TỪ VỰNG TOEIC unit 29

PALEO comes from the Greek palaios, meaning “ancient”—that is, “olderthan old.” The prefix sometimes gets attached to very recognizable words; paleobiology, for instance, deals with the

Unit 29

NECRO PALEO CIRCU/CIRCUM MINI/MINU INTER SUR CO SYNWords from Mythology and History

Quiz 29-1 Quiz 29-2 Quiz 29-3 Quiz 29-4 Quiz 29-5 Review Quizzes 29

NECRO comes from the Greek nekros, meaning “dead body,” so it's not

surprising that it shows up in some unappetizing places A necrophagous

insect, for instance, is one that feeds on dead bodies; when homicideinvestigators discover a corpse, they may use the insect evidence to figure outwhen the person died

necrosis Death of living tissue, usually within a limited area

• He had ignored the spider bite for several days, and his doctor was alarmed

to see that serious necrosis had set in

Cells die naturally after a period of time, but may also die as a result ofinjuries, infections, or cancer Burns produce necrosis, and the bedsoressuffered by nursing-home patients are a form of necrosis The dreadedcondition known as gangrene, in which the dying tissue turns black or green,

is another form When untreated, the dying cells release substances that lead

to the death of surrounding cells, so untreated necrosis can lead to death

Treatment usually requires the removal of the necrotic tissue, and in severe

cases can even involve amputating a limb

necromancer One who conjures the spirits of the dead

in order to magically reveal the future or influence the course of events

• Her specialty is communication with the dead, and she might once havebeen known as a necromancer, but her sign says simply “Psychic.”

The practice of necromancy goes back as far as the ancient Assyrians and

Babylonians and has continued through all the centuries since In the MiddleAges it became associated with black magic; condemned by the church, ithad to be practiced secretly In Europe a necromancer might work in a remotegraveyard at night, standing within a magical circle he had drawn to shieldhimself from the anger of the spirits The grave of a person who had diedsuddenly or violently might be plundered for its body parts; the unused

energy these were believed to contain made them valuable in the necromantic

ceremony But body parts aren't essential to necromancy, which is nowpracticed by channelers, mediums, and shamans, and even by groups ofamateurs sitting around a Ouija board

necropolis A cemetery, especially a large, elaboratecemetery of an ancient city

• On Sundays the downtown is like a necropolis, and he was always slightlydisturbed by the complete absence of life among all those buildings

With its -polis ending, meaning “city” (see POLIS/POLIT), a necropolis is a

“city of the dead.” Most of the famous necropolises of Egypt line the NileRiver across from their cities In ancient Greece and Rome, a necropoliswould often line the road leading out of a city; in the 1940s a great Romannecropolis was discovered under the Vatican's St Peter's Basilica Somemore recent cemeteries especially deserve the name necropolis because theyresemble cities of aboveground tombs, a necessity in low-lying areas such asNew Orleans where a high water table prevents underground burial

necropsy An autopsy, especially one performed on ananimal

• Daisy's sudden death was so mysterious that we paid for a necropsy, and itturned out she'd been a victim of lethal chemicals in our imported dog food

Human autopsies are generally performed either to determine the cause ofdeath or to observe the deadly effects of a disease for research or educationpurposes Autopsies may be necessary when tracking an epidemic; they'realso performed to discover whether a death might actually have resulted frommurder, and if so, what evidence it might reveal that could help catch themurderer Animal necropsies are actually more common than humanautopsies, since a farmer with livestock is always concerned that whateverkilled one animal not pose a threat to the others

PALEO comes from the Greek palaios, meaning “ancient”—that is, “older

than old.” The prefix sometimes gets attached to very recognizable words;

paleobiology, for instance, deals with the biology of fossil organisms, paleogeography is the study of geography in earlier geological eras, and paleoecology is the study of the relationship of plants and animals to their

environment in those eras

Paleolithic Of or relating to the earliest period of the StoneAge, characterized by rough or chipped stone implements

• He raves about the health benefits of his Paleolithic diet, the kind that ourpre-agricultural, hunting-and-gathering Stone Age ancestors would haveeaten

