge them for junk that none of the locals would have given a second glance.

Pregnant

There was a _____ pause in the room as the elves considered the alarming implications of Santa's announcement that from now on all toys would be bought from Toys "R" Us.

Taint

There's a _____ of madness in that family; they're okay for a generation or two, and then suddenly one of them forsakes the comforts of the family house for the chicken coop.

Occult

There's a store on Maple Street called Witch-O-Rama; it sells crystal balls, love potions, and other _____ supplies.

Schism

There's been a _____ in the ranks of the Flat Earth Society; one faction believes that the earth is flat because it was created that way, while the other faction believes the earth used to be round but was rolled flat by beings from outer space.

Thwart

There's no _____ Yogi Bear once he gets it into his mind that he wants a picnic basket; he will sleep till noon, but before it's dark, he'll have every picnic basket that's in Jellystone Park.

Idiomatic

This rule of grammar may seem peculiar to everyone else in the country because it is only _____ to the people living in that small region.

Patrimony

This thorny patch of ground isn't much, but it's my _____; it's all that my father left to me in his will.

Triumvirate

Those three girls have been a _____ of best friends ever since the first day of nursery school, when all three of them had potty accidents at once.

Ineradicable

Tim wore saddle shoes and yellow socks on the first day of high school, garnering himself an _____ reputation as a nerd.

Veneer

To a woodworker, a _____ is a thin sheet or strip of wood that has been sliced or peeled from a larger piece of wood; plywood, for example, is a sandwich of veneers.

Punitive

Todd was ordered to pay a one-thousand-dollar fine plus three thousand dollars in _____ damages for having written insulting graffiti on the Purvises' garage door.

Incursion

Todd's midnight _____ on the refrigerator usually meant that at breakfast time no one else in the family had anything to eat.

Premeditated

Tomas's seemingly fortuitous rise to the presidency had actually been carefully _____; for twenty years, he had been quietly sucking up to anyone in the company whom he felt could advance his career.

Sally

Tony didn't know the answer to the professor's question, but his quick-witted _____ made the whole class laugh, including the professor.

Suffrage

Universal _____ is the right of all people to vote, regardless of race, sex, ownership of property, and so forth.

Puritanical

Ursula's parents are quite _____; they won't let her talk to boys and won't let her stay out past seven-thirty without a chaperon.

Impresario

Val calls himself an _____, but he is really just a lazy guy who likes to hang around rock concerts making a nuisance of himself.

Phlegmatic

Vinnie tried to be _____ about his eleven last-place finishes on field day, but as soon as he got home, he broke down and cried like a baby.

Mire

Walking through the _____ in stiletto heels is not a good idea; your shoes are liable to become stuck in the muck.

Protégé

Walter is always approaching important men in the company and asking them to be his mentor. But nowadays most executives don't have time for _____; they're too busy looking after their own jobs.

Imbue

Was it the young poet's brilliant writing or his dashing appearance that _____ the girls with such a love of poetry?

Interlude

Wasn't that a pleasant _____? I just love getting away from my office and shooting the rapids for an hour or two.

Medium

We are trying to decide whether print or television will be a better _____ for this advertisement.

Pristine

We had thought the forest was _____ until we spotted the tin cans buried under the moss.

Reprisal

We knocked over their snowman, and in _____ they spray painted our clubhouse.

Presuppose

We mustn't _____ that the new headmaster hates girls just because he's always been in charge of boys' schools before; after all that time spent living with boys, it may actually be boys whom he hates.

Impasse

We seem to have reached an _____. You want to spend the money on a pair of hockey skates for yourself, while I want to donate it to charity.

Teem

We'd better hire some extra security for the concert; it's going to be _____ with hopped-up kids, and they'll be furious when they find out that the main act canceled last night.

Verdant

When the movie crew reached their destination, they were dismayed to find the landscape still _____; they were supposed to be making a movie about skiing.

Pliability

William's heavy vinyl gloves lost their _____ in the cold weather, and he found it difficult to move his fingers.

Ratiocination

Winning the love of Wilma was clearly not a problem that could be solved by _____ alone; Fred decided to turn off his computer and ask her out.

Interminable

Winter must seem _____ in Moscow; the weather usually starts getting cold in September and doesn't warm up until April.

Supersede

Your new address list _____ the address list you were given last week, which _____ the list of the previous week, and will be _____ next week by an updated list to be distributed at that time.

Presumably

_____ Elsie would have worn her glasses if she had known that her driver's test was today.

Primal

_____ among a puppy's needs is access to expensive shoes that it can chew.

Panegyric

"All these _____ are embarrassing me," lied the actress at the dinner in her honor.

Osmosis

I learned my job by _____; I absorbed the knowledge I needed from the people working around me.

Toil

"Am I going to have to _____ in the fields like this all day?" asked Celia plaintively after being asked by her mother to pick some chives from the garden.

Interlude

"Clara's _____" is a musical piece written by - who else? - Clara.

Induce

"Could I _____ you to read one more chapter?" the little boy asked his father at bedtime; the father was so astonished that his little boy understood such a big, important-sounding word that he quickly complied with the request.

Query

"Do you really think the earth is round?" Doug _____ scornfully.

Scorn

"I _____ your sweaty, mindless athletics," said the president of the literary club to the captain of the football team. "I prefer spending a quiet afternoon by myself reading the works of the great poets."

Purblind

"I can no longer live with such a _____ woman," moaned the famous tenor. "She actually finds it embarrassing when I break into song in the middle of the street."

Importune

"I hate to _____ you once again," said the woman next door, "but may I please borrow some sugar, eggs, milk, flour, butter, jam, and soup?"

Proclaim

"I hereby _____ that today is Hot Dog Day," announced the befuddled governor on the first day of Hot Dog Week.

Muse

"I wonder whether I'll win the flower-arranging prize," Melanie _____, staring pensively at her vaseful of roses and licorice sticks.

