TỪ VỰNG TOEIC unit 26

Unit 26MUR POLIS/POLIT NUMER KILO MICRO MULTI PAR PHOB HEM/HEMO ITIS Medical Words Quiz 26-1 Quiz 26-2 Quiz 26-3 Quiz 26-4 Quiz 26-5 Review Quizzes 26 MUR, from the Latin noun murus, mea

Unit 26

MUR POLIS/POLIT NUMER KILO MICRO MULTI PAR PHOB

HEM/HEMO ITIS Medical Words

Quiz 26-1 Quiz 26-2 Quiz 26-3 Quiz 26-4 Quiz 26-5 Review Quizzes 26

MUR, from the Latin noun murus, meaning “wall,” has produced a modest

number of English words

muralist A painter of wall paintings

• She's enjoying her new career as a muralist, but it's terribly hard on herwhen she sees her works wrecked by vandals

Any wall painting may be called a mural Murals have been around since

long before the framed painting Scenic murals date back to at least 2000B.C on the island of Crete Indoor murals for private homes were popular inancient Greece and Rome, and many of those at Pompeii were preserved bythe lava of Mt Vesuvius In the Renaissance the muralists Raphael andMichelangelo created great wall and ceiling paintings for the Catholic

Church, and Leonardo da Vinci's The Last Supper became one of the most

famous of all murals Mural painting saw a great revival in Mexico beginning

in the 1920s, when a group of muralists inspired by the Mexican Revolution,including Diego Rivera, J C Orozco, and D A Siqueiros, began taking theirintensely political art to the public by creating giant wall paintings,sometimes on outdoor surfaces

intramural Existing or occurring within the bounds of aninstitution, especially a school

• At college he lacked the time to go out for sports in a serious way, but hedid play intramural hockey all four years

With its Latin prefix intra-, “within” (not to be confused with inter-,

“between”), intramural means literally “within the walls.” The word is

usually used for sports played between teams made up only from students atone campus Intramural athletics is often the most popular extracurricularactivity at a college or university

extramural Existing outside or beyond the walls orboundaries of an organized unit such as a school or hospital

• “Hospital Without Walls” is an extramural program that offers home care services

health-Extramural contains the Latin extra-, meaning “outside” or “beyond” (see

EXTRA) The walls in extramural are usually those of schools, colleges, anduniversities, and the word is often seen in phrases like “extramural activities”and “extramural competition,” referring to things that involve the worldbeyond the campus Some institutions use the term “extramural study” forwhat others call “distance learning”—that is, teaching and learning by means

of Web connections to the classroom and to videos of lectures Money thatflows into universities to support research (from foundations, governmentinstitutes, etc.) is usually called “extramural income.”

immure To enclose within, or as if within, walls; imprison

• In Dumas's famous novel, the Count of Monte Cristo is in fact a sailor whohad been unjustly immured in an island prison for 15 years before breakingout and taking his revenge

In Eastern European legend, whenever a large bridge or fort was completed, ayoung maiden would be immured in the stonework as a sacrifice (It's notcertain that such things were actually done.) In Poe's grim story “A Cask ofAmontillado,” a man achieves revenge on a fellow nobleman by chaininghim to a cellar wall and bricking him up alive At the end of Verdi's great

opera Aida, Aida joins her lover so that they can die immured together But real-life examples of immurement as a final punishment are somewhat harder

to find

POLIS/POLIT comes from the Greek word for “city.” The ancient Greek

city-states, such as Athens, Thebes, and Sparta, operated much like separate

nations, so all their politics was local, like all their public policy—and even all their police!

politic (1) Cleverly tactful (2) Wise in promoting a plan or plan

As you can see, politic can be used for many situations that have nothing to

do with public politics.

politicize To give a political tone or character to

• By 1968 the Vietnam War had deeply politicized most of America's collegecampuses

Sexual harassment was once seen as a private matter, but in the 1980s and'90s it became thoroughly politicized, with women loudly pressuringlawmakers to make it illegal So, at the same time, the issue of sexualharassment politicized many women, who began to take an interest inpolitical action because of it In other words, we may speak of an issuebecoming politicized, but also of a person or group becoming politicized

acropolis The high, fortified part of a city, especially anancient Greek city

• On the Athenian Acropolis, high above the rest of the city, stands theParthenon, a temple to Athena