Since lithos means “stone” in Greek, the name Paleolithic was given to the

older part of the Stone Age The first known period of human culture, thePaleolithic actually covers almost all of human history, from the first use ofstone tools around 2.5 million years ago until the invention of agriculturearound 10,000 years ago For almost all that time, humans used the verycrudest of stone tools, produced by chipping away flakes of stone in order tomake an edge for an ax or knife Near the end of the period, animal bones andantlers were being used for tools, especially pointed tools, and sculptedfigures and cave art were being produced The Paleolithic gave way to theMesolithic (“Middle Stone Age”) period, with its tools made of polishedstone, wood, and bone

paleography (1) The study of ancient writings andinscriptions (2) Ancient writings

• For her thesis on Central American paleography, she spent a winter inHonduras studying rock inscriptions 30 miles upriver from the nearest town

The world's oldest literature dates from about 4,000 years ago, from the landknown as Sumer (now southern Iraq) Early writing took the form ofpictographs, very simple pictures that first represented things or ideas andlater came to represent actual words The first actual alphabet, in which eachcharacter represents a sound, appeared in the same general region about 500years later But writing developed in very different ways in different parts ofthe world, and 1,000 years later, when Europeans first arrived in the NewWorld, alphabetic writing still wasn't being used anywhere in the Americas.Decoding some ancient languages has proven to be a huge task for

paleographers, and determining the age and the source of a piece of writing

can pose major challenges

paleontology A science dealing with the life of pastgeological periods as known from fossil remains

• Her obsession with dinosaurs as a child continued through her teens, and noone was surprised when she started graduate school in paleontology

Until the 1820s, hardly anyone even suspected that dinosaurs had everexisted In the years since, paleontology has sought to discover the entirehistory of life on earth, from the era of single-celled organisms up into the

human era Paleontologists continue to make remarkable discoveries, such as

that a huge meteorite that fell in the Gulf of Mexico wiped out the dinosaurs

—all except the birds, the only surviving dinosaurs “Radiometric dating” canreveal the age (often tens of millions of years) of a rock or fossil or a tinygrain of pollen by measuring how much its radioactive elements havedisintegrated The study of molecules of DNA, RNA, and proteins has alsobecome important for dating Paleontologists often consult with geologistssearching for oil, gas, and coal deposits, since all these “fossil fuels” wereformed from plant and animal remains

Paleozoic The era of geological history, ending about 248million years ago, in which vertebrates and land plants first appeared

• His geological specialty was the beginning of the Paleozoic, from which theearliest fish fossils date

The Greek root zo- means “animal,” so names such as Paleozoic were

invented to refer to a period in the development of animal life For geologists,

the Paleozoic era is followed by the Mesozoic (meso- meaning “middle”), which is followed by the Cenozoic (cen- meaning “recent”) Eras are huge

stretches of time; geologists break eras down into smaller “periods” and

“epochs.” Thus, the Paleozoic ends with the Permian period, the Mesozoicends with the Upper Cretaceous epoch, and the Cenozoic ends with theHolocene epoch—the epoch in which we are living The Paleozoic eraproduced the first fish, the first land plants, the first insects, and the firstamphibians and reptiles; the dinosaurs, birds, and mammals had to wait forthe Mesozoic

5 The men's graves in this Iron Age _ held numerous weapons.

6 The wall paintings date from the end of the _, just before the beginning

of settled farming villages

7 Millions of kids are fascinated by dinosaurs, but not many will go on tostudy _ in college

8 Insects, reptiles, amphibians, and primitive fish inhabited the earth duringthe _ era, but not mammals

Answers

B Indicate whether the following pairs of terms have the same or different meanings:

1 Paleozoic / of the period about 10,000 years ago

CIRCU/CIRCUM comes from the Latin circus, meaning “circle.” So a

circus is traditionally held under a round tent A circuit can be a tour around

an area or territory, or the complete path of an electric current To

circumnavigate means “to navigate around”—often around the world.

circuitous (1) Having a circular or winding course (2) Notforthright or direct in action

• She sometimes arrives at her conclusions by circuitous reasoning that herstudents can't even follow