Karma

"If you keep on messing up your rooms," the baby-sitter warned the children, "it will be your _____ to come back to earth as a pig."

Ingratiatingly

"That's the loveliest, most flattering dress I've ever seen you wear, Miss Ford," the class goody-goody told the teacher _____.

Sanction

"Unless your puny little nation stops selling poisoned fruit to other nations," the secretary of state threatened, "we'll impose so many _____ on you that you won't know which way is up."

Wrathfully

"Why are you treating me this way?" Catherine demanded _____. "I'll bet I'm the only girl in the whole sixth grade who has to pay rent to live in her own house!"

Timorous

"Would you mind getting off my foot, sir?" the wizened old lady asked in a tiny, _____ voice.

Remuneration

"You mean you expect _____ for working here?" the magazine editor asked incredulously when the young college graduate inquired as to what sort of salary she might expect to earn as an editorial assistant.

Quandary

"You place me in a _____," observed the professor to his pleading student. "If I don't give you an A, you'll be expelled - even though your work deserves no higher than a D-plus." Then the professor remembered that Candy almost never came to class and decided he wasn't in much of a quandary after all.

Obeisance

"You'll have to show me _____ once I'm elected queen of the prom," Diana proclaimed to her servile roommates, who promised that they would.

Implication

A 100 percent cut in our school budget would have troubling _____; I simply don't think the children would receive a good education if they didn't have teachers, books, or a school.

Prelude

As a _____ to her recital, Mrs. Oliver lectured for about an hour on some of the finer points of the composition she was about to sing.

Junction

As a child, Tommy spent most of his time at the railroad _____ hoping he'd spot a passing boxcar he could jump into.

Primal

All of us can trace our ancestry back to one-celled creatures swimming about in a sort of _____ soup of water, amino acids, gunk, and who knows what else.

Voluminous

After Stacy's death, Henry burned their _____ correspondence because he didn't want anyone to find out that he and Stacy had been exchanging letters for years.

Stupor

After Thanksgiving dinner, we were all too full to do anything except lie around on the floor in a _____ and watch the dog walk in circles in front of the fireplace.

Indict

After a five-day water fight, the entire freshman dorm was _____ on a charge of damaging property.

Impasse

After arguing all day, the jury was forced to admit they had reached an _____; they had examined and reexamined the evidence, but they still could not reach a unanimous verdict.

Rivet

After reading the first paragraph, I was _____ to the murder mystery until I had finished the final one.

Incursion

After repeated _____ into the town, the enemy soldiers finally realized that the townspeople would never surrender.

Ostracize

After she'd tattled to the counselor about her bed being short-sheeted, Tracee was _____ by the other girls in the cabin; they wouldn't speak to her, and they wouldn't let her join in any of their games.

Partition

After the Second World War, Germany was _____ into two distinct countries, East Germany and West Germany.

Ouster

After the president's _____ by an angry mob, the vice president moved into his office and lit one of his cigars.

Junta

After the rebels had executed the king, they installed a _____ of former generals to lead the country until elections could be held.

Insuperable

Against seemingly _____ odds, the neighborhood touch-football team made it all the way to the Super Bowl.

Intervene

Al and Mike were having a pretty good time in their sailboat until the hurricane _____.

Rationale

Alice's _____ for buying a new coat was sound; her old coat had a broken zipper.

Surreal

Alice's adventures in Wonderland were rather _____, perhaps because it turned out (disappointingly) that they actually were part of a dream.

Prowess

Although he boasts of having great _____ in the kitchen, Dudley knows how to make nothing but toast.

Innuendo

Although his opponent never actually said Senator Hill cheated on his wife, the public _____ were enough to ruin Hill's chances for reelection.

Incendiary

Although the inspector from the arson squad found a scorched _____ device in the gutted basement of the burned-down house, the neighbors insisted that the fire was accidental.

Incumbent

An _____ senator usually has a distinct advantage over any opponent because being in office makes it easier for him or her to raise the millions of dollars needed to finance a modern political campaign.

Stipend

An allowance is a _____ that a child receives from his or her parents. It is always too small.

Iridescence

An appraiser judges the quality of an opal by its color and _____ more than by its size.

Shackle

As soon as the bad guys left the room, the clever detective slipped out of his _____ by using his teeth to fashion a small key from a ballpoint pen.

Panegyric

As the Soviet official's brief introductory speech turned into a three-hour _____ on the accomplishments of Lenin, the members of the audience began to snooze in their seats.

Specter

As the girls gazed at him, transfixed with horror, he gradually shriveled up and turned into a _____ before their eyes. "I told you we shouldn't touch that switch," Suzy snapped at Muffy.

Trenchant

As the landlord showed the couple around, Meave managed to sound most appreciative about the new apartment, but her _____ asides to her husband made it clear that she thought the place was a dump.

Temporal

As the rich old man approached ninety, he grew less concerned with _____ matters and devoted more and more energy to deciding which of his children should be left out of his will.

Rebuff

Ashley has been trying to tame the squirrels in her yard, but so far they've _____ her efforts; she hasn't even been able to get them to eat the food she leaves for them on her porch.

Licentious

Ashley said the hot new novel was deliciously _____, but I found the sex scenes to be dull and predictable.

Mania

At Christmas time, a temporary _____ descended on our house as Mother spent hour after hour stirring pots on the stove, Father raced around town delivering presents, and we children worked ourselves into a fever of excitement about what we hoped to receive from Santa Claus.

Suffice

At Thanksgiving dinner, Grandma said that she wasn't very hungry, and that a crust of bread and a few drops of water would _____.

Overture

At contract time, management's _____ to the union was instantly rejected, since the workers had decided to hold out for significantly higher wages.

Thesis

At the first Conference on Extraterrestrials, Caroline Riggs advanced her controversial _____ that aliens operate most of our nation's bowling alleys.

Referendum

At the last minute, the state legislators snuck a large pay raise for themselves into the appropriations bill, but voters got wind of the scheme and demanded a _____.