The Greek root acro- means “high”; thus, an acropolis is basically a “high

city.” Ancient cities often grew up around a high point, in order that theycould easily be defended The Greeks and Romans usually included in theiracropolises temples to the city's most important gods; so, for example, Athensbuilt a great temple on its Acropolis to its protector goddess, Athena, fromwhich the city took its name Many later European cities cluster around awalled castle on a height, into which the population of the city and thesurrounding area could retreat in case of attack, and even South Americancities often contain a similar walled area on high ground

megalopolis (1) A very large city (2) A thicklypopulated area that includes one or more cities with the surrounding suburbs

• With its rapid development, the southern coast of Florida around Miamiquickly became a megalopolis

A “large city” named Megalopolis was founded in Greece in 371 B.C to helpdefend the region called Arcadia against the city-state of Sparta Though astadium seating 20,000 was built there, indicating the city's impressive sizefor its time, Megalopolis today has only about 5,000 people Social scientistsnow identify 10 megalopolises in the U.S., each with more than 10 millionpeople The one on the eastern seaboard that stretches from Boston toWashington, D.C., where the densely populated cities seem to flow into eachother all along the coast, is now home to over 50 million people But it'seasily surpassed by the Japanese megalopolis that includes Tokyo, with morethan 80 million inhabitants

3 He knew it was never _ to mention his own children's achievementsaround his brother, whose oldest son was in prison.

4 They had hired a professional _ to paint the walls of the staircase with aflowery landscape

5 The city government buildings occupied an _, high above the factoriesthat lined the riverbank

6 Women's softball was the most popular of the college's _ sports

7 Most voters thought it was unfortunate that the candidates had actuallymanaged to _ a traffic accident

8 The government mental-health center in Washington, D.C., conducts itsown research but also funds _ research at universities across the country.Answers

B Match the word on the left with the correct definition on the right.

1 megalopolis a within an institution

2 immure b seal up

3 intramural c high part of a city

4 politic d turn into a political issue

5 acropolis e wall painter

6 politicize f huge urban area

7 muralist g shrewdly sensitive

8 extramural h outside an institution

Answers

NUMER comes from the Latin words meaning “number” and “to count.” A

numeral is the symbol that represents a number Numerous means “many,” and innumerable means “countless.” Numerical superiority is superiority in

numbers, and your numerical standing in a class is a ranking expressed as anumber

numerology The study of the occult significance ofnumbers

• Though he didn't believe in numerology as a mystical bond betweennumbers and living things, he never went out on Friday the 13th

As an element of astrology and fortune-telling, numerology has long beenemployed to predict future events For many early Christians, 3 representedthe Trinity, 6 represented earthly perfection, and 7 represented heavenlyperfection; and still today, many of us like to group things into sets of 3 or 7,for no particular reason Numerology has also been used to interpret

personality; in particular, numerologists may assign numbers to each letter of

a person's name and use the resulting figures, along with the person's date ofbirth, as a guide to his or her character

alphanumeric Having or using both letters and numbers.

• Back in the 1950s, we always spoke our phone numbers in alphanumericform, using the letters printed on the dial: for example, “TErrace 5-6642,”instead of “835-6642.”

Alphanumeric passwords are much harder for a hacker to crack than plainalphabetic passwords, since the number of possible combinations is so muchgreater License plates usually contain both letters and numbers, since, for abig state or country, the plate wouldn't be large enough to fit enough numbersfor everyone In computing, the standard alphanumeric codes, such as ASCII,may contain not only ordinary letters and numerals but also punctuationmarks and math symbols

enumerate To specify one after another; list

• The thing he hated most was when she would start enumerating his faultsout loud, while he would sit scowling into the newspaper trying to ignore her

In a census year, the U.S government attempts to enumerate every singlecitizen of the country—a task that, even in the modern era of technology, isn't

truly possible Medical tests often require the enumeration of bacteria,

viruses, or other organisms to determine the progress of a disease or the

effectiveness of a medication Despite its numer- root, you don't have to use

numbers when enumerating For students of government and law, the

“enumerated powers” are the specific responsibilities of the Congress, aslisted in the U.S Constitution; these are the only powers that Congress has, afact that the Tenth Amendment makes even more clearly

supernumerary Exceeding the usual number

• Whenever the workload for the city's courts and judges gets too large,supernumerary judges are called in to help

Supernumerary starts off with the Latin prefix super-, “above” (see SUPER).