Circuitous is usually the opposite of direct, and it's generally used to describe

either roads or explanations Detours are usually circuitous, and a circuitouspath, twisting and turning and cutting back on itself, is the kind of route you'dexpect to find in the mountains Lawyers often find themselves makingcircuitous arguments, which may get most circuitous when they're defendingparticularly undesirable clients

circumference (1) The perimeter or boundary of a circle.(2) The outer boundary or surface of a shape or object

• To calculate the circumference of a circle, multiply its diameter by 3.1416

Attempts have been made to measure the circumference of the earth since thetime of Aristotle The calculation that Columbus was relying on led him tothink he could reach China by sailing west more quickly than by sailing east.But that measurement had calculated the earth's circumference as about aquarter too small, and the rest is history Columbus wasn't the only one whogot it wrong; many later attempts continued to produce differentmeasurements for the earth's circumference—even though the Greeks hadcalculated it correctly way back in the 3rd century B.C

circumspect Careful to consider all circumstances andpossible consequences; cautious

• Her answer was careful and circumspect, and I couldn't help thinking sheknew a lot more than she was telling

Since spect- comes from the Latin word for “look,” circumspect basically

means “looking around” yourself before you act Being a doctor hastraditionally called for a circumspect personality, which gives their patients

confidence in them Scholars are known for their circumspection, since

there's nothing worse for scholars' reputations than mistakes in the books orarticles they've written Bankers once had a reputation for greatcircumspection, but the financial disaster of 2008 earned some bankers a verydifferent kind of reputation

circumvent (1) To make a circuit around (2) To manage

to get around, especially by clever means

• We knew there was a traffic jam on the highway and circumvented it byusing back roads

In mythology, a person's attempts to circumvent fate are almost always

doomed In the Iliad we're told of how Achilles' mother, Thetis, hoping to

circumvent the prophecy that her child would die in a war against Troy,disguised the boy as a woman But clever Odysseus, recruiting for the Greekarmy, arrived disguised as a peddler, and among the jewels he displayed tothe women of the household he laid a sword The young Achilles, ignoringthe jewelry, immediately seized the sword, thereby identifying himself forwhat he was Today we more often hear of attempts to circumvent the law, or

at least some requirements that we'd rather not have to deal with

MINI/MINU come from Latin words meaning “small” and “least.” So the

minimum is the least, and a minute amount is almost nothing And mini- is all

too familiar as a prefix that we've been applying to all kinds of things since

the 1950s: minivan, miniskirt, mini-mart, minipark, and the rest.

minimalism A style or technique (as in music,literature, or design) that is characterized by extreme spareness andsimplicity

• He'd never understood what anyone liked about minimalism, sinceminimalist stories always seemed to leave out any description of people'scharacters and motivation and rarely even described their surroundings

In the 1960s, a few composers, including Philip Glass, Steve Reich, and JohnAdams, began writing music inspired by the music of India and SoutheastAsia, often with a quick pulsing beat and chords that are repeated quickly

over and over while small changes are slowly introduced Minimalist art,

which began appearing around the same time, tries to strip away all personalelements, often leaving only pure geometric forms; you may have seen theplain silver boxes of Donald Judd, or the straight neon tubes of BruceNauman In literature, the stripped-down fiction of Samuel Beckett andRaymond Carver is often considered minimalist But there's a real questionwhether these various types of minimalism should even be considered thesame concept

minuscule Very small

• For someone who had been living on a minuscule budget since graduatingfrom college, even the paycheck for a minimum-wage job felt like wealth toher

As a noun, minuscule means a style of ancient or medieval handwriting script

with smaller letters than earlier scripts There were actually severalminuscules, but the most important was promoted from around A.D 800 on

by Charlemagne, who believed that any educated person in the Holy RomanEmpire should be able to read the Latin written by anyone else If you've everlooked at a medieval manuscript, you've probably seen minuscule script,

along with so-called majuscule (for modern type, we would use the words lowercase and capital instead); even today most of us can read medieval

minuscule and majuscule without too much trouble Be careful about spelling

minuscule; we tend to expect a word meaning “small” to begin with rather than minu-.

mini-minutiae Very small or minor details

• She likes “thinking big,” and gets annoyed when her job requires her to dealwith what she considers minutiae