Reclaim

At the recycling facility, massive electromagnets are used to _____ steel and iron from scrap metal.

Intervene

Barry and his sister might have argued all day if their mother hadn't _____; she stepped between them and told them she would knock their heads together if they didn't stop bickering.

Vivacity

Beatrice's _____ dimmed noticeably when she realized that the news she was waiting for would not be good.

Presupposition

Because his father is a famous actor, Phil often encounters the _____ that he can act, too.

Precocious

Beethoven's father was so proud of his son's _____ musical genius that he used to wake the boy up in the middle of the night and make him play the piano for guests.

Parallel

Before they learn to cooperate, young children often engage in what psychologists call _____ play; rather than playing one game together, they play separate games side by side.

Thorny

Before we go any further, we'll have to resolve the _____ question of who's going to pay for the next round.

Self-made

Being a wildly successful _____ politician, Maggie had little sympathy with the idea of helping others who hadn't gotten as far as she. "I pulled myself up by my own bootstraps; why can't they?" she would say, staring out her limousine window at the wretched souls living in cardboard boxes on the streets.

Ingratiation

Bella's attempts at _____ were unsuccessful; her teacher could tell she was being insincere when she told him how nice he looked.

Render

Benson decided to _____ his mother in oil after determining that watercolor wasn't a substantial enough medium for the portrait of such a sourpuss. Benson's mother was not pleased with his _____.

Savant

Bertrand is a real _____ about architecture. You can't go on a walk without him stopping to point out every architectural point of interest he sees. That's why no one will go on walks with him anymore.

Nemesis

Betsy finally met her _____, in the form of a teacher who wouldn't accept any excuses.

Resplendent

Betsy's gown looked _____ in the candlelight; the gown was made of nylon, and it was so shiny you could practically see your reflection in it.

Parallel

Bill and Martha have _____ interests in the yard; Bill's favorite activity is mowing, and Martha's is pruning.

Larceny

Bill's ten previous convictions for _____ made the judge unwilling to suspend his latest jail sentence.

Prattle

Billie Jean _____ ceaselessly about the only things that interest her: makeup, shopping, and her weight.

Wary

Billy Green is _____ of new baby-sitters; he hides behind his father's legs and cries when it's time for his parents to go.

Stark

Billy used to answer the door _____ naked, just to see what would happen; lots of things happened.

Surreal

Bob was so tired when he stepped off the train that his first view of India had a faintly _____ quality; the swarming crowds, the strange language, and, above all, the cows walking in the streets made him feel as though he'd stumbled into a dream.

Refractory

Bobby is such a _____ little boy when it comes to haircuts that he has to be tied up and hoisted into the barber's chair.

Impecunious

Can you lend me five million dollars? I find myself momentarily _____.

Ostracism

Carl's letter to the editor advocating a cut in the school budget led to his _____ by the educational committee.

Pandemic

Cheating was _____ on the campus of the military academy; cadets were carrying more crib sheets than books.

Lavish

City Hall has _____ money on the street-cleaning program, but our streets are dirtier than ever.

Lascivious

Clarence's _____ comments made his female associates extremely uncomfortable.

Voracious

Clay is a _____ reader; he always has his nose buried in a book.

Raucous

Crows are my least favorite bird in the early morning; their _____ cawing wakes me, and I can't get back to sleep.

Vigilantly

Dad _____ guarded the door of the living room to keep the children from seeing the Easter bunny at work.

Serpentine

Dan despises interstate highways, preferring to travel on _____ state roads that wind through the hills and valleys.

Reprimand

David was relieved to see that the officer intended to give him a verbal _____ instead of a speeding ticket.

Odious

Don won the election by stooping to some of the most _____ tricks in the history of politics.

Rivet

Dr. Connors _____ the attention of his audience with a description of his method of turning himself into a lizard.

Pseudonym

Dr. Seuss was the _____ of Theodor Seuss Geisel.

Repugnant

Even the tiniest lapse in etiquette was _____ to Mrs. Mason; when little Angela picked her nose and wiped it on the tablecloth, Mrs. Mason nearly burst her girdle.

Momentum

Even when they're both being driven at the same speed, a big car is harder to stop than a small one because the big car has more _____.

Nomadic

Ever since he graduated from college, my brother has been living a _____ life; his only home is his car, and he moves it every day.

Jargon

Ever since she went into therapy, Liz has been talking about "healingness" and "connectedness" and spouting so much other self-help _____ that it's sometimes hard to listen to her.

Supersede

Every few minutes, someone introduces a new antiaging cream that allegedly _____ all the existing antiaging creams on the market; it's a wonder we haven't all turned into babies.

Travesty

Every year at homecoming, the college glee club puts on a _____ of a popular play or movie, and their show is always popular with alumni.

Pilgrimage

Every year, thousands of tone-deaf people make a _____ to the shrine of St. Piano, hoping that musical ability will be restored to them.

Reprobate

Everyone deplored the _____'s behavior while he was alive, but now that he's dead everyone wants to read his memoirs.

Suppress

Everyone had expected the Soviet army to _____ the uprisings against the coup, but for once the army was behind the populace. The soldiers' refusal to quash the demonstrators effectively ended the coup.

Stupendous

Everyone had told Chet to expect a _____ view from the top of the Empire State Building, but the weather was foggy on the day he visited, and all he could see was clouds.

Waft

First a gentle little breeze _____ through the window, then a typhoon blew the house down.

Rife

Fistfights were _____ in that part of town, largely because there was an all-night bar in nearly every storefront.

Titular

Flipper, the _____ star of the TV show Flipper, was in reality a female dolphin named Suzy.

Surmise

From the messages the eight-ball has been sending me, I _____ that someone's going to give me a present soon.

Privation

For Owen, the fact that he never had to make his bed more than made up for the numerous _____ of life in a pup tent.

Sanction

For many years international _____ on South Africa included the banning of its athletes from competing in the Olympics.