You may have heard of someone being born with supernumerary teeth,supernumerary fingers, or supernumerary toes A supernumerary rainbowmay show up as a faint line—red, green, or purple—just touching the main

colored arc Supernumerary is also a noun: A supernumerary is usually

someone in a crowd scene onstage, otherwise known as an “extra” or a

“spear-carrier.”

KILO is the French version of the Greek word chilioi, meaning “thousand.”

France is also where the metric system originated, in the years following the

French Revolution So in English, kilo- shows up chiefly in metric-system units Before the computer age, the most familiar kilo- words for English- speakers were probably kilowatt, meaning “1,000 watts,” and kilowatt-hour,

meaning the amount of energy equal to one kilowatt over the course of anhour

kilobyte A unit of computer information equal to 1,024 bytes

• A 200-word paragraph in the simplest text format takes up about a kilobyte

of storage space on your hard drive

Knowing the root kilo-, you might think a kilobyte would be exactly 1,000

bytes But actually a kilobyte represents the power of 2 that comes closest to1,000: that is, 210 (2 to the 10th power), or 2 × 2 × 2 × 2 × 2 × 2 × 2 × 2 × 2 ×

2, or 1,024 Why 2? Because the capacity of memory chips is always based

on powers of 2 Locations in electronic memory circuits are identified bybinary numbers (numbers that use only the digits 0 and 1), so the number ofaddressable locations becomes a power of 2

kilometer A unit of length equal to 1,000 meters

• U.S highway signs near the Canadian border often show distances inkilometers in addition to miles

A kilometer is equal to about 62/100 of a mile, and a mile is equal to about1.61 kilometers The U.S has been slow to adopt metric measures, which areused almost everywhere else in the world Though our car speedometers areoften marked in both miles and kilometers, the U.S and Great Britain arepractically the only developed nations that still show miles rather thankilometers on their road signs But even in the U.S., footraces are usuallymeasured in meters or kilometers, like the Olympic races Runners normally

abbreviate kilometer to K: “a 5K race” (3.1 miles), “the 10K run” (6.2 miles),

and so on

kilohertz A unit of frequency equal to 1,000 cycles persecond

• A drone aircraft nosedived and crashed after an onboard tape recorderturned out to be using a 10-kilohertz signal, the same frequency used by theaircraft's control system

If your favorite AM radio station has a frequency of 680 kilohertz (kHz), thatmeans the station's transmitter is oscillating (vibrating) at a rate of 680,000

cycles per second (i.e., 680,000 times a second) A related term is megahertz (MHz), meaning “millions of cycles per second.” Shortwave radio operates

between 5.9 and 26.1 MHz, and the FM radio band operates between 88 and

108 MHz Garage-door openers work at about 40 MHz, baby monitors work

at 49 MHz, and so on The terms hertz, kilohertz and megahertz honor the

great German physicist Heinrich Hertz, the first person to broadcast andreceive radio waves

kilogram A unit of weight equal to 1,000 grams

• The kilogram is the only base unit of measurement still defined by aphysical object rather than a physical constant (such as the speed of light)

The original concept of the kilogram, as the mass of a cubic decimeter ofwater (a bit more than a quart), was adopted as the base unit of mass by thenew revolutionary government of France in 1793 In 1875, in the Treaty ofthe Meter, 17 countries, including the U.S., adopted the French kilogram as

an international standard In 1889 a new international standard for thekilogram, a metal bar made of platinum iridium, was agreed to; PresidentBenjamin Harrison officially received the 1-kilogram cylinder for the U.S in

1890 But no one uses that bar very often; for all practical purposes, akilogram equals 2.2 pounds

5 kilohertz e occult use of numbers

6 numerology f 1,000 vibrations per second

7 alphanumeric g 2.2 pounds

8 kilometer h combining numbers and letters

Answers

B Fill in each blank with the correct letter:

2 For his annual salary review, his boss always asks him to _ the projects

he completed during the previous year

3 On a hard drive, a _ is enough capacity for a few sentences of text, butfor audio or video it's too small to even mention