As you might guess, this word comes straight from Latin The Romans used

it in its singular form, minutia, to mean “smallness,” and in the plural to mean

“trifles”; today we almost always use it in the plural with that same “trifles”meaning Hardly anyone ever talks about minutiae except to dismiss theirimportance So you may talk about the minutiae of daily life or the minutiae

of a contract, or about getting bogged down or buried in minutiae at theoffice Just don't forget that the devil is often in the details

diminutive (1) Indicating small size (2) Very small

• In German, Hänsel is a diminutive form of Hans (which is a diminutiveform of Johannes), and Gretel is a diminutive form of Margaret

Just as diminish means “to grow smaller,” diminutive means “very small.” When writing about language, diminutive as both an adjective and a noun

refers to particular endings and the words made with them to indicate

smallness In English, such endings include -et and -ette (piglet, dinette, cigarette, diskette) as well as -ie and -y (doggy, bootie, Bobby, Debbie) However, diminutives are more common in many other languages Outside of language, diminutive is used for many things, including people (“She noticed

a diminutive figure standing shyly by the door”), but often not very seriously(“We were served some rather diminutive rolls”)

B Match the definition on the left to the correct word on the right:

INTER comes straight from Latin In English it has various meanings; all of

them can be expressed broadly as “between,” but they're still quite distinct:

“moving between” (intercity), “communicating between” (intercom),

“coming between” (intercept), and so on No wonder so many English words begin with inter-.

intercede (1) To act as a go-between between unfriendlyparties (2) To beg or plead in behalf of another

• He had interceded for her with their boss on one important occasion, forwhich she was still grateful

The Latin cedere means “to go,” so “go between” is the most literal meaning

of intercede (The same -cede root can also be seen in such words as precede and secede.) If you've been blamed unfairly for something, a friend may

intercede on your behalf with your coach or teacher More often, it will be the

coach or teacher who has to intercede in a student dispute The intercession

of foreign governments has sometimes prevented conflicts from becomingworse than they otherwise would have

interstice A little space between two things; chink, crevice

• All the interstices between the rocks have been filled with new cement, andthe wall should be fine for another hundred years

People often speak of interstices in the physical sense (referring to theinterstices in surfaces, for example, or microscopic interstices betweenparticles in chemical compounds), but also often in a less literal way (theinterstices in a movie's plot, in the economy, in what's covered by a

complicated tax law, etc.) The pronunciation of interstice is slightly unusual;

you might not guess that it's accented on the second syllable This is also true

in the plural interstices, which is used more often than the singular form; note also that in interstices the final e is usually pronounced long, so that it rhymes with bees.

interdict (1) To prohibit or forbid (2) To destroy, damage, orcut off (as an enemy line of supply) by firepower to stop or hamper anenemy

• All weapons trade with the country had been interdicted by the NATOalliance, and ships were actually being stopped and searched before beingallowed to dock

Interdict and interdiction are used for very serious prohibitions—more

serious than, say, a professor telling the class that texting is forbidden during

lectures During the Middle Ages and Renaissance, an interdict was a

sentence imposed by the powerful Catholic Church forbidding a person orplace, and sometimes even an entire country, from receiving church

privileges or participating in church functions Interdict now often means

“cut off” in a physically forceful way as well; interdictions are usuallytargeted at either arms supplies or illegal drug shipments

interpolate To put something between other things or parts,especially to put words into a piece of writing or a conversation

• On page 6, she noticed that someone had interpolated a couple of sentencesthat completely altered the meaning of her original text

The meaning of interpolate is often entirely innocent An interpolation in a

text may have been approved by everyone concerned, and an interpolation inconversation is usually just an interruption But in its older meaning,interpolating usually meant tampering with a text secretly to change itsapparent meaning Legislators are sometimes enraged to discover whatsomeone has quietly interpolated into their favorite bill at the last minute.And any contract always has to be read carefully to make sure the otherlawyer didn't slip in an undesirable interpolation

SUR is actually a shortening of the Latin prefix super-, meaning “over,

above” (see SUPER), and has the same meaning A surface is the face above

or on the outside of something A surplus is something above and beyond what is needed And to survey a landscape is to look out over it.