Sordid

For many years, it turned out, Mr. Rubble had been involved in a _____ affair with the daughter of Mr. and Mrs. Flintstone.

Integral

For me, no day is _____ unless I can eat chocolate at some point during it.

Impenetrable

For obvious reasons, knights in the Middle Ages hoped that their armor would be _____.

Improvise

Forced to land on a deserted island, the shipwrecked sailors _____ a shelter out of driftwood and sand.

Paroxysm

Forty years of cigarette smoking had made John prone to agonizing _____ of coughing.

Shrewd

Foxes actually are every bit as _____ as they're portrayed to be in folklore; hunters say foxes under pursuit are often able to trick even trained foxhounds into following a false trail.

Muse

Fred meant to get some work done, but instead he sat at his desk _____ all afternoon, and then it was time to go home.

Inimitable

Fred's dancing style is so _____ that anyone who follows his act looks like a drunk elephant by comparison.

Quotidian

Having an airplane crash in your backyard isn't exactly a _____ event; in fact, for most people it isn't even a weekly one.

Placebo

Half the subjects in the experiment received the real drug; half were given _____. Of the subjects given placebos, 50 percent reported a definite improvement, 30 percent reported a complete cure, and 20 percent said, "Oh, I bet you just gave us a placebo."

Sarcasm

Hank believes that _____ is the key to breaking the ice with girls. "Is that your real hair, or did you just join the circus?" he asked Jeanette.

Timorous

Hannah's _____ boyfriend broke up with her by asking her friend Tina to do it for him.

Influx

Heavy spring rains brought an _____ of mud to people's basements.

Underscore

Heidi was so nervous about the exam that she ended up _____ her entire textbook in yellow marker.

Rebuff

I invited my parents to the Metallica concert, but I was met with a horrified _____; in fact, my parents said they would rather die than go.

Inquisition

I keep telling you that I got home late because I missed the bus! What is this, some kind of _____?

Rend

I realize you're upset about not being invited to the dance, but _____ your clothing and tearing out your hair is getting a little too emotional, don't you think?

Impenetrable

I was unable to guess what Bob was thinking; as usual, his expression was _____.

Sweeping

I wish Matthew wouldn't make such _____ judgments; what gives him the right to decide that an entire continent is in bad taste?

Redeem

I won't marry you until you _____ your promise to build a roof over our heads.

Mawkish

I would have liked that movie a lot better if the dog's death scene, in which a long line of candle-bearing mourners winds past the shrouded doghouse, hadn't been so _____.

Mire

I'd love to join you tonight, but I'm afraid I'm _____ in a sewing project and can't get away.

Mode

I'm not interested in dressing in the latest _____; a barrel and a pair of flipflops are fashionable enough for me.

Ordinance

I'm sorry, but you'll have to put your bathing suit back on; the town passed an _____ against nude swimming at this beach.

Solace

I've heard a lot of come-ons in my day, but "May I _____ you?" has to be a first.

Patrimony

If Bob keeps spending at this rate, he will have exhausted his entire _____ by the end of the year.

Vacuous

If Gail has to spend one more hour cooped up with Karen and her _____ observations, she cannot answer for the consequences.

Woe

If I told you all the _____ that have befallen Karl this year, you'd think I was making them up; no one could have that much bad luck.

Jaunt

If my uncle keeps _____ off to all these hot new vacation spots, he'll spend all the money I'm hoping to inherit from him.

Triumvirate

Mother Goose Land is ruled by a _____ consisting of the butcher, the baker, and the candlestick maker.

Viscosity

Motor oils are rated according to their _____; less viscous oils are usually used in the winter because cold weather can cause more viscous grades to become excessively thick.

Plight

Moved by the _____ of the hostages, the rich man assembled an army of mercenaries to rescue them.

Pontificate

Mr. Burgess doesn't so much speak as _____; he makes even "hello" sound like a proclamation from on high.

Secede

If taxes keep rising, our state is going to _____ from the nation and become a tax-free society financed by revenues from bingo and horse-racing.

Impoverish

Mr. DeZinno spent every penny he had on lottery tickets, none of which was a winner; he _____ himself in his effort to become rich.

Progeny

Mr. March is rich in nothing but _____; he says he'd rather have a million children than a million dollars.

Stout

Mr. Reardon never goes for a walk without carrying a _____ stick along; he uses it to steady his balance, knock obstacles out of his path, and scare away dogs and small children.

Subside

Mrs. Bailey eyed her students sternly until their chattering had _____ and they were ready to hear her views on linguistic development.

Scant

Mrs. Doudy has rather _____ knowledge of home economics. She's been teaching her students to hem things with tape and safety pins.

Ineluctable

If you keep waving that sword around in this crowded room, I'm afraid a tragedy will be _____.

Stark

If you play that song one more time, I will go _____, raving mad, and throw the stereo out the window.

Marginal

Mrs. Hoadly manages to eke out a _____ existence selling the eggs her three chickens lay.

Plunder

Mrs. Ort told her son to stop _____ the refrigerator before he ate up all the food that she had prepared for her guests.

Oscillate

Mrs. Johnson can't make up her mind how to raise her children; she _____ between strictness and laxity depending on what kind of mood she's in.

Retrospect

In _____, I was probably out of line when I yelled at my mother for telling me she liked what I was wearing and saying that she hoped I would have a nice day.

Stipend

In addition to his commissions, the salesman received a small _____ to cover his travel expenses.

Melee

In all the _____ of shoppers trying to get through the front door of the department store, I got separated from my friend.

Jubilation

In an excess of _____ at the good news, Rebecca flung her arms around a total stranger.

Serene

In the lake's _____ blue depths lie the keys my father hurled off the deck in a fit of temper a couple of days ago after learning that I had totaled his car.

Resplendent

In the morning sunlight, every drop of dew was _____ with color; unfortunately, no one was awake to see it.

Impediment

Irene's inability to learn foreign languages was a definite _____ to her mastery of French literature.