4 As a child, she had a couple of _ teeth, which the dentist pulled whenshe was 8 years old

5 The broadcast frequencies of FM stations are required to be 200 _ apart

so as not to interfere with each other

6 When they first moved to Berlin, it took them a few days to get used tobuying potatoes and oranges by the _ rather than the pound

7 She occasionally visited a local fortune-teller, who would use playingcards and _ to predict her future

8 The Web site uses six-character _ passwords, of which there are enoughfor tens of millions of users

Answers

MICRO, from the Greek mikros, meaning “small,” is a popular English

prefix A microscope lets the eye see microscopic objects, and libraries store the pages of old newspapers on microfilm at 1/400th of their original size And we continue to attach micro- to lots of familiar words; most of us could figure out the meaning of microbus and microquake without ever having heard them before Scientists often use micro- to mean “millionth”; thus, a microsecond is a millionth of a second, and a micrometer is a millionth of a

meter

microbe An organism (such as a bacterium) of microscopic orless than microscopic size

• Vaccines reduce the risk of diseases by using dead or greatly weakenedmicrobes to stimulate the immune system

A hint of the Greek word bios, meaning “life,” can be seen in microbe Microbes, or microorganisms, include bacteria, protozoa, fungi, algae,

amoebas, and slime molds Many people think of microbes as simply thecauses of disease, but every human is actually the host to billions ofmicrobes, and most of them are essential to our life Much research is now

going into possible microbial sources of future energy; algae looks

particularly promising, as do certain newly discovered or created microbesthat can produce cellulose, to be turned into ethanol and other biofuels

microbiologist A scientist who studies extremelysmall forms of life, such as bacteria and viruses

• Food microbiologists study the tiny organisms that cause spoiling andfoodborne illness

Since microorganisms are involved in almost every aspect of life on earth,microbiologists work across a broad range of subject areas Some study onlyviruses, some only bacteria A marine microbiologist studies the roles ofmicrobial communities in the sea A soil microbiologist might focus on theuse and spread of nitrogen Veterinary microbiologists might researchbacteria that attack racehorses or diagnose anthrax in cows And thegovernment puts microbiologists to work studying whether microbes couldadapt to life on the surface of Mars, and how to defend ourselves against thepossibility of germ warfare

microbrew A beer made by a brewery that makes beer insmall amounts

• As a city of 75,000 people with eight breweries, it offers a greater variety ofmicrobrews per capita than any other place in America

Microbrews are usually beers or ales made with special malts and hops,unfiltered and unpasteurized, and thus distinctive in their aroma and flavor

Many microbreweries double as bar/restaurants, called brewpubs, where the

gleaming vats may be visible behind a glass partition “Craft brewing” andthe opening of local brewpubs began in earnest in the U.S in the 1980s Butnot everyone is willing to pay extra for a beer, and lots of people are simplyused to the blander taste of the best-selling beers, so by 2008 microbrews stillonly accounted for about 4% of all beer sold in the U.S

microclimate The essentially uniform local climate of asmall site or habitat

• Temperature, light, wind speed, and moisture are the essential components

of a microclimate

The microclimate of an industrial park may be quite different from that of anearby wooded park, since the plants absorb light and heat while asphaltparking lots and rooftops radiate them back into the air A microclimate canoffer a small growing area for crops that wouldn't do well in the wider region,

so skilled gardeners take advantage of microclimates by carefully choosingand positioning their plants San Francisco's hills, oceanfront, and bay shore,along with its alternating areas of concrete and greenery, make it a city ofmicroclimates

MULTI comes from the Latin word multus, meaning “many.” Thus, a

multicultural society is one that includes people of several different countries, languages, and religions; a multimedia artwork uses two or more artistic media (dance, music, film, spoken text, etc.); and a multitude of complaints

reaching your office would be a great many indeed

multicellular Consisting of many cells

• Multicellular organisms—fungi, plants, and animals—have specialized cellsthat perform different functions

Multicellular organisms are distinguished from the very primitive celled organisms—bacteria, algae, amoebas, etc Even sponges, simple asthey are, have specialized cell types such as digestive cells In complexmulticellular organisms, only the surface cells can exchange substances withthe external environment, so the organisms have developed transport systemssuch as the circulatory system, in which the blood brings gases and nutrients

single-to the cells and removes waste products from them