Slake

Irene's thirst for companionship was _____ by her next-door neighbor, who spent most of every day drinking coffee with her in her kitchen.

Perverse

It is _____ of Steve to insist on having the window seat, since looking down from great heights makes him airsick.

Regimen

It takes most new students a long time to get used to the _____ at boarding school; that is why this headmaster doesn't allow children to write letters home until the beginning of the second semester.

Inculcate

It took ten years, but at last we've managed to _____ in our daughter the habit of shaking hands.

Ludicrous

It was _____ for me to have expected my three puppies to behave themselves while I was out; every pair of shoes I own has become a chew toy.

Veracious

It would be easier to trust Charlotte if she had a reputation for being _____ - but she doesn't. In fact, she's been called a liar many times before.

Supplication

It's almost frightening to walk through the streets of any city nowadays, there are so many people making _____ for food or spare change.

Nullify

It's hard to believe that Saudi Arabia still hasn't _____ the law that prohibits women to drive.

Mawkish

It's hard to believe that Trudy's _____ greeting card verses have made her so much money; I guess people really do like their greeting cards to be filled with mushy sentiments.

Nebulous

Jake's ideas about a career are a little _____ at this point. He says he wants to have a job that will entitle him to have a telephone on his desk, but that's all he's figured out so far.

Quandary

Joe is in a _____; tomorrow he's scheduled to marry three different women in three different towns, and he can't decide whether to try to pull it off or move to another country.

Trenchant

Joellen's presentation was _____ and well researched; that was not surprising since she had paid her clever new assistant to write it.

Voluminous

Kate frantically searched through her _____ lecture notes for the phone number of the boy sitting next to her.

Importunate

Leslie's _____ boyfriend called her day and night to ask her if she still loves him; after the hundredth such phone call, she understandably decided that she did not.

Sally

Let's take a little _____ down Newbury Street; there are some nice, expensive shops there I've been meaning to peek into.

Nomadic

Lila spent her senior year living in a tent with a _____ tribe of sheep herders.

Ominous

Mrs. Lewis's voice sounded _____ when she told the class that it was time for a little test.

Scorn

Morris _____ every kind of cat food except the most expensive brand.

Ribald

Most of the songs on that new album have _____ lyrics that will give heart attacks to mothers all over the nation.

Pastoral

Lyme disease has made people a little less intrigued with living in _____ splendor than they used to be.

Paragon

Mario named his fledgling restaurant _____ Pizza, hoping that the name would make people think his pizzas were better than they actually were.

Specious

Medical doctors have long viewed chiropractic as a _____ discipline, but that attitude has changed somewhat in recent years as a number of careful studies have demonstrated the effectiveness of certain chiropractic techniques.

Toil

Meeting the manufacturing deadline required weeks of unremitting _____ from the designers, some of whom worked past midnight nearly every night.

Psyche

Mel has a fragile _____; when anyone criticizes him, he pouts for days and refuses to eat.

Impresario

Monsieur Clovis, the _____ of the Little Rock Operetta House, is as temperamental as some of his singers; if he doesn't get his way, he holds his breath until he turns blue.

Singular

Nell has a _____ talent for getting into trouble; the other morning, she managed to break her leg, insult a woman at the post office, drop some eggs at the grocery store, paint her bedroom green, and cut down the big maple tree in the next-door neighbor's front yard.

Verge

Nick's surly answer _____ on rudeness, but his father decided not to punish him.

Incarnation

Nina is the _____ of virtue; she has never done anything wrong since she was born.

Timorous

On Halloween night, the DeMados decorate their house with skeletons and bats, and _____ trick-or-treaters are afraid to approach their door.

Incendiary

On July 3, the newspaper published an _____ editorial urging readers to celebrate the nation's birthday by setting flags on fire.

Motley

One glance at her date's _____ tuxedo convinced Cathy that she didn't want to go to the prom after all; the jacket looked more like a quilt than like a piece of formal clothing.

Invoke

Oops! I just spilled cake mix all over my mother's new kitchen carpet. I'd better go _____ her forgiveness.

Innuendo

Oscar tried to hint that he wanted a new fishing pole for his birthday, but Maxine didn't pick up on the _____, and she gave him a bowling ball instead.

Reprimand

Otto received his father's _____ in stony silence because he did not want to give that mean old man the satisfaction of seeing his son cry.

Stratagem

Our _____ for replacing the real newspaper with a parody issue involved kidnapping the driver of the delivery truck and taking over the delivery route ourselves.

Procure

Our efforts to _____ a thousand cases of champagne in time for the party ended in failure; we were able to find only nine hundred.

Subterfuge

Pearl isn't allowed to wear jeans to school, so she has gotten into the habit of leaving a pair of jeans in the bushes behind her house and changing into them in her best friend's garage. This little _____ is about to be discovered, however, because Pearl's mother is dropping in on the school unexpectedly today to bring her the lunchbox she left at home this morning.

Toxin

Some shellfish contain a _____ that can make diners violently ill.

Replicate

Some simple organisms _____ by splitting themselves in two.

Pilgrimage

Someday I'm going to make a _____ back to the most important spots of my childhood, beginning with the McDonald's across the street from my old house.

Perverse

Ralph takes a _____ pleasure in making his garden the ugliest on the block; it pleases him to know that he deeply annoys his neighbors.

Susceptibility

Ray's _____ to new fads hasn't diminished in recent years; he now spends much of his time sitting on an aluminum foil mat in order to "metallicize" his joints and ligaments.

Pallor

Regina's ghostly _____ can only mean one thing: she just caught sight of her blind date for the evening.

waft

Rick closed the kitchen door to keep the smell of popcorn from _____ upstairs because he didn't want his sister to know that he was making a snack.

Obviate

Robert _____ his arrest for tax evasion by handing a blank check to the IRS examiner and telling him to fill in any amount he liked.

Seclude

Roberta lives in a _____ house at the end of a dead-end street; the lots on either side of hers are empty.

Layman

Shakira considered herself an excellent painter, but she was distinctly a _____; she couldn't make much headway on any canvas that didn't have numbers printed on it.

Insouciant

She is so charmingly _____, with her constant tap dancing and her little snatches of song, that no one can stand to be in the same room with her. Her _____ drives people crazy.

Quasi

She managed to come up with a _____ -plausible excuse for being out all night, so the headmistress decided to give her one more chance.

Meander

Since I hadn't wanted to go to the party in the first place, I just _____ through the neighborhood, walking up one street and down another, until I was pretty sure everyone had gone home.

Prurient

Since Miss Goggins was afraid that art books with naked statues in them would appeal to teenagers' _____ interests, she had all the art books removed from the library shelves.

Render

Sitting all night on the bottom of the pond had _____ the car useless for almost anything except continuing to sit on the bottom of the pond.

Slake

Soda doesn't _____ your thirst as well as plain old water.

Repress

Stella could not _____ her feeling of horror at the sight of her neighbor's wallpaper.

Tumult

Such a _____ breaks out when the end-of-school bell rings that the teachers have learned to jump onto their desks to avoid being trampled.

Bathos

Terry said the new novel was deeply moving, but I found it to be filled with _____, and I didn't shed a tear.

Impregnable

Thanks to repeated applications of Turtle Wax, my car's finish is _____; the rain and snow bounce right off it.

Vagary

Thanks to the _____ of fashion, everyone is wearing tennis rackets instead of shoes this summer.

Viscous

That _____ sap dripping from the gash in the trunk of the pine tree may one day harden into amber.

Shibboleth

That large government programs are inherently bad is a _____ of the Republican party.

Peculiar

That method of cooking shrimp is _____ to this region; it isn't done anywhere else.

Ostracize

That poor old man has been _____ by our town for long enough; I'm going to visit him today.

Olfactory

That stew's appeal is primarily _____; it smells great, but it doesn't have much taste.

Lout

That stupid _____ has no idea how to dance. I think he broke my foot when he stepped on it.

Provocation

That stupid dog starts barking at any _____, including the sound of a window washer clearing his throat.

Specious

That's _____ reasoning, Olivia; the fact that both roses and blood are red does not mean that roses contain blood.

Pandemic

The Black Plague was virtually _____ throughout Europe during the fourteenth century.

Queue

The British are famous for waiting patiently in long _____, while the Germans are notorious for pushing to the head of the line.

Infrastructure

The country's political _____ was so corrupt that most of the citizens welcomed the coup.

Posture

The creative writing workshop quickly disintegrated into an orgy of _____ by the self-important student poets, all of whom were trying to prove that they were tortured geniuses.

Sophomoric

The dean of students suspended the fraternity's privileges because its members had streaked through the library wearing togas, soaped the windows of the administration building, and engaged in other _____ antics during Parents' Weekend.

Media

The _____ have a responsibility to report the facts fairly and without favor.

Intermittent

The _____ hooting of an owl outside my window made it hard for me to sleep last night; every time I would begin to drop off, the owl would start up again.

Vagary

The _____ of Sean's boss are a little unsettling; one day he'll tell Sean that he is in line to become president of the company, and the next day he'll tell him to scrub the executive washroom.

Underpinning

The _____ of our friendship extend back to childhood, when I helped Kristie sew a purse for her mother.

Mania

The _____ of the Roman emperor Caligula displayed itself in ways that are too unpleasant to talk about.

Posthumous

The _____ publication of Hemingway novels has become a minor literary industry, even though Hemingway clearly had good reasons for keeping the novels unpublished.

Predominant

The _____ quality of Luther's painting is its boring grayness; he calls it "Fog at Dusk."

Thesis

The _____ statement of a written composition is a sentence that states the theme of the composition.

Turbid

The air was _____ with an oily black smoke that coated everything in soot and made noon look like midnight.

Remission

The appeals court granted Ronnie a partial _____ of his crimes; it threw out two of his convictions, but it upheld the third.

Rarefied

The atmosphere atop Mount Everest was so _____ that the climber could hardly breathe.

Threshold

The dean told the new graduates that they stood at the _____ of a great adventure; what he didn't say was that for many of them the adventure would be unemployment.

Procurable

The bookstore manager said that the bestseller was sold out, and that additional copies were not _____

Vignette

The boring movie was enlivened somewhat by half a dozen sexy _____ sprinkled through it.

Indictment

The broken fishbowl and missing fish were a clear _____ of the cat.

Transfix

The children stood _____ at the astonishing sight of Mary Poppins rising into the air with her umbrella.

Undermine

The children's adamant refusal to learn French considerably _____ their teacher's efforts to teach it to them.

Stalwart

The chipmunk made a _____ effort to defend her babies from the sallies of the cat, but it was my own efforts with a water pistol that finally drove the attacker away.

Temporize

The co-op board was afraid to tell the actress flat out that they didn't want her to buy an apartment in their building, so they _____ by saying they had to look into some building restrictions first.

Liaison

The condor breeders worked in _____ with zoo officials to set up a breeding program in the wild.

Systemic

The consultant said that the problem was not isolated to one department, but was _____; that is, it affected the entire company.

Travesty

The defense lawyer complained that the continual snickering of the judge had turned his client's trial into a _____, and he demanded that the case be thrown out.

Refractory

The doctors prescribed ten antibiotics before finding one that worked on Helen's _____ infection.

Impede

The faster I try to pick up the house, the more the cat _____ me; he sees me scurrying around, and, thinking I want to play, he runs up and winds himself around my ankles.

Spurn

The female peacock _____ the male's advances day after day; she took so little notice of him that he might as well have sold his tail feathers and tried to make time with the chickens.

Remuneration

The firefighter viewed the child's hug as more than adequate _____ for crawling through the burning building to save her.

Progeny

The first release of the word-processing software was balky and unreliable, but its _____ have been quite impressive.

Rhapsodic

The review of the play was far from _____. In fact, it was so harshly negative that the play closed the next day.

Traumatize

The fox _____ the hens by sneaking into the henhouse and licking his lips.

Ribaldry

The freshman dormitory was characterized primarily by _____ and beer.

Presumably

The gardener said he would come a little early next week, _____ to rake up all the dead leaves before mowing.

Vogue

The goldfish were sorry to learn that the campus _____ for swallowing live goldfish is back.

Repress

The government's crude attempt to _____ the rebellion in the countryside only made it easier for the rebels to attract new recruits.

Trauma

The gunshot victim was hurried to the hospital's new _____ center, which was staffed by physicians experienced in treating life-threatening wounds.

Redress

The head of the environmental group explained that by suing the chemical factory for violating clean air laws, he was using the courts to _____ a civil wrong.

Mire

The horses were so _____ in the pasture that they couldn't go another step.

Subside

The house's foundation _____ to the point where the first floor windows were in danger of disappearing from view.

Transfix

The hunter aimed his flashlight at the eyes of the bullfrog, hoping to _____ his prey so that it would be easier to catch.

Quay

The hurricane washed away every boat moored along the _____, but the boats that had been pulled onto dry land before the storm were undamaged.

Inimical

The reviews of his exhibition were so _____ that Charles never sculpted again.

Underwrite

The local bank agreed to _____ the high school production of South Pacific, providing money for props, costumes, and the rental of a theater.

Momentum

The locomotive's _____ carried it through the tunnel and into the railroad terminal.

Sarcastic

The mayor was enraged by the _____ tone of the newspaper's editorial about his arrest for possession of cocaine.

Interminable

The meeting was supposed to be short, but Ted's _____ lists of statistics dragged it out for three hours.

Perpetuate

The new forestry bill contained conservation measures intended to help _____ the nation's timber resources.

Sententious

The new headmistress made a _____ speech in which she urged the student body to follow her illustrious example.

Paragon

The new manual is unusual in the computer world in that it is a _____ of clear writing; after reading it, you understand exactly how the software works.

Meander

The river _____ across the landscape in a series of gentle curves.

Layman

The new minister tried hard to involve the laity in his services; unfortunately, the last time a _____ preached a sermon, he spent most of the time talking about his new boat. Perhaps that's just the risk you run when you use a lay preacher.

Predecessor

The new model of the minivan is a wonderful vehicle, but its _____ was riddled with engineering flaws.

Omniscient

The novel's narrator has an _____ point of view, so his parts often clue the reader in to things the characters in the story don't know.

Refractory

The old man viewed all children as drooling, complaining, _____ little monsters.

Limpid

The river flowing past the chemical plant isn't exactly _____; in fact, it's as opaque as paint, which is apparently one of its principal ingredients.

Suffuse

The room that was once filled with dazzling sunbeams is now _____ with the ugly grayish light of a fluorescent lamp.

Undermine

The rushing waters of the flood had _____ the north end of the foundation, and the house was now leaning in that direction.

Subsidize

The school lunch program is _____ by the state; the school system is reimbursed by the state for a portion of what it spends on pizza and peach cobbler.

Implausible

The theory that tiny little men move the pictures around inside the television is interesting but _____; for one thing, you never see anyone putting food in a TV.

Quizzical

The policeman's _____ expression hinted that perhaps I hadn't explained very well why I had to speed on the highway.

Subside

The popular new drug helps anxieties to _____, but it does not eliminate them completely.

Inculcate

The preacher who believes that stern sermons will _____ morals in his congregation frequently finds that people stop coming to church at all.

Moratorium

The president of the beleaguered company declared a _____ on the purchase of office supplies, hoping that the money saved by not buying paper clips might help to keep the company in business a little bit longer.

Junta

The president's principal advisers were so secretive and so protective of their access to the president that reporters began referring to them as the _____.

Turmoil

The president's sudden death threw his administration into _____, as his former deputies and assistants vied with one another for power.

Supplication

The priest asked our prayers and _____ for the sick and dying of the parish.

Wizened

The prince was horrified when he lifted his new bride's veil and found not the princess he had been expecting but a _____ old crone.

Revulsion

The princess pulled back in _____ when she realized that her kiss hadn't turned the frog into a prince after all.

Skirmish

The principal _____ with the students over the issue of hair length.

Sweeping

The principal's _____ gaze made every kid in the lunchroom tremble.

Seclusion

The prisoner was causing so much trouble that his guards agreed it would be best to put him in _____ for the time being.

Subsidize

The professor's assertion that cigarette smoking can be healthful was discredited when a reporter discovered that the tobacco industry had _____ his research.

Substantiate

The prosecutor did her best to _____ the charge against the defendant, but it was an uphill job; she couldn't find a single witness willing to testify against him.

Punctilious

The prosecutor's _____ recitation of the case against the defendant left the jury no choice but to convict.

Tepid

The teacher's praise of Tina's painting was _____, perhaps because Tina's painting was an unflattering caricature of the teacher.

Pliable

The tennis coach preferred working with very young children, because he found them to be more _____ than older players, who had often become set in their ways.

Sumptuous

The walls were covered with _____ silk tapestries, the floors with the finest Eastern rugs, and I felt stupid standing there, because I was wearing cutoffs.

Intersperse

The wildly unpredictable company had had periods of enormous profitability _____ with periods of near-bankruptcy.

Interloper

The year-round residents of the resort town viewed summertime visitors as _____ who contributed nothing to the town except traffic jams and trash.

Obviate

Their move to Florida _____ the need for heavy winter clothes.

Limpid

Theodora's poetry has a _____ quality that makes other writers' efforts sound stiff and overformal.

Quiescence

Theodore was bubbling over with energy as a young man, but in old age he settled into a peaceful _____.

Singular

Theodore's _____ facility with numbers makes life difficult for his teacher, who finds it embarrassing to be corrected by a first grader.

Pathos

There was an unwitting _____ in the way the elderly shopkeeper had tried to spruce up his window display with crude decorations cut from construction paper.

Underwrite

There would be no such thing as public television in this country if rich American oil companies were not willing to _____ the rebroadcast of expensive British television shows.

Reactionary

There's no point in proposing a welfare bill as long as this _____ administration remains in power.

Posterity

There's no point in protecting the world's oil reserves for _____ if we don't also leave posterity any air to breathe.

Inviolable

There's no such thing as an _____ chain e-mail; sooner or later, someone always breaks the chain.

Invoke

This drought has lasted for so long that I'm just about ready to _____ the Rain God.

Impenetrable

This essay is utterly _____. There isn't one word in it that makes sense to me.

Nonchalantly

Unconcerned with all the worry his disappearance had caused, the cat sat down and _____ began to wash his face.

Veneer

Under her _____ of sophistication - acquired, at great expense to her parents, at a Swiss finishing school - Holly is actually a shy, nervous hick.

Invidious

Under the guise of paying them a compliment, Stephanie made an _____ comparison between the two girls, causing them to feel jealous of each other instead of flattered.

Vogue

Vogue is a famous magazine filled with fashion photographs, clothing advertisements, and articles about whatever is in _____ at the moment.

Rarefied

Wendell's musical compositions are so _____ that only a few people can really appreciate them.

Repartee

When Annette first came to college, she despaired of ever being able to keep up with the _____ of the clever upperclassmen, but eventually she, too, got the hang of being insufferable.

Livid

When Christopher heard that his dog had chewed up his priceless stamp collection, he became _____, and he nearly threw the poor dog through the window.

Impromptu

When Dimitri's mother-in-law dropped in without warning, he prepared her an _____ meal of the foods he had on hand - coffee and tomato sauce.

Secede

When Edward's mother made him clean his room, he _____ from his family and moved into the basement, where he could keep things as messy as he wanted.

Redeem

When I heard that my husband had pawned my mink coat in order to buy me a birthday present, I went straight to the pawnshop and _____ it with the money I had been going to spend on a birthday present for him.

Noisome

When I opened the refrigerator after returning from vacation, such a _____ odor leaped out at me that I bolted from the apartment.

Intersperse

When I plant a row of tomatoes, I always _____ a few marigold plants because even a scattering of marigolds helps to keep pests away

Pastoral

When I'm in the city, I long for the _____ life, but the second I get into the country, I almost die of boredom.

Retort

When Laurie accused Peggy of being drunk, Peggy _____, "Whoeryooshayingsdrunk?" and fell over on the sidewalk.

Omniscient

When Lucy was a small child, she thought her parents were _____. Now that she's a teenager, she realizes they don't know anything at all.

Perpetrator

When Miss Walsh found glue on her chair, she speedily apprehended the _____ and sent him to the principal.

Throttle

When Nicki has an idea for a poem, she runs to her desk and works at full _____ until the poem is finished; she doesn't even stop to answer the phone or go to the bathroom.

Remission

When companies ask for prompt _____ of their bills, I just laugh and put the bills away in a drawer.

Protocol

When she was made ambassador to France, she spent months studying French _____ before she felt comfortable with her new role.

Secede

When the southern states _____ from the Union, they probably never expected to create quite as much of a ruckus as they did.

Teem

When the waiter brought Bob the cheese course, Bob gasped; the cheese was _____ with maggots.

Insurrection

When their mother denied them TV privileges for a week, the Eisenman twins organized an _____ in which they stormed the den, dragged the TV into their bedroom, and barred the door.

Supine

When you've got both broken legs in traction, you'd better stay _____ or you'll be awfully uncomfortable.

Infusion

Whenever I have a cough, my grandmother steeps an _____ of herbs that cures me right away.

Rueful

Whenever Olga's mother gets a _____ look in her eye, Olga knows she's about to make some kind of remark about how fast time passes.

Infringe

Whenever Patrick comes into her room, Liz always shouts, "Mom! He's _____ on my personal space!"

Oligarchy

Whenever Rick's parents tell him that they're in charge of the family, he tells them that he can't survive under an _____.

Voracious

Whenever he goes skiing, Reed comes home _____; once he even ate an entire uncooked meat loaf that his mother had intended to prepare for dinner.

Pontificate

Whenever my next-door neighbor begins _____ about zoning laws, I quietly tiptoe back inside; I am tired of being lectured by that pompous ass.

Plight

Whenever the heroine finds herself in a seemingly hopeless _____ in an old-fashioned movie - whether it's being tied to railroad tracks or hanging on to a cliff edge - it's pretty certain she'll be rescued soon.

Thorny

Whether to let children go out alone after dark is a _____ topic for the parents of urban teenagers. Is it more important to keep them safe at home or to allow them to develop a sense of independence?

Psyche

While in medical school, Nancy noticed that she was far more interested in her patients' _____ than in their bodies, so she decided to become a psychiatrist.

Inadvertently

While ironing a shirt, Steven _____ scorched one sleeve; it was really the collar that he had meant to scorch.

Sedentary

Writing is a _____ life; just about the only exercise you get is walking to the mailbox to see whether anyone's sent you a check, and you don't even need to do that often.

Porous

You just can't build a _____ boat and expect it to float.

Unilateral

_____ disarmament is the decision by one side in a conflict to lay down its arms.

Nirvana

_____ for Judy consisted of a hot bubble bath and a hot fudge sundae at the end of a long day.

Stark

_____ terror leaped into the baby-sitter's eyes when she realized that both the car and the triplets were missing.

Rout

_____ the forces of pestilence and famine turned out to be a bigger job than Mark had anticipated, so he stopped trying and went to law school instead.

Suffuse

_____ the meat with a marinade will add flavor, but it won't tenderize the meat.

Solidarity

_____ was an appropriate name for the Polish labor union since it represented a decision by workers to stand up together against their government.