TỪ VỰNG TOEIC unit 21

Since the Latin word limen means “threshold,” something subliminal exists just below the threshold of conscious awareness.. High bloodpressure—that is high pressure against the walls of

Unit 21

SUB HYPER PRE PARA META PER ANT/ANTI CONTRA Greek andLatin Borrowings

Quiz 21-1 Quiz 21-2 Quiz 21-3 Quiz 21-4 Quiz 21-5 Review Quizzes 21

SUB means “under.” So a subway runs under the streets, and a submarine

moves under the ocean's surface A subject is a person under the authority of another A movie's subplot is lower in importance than the main plot Subscribe once meant “to write one's name underneath,” so subscription was

the act of signing a document or agreement

subconscious Existing in the mind just below the level ofawareness

• After dropping three dishes in a week, she began thinking there might besome kind of subconscious agitation behind her case of butterfingers

We're rarely aware, or at least fully aware, of our subconscious mentalactivity But subconscious thought does affect our feelings and behavior, andit's often revealed in dreams, artistic expression, and slips of the tongue Thesubconscious mind can be a hiding place for anxiety, a source of creativity,and often the reason behind our own mysterious behavior

subjugate To bring under control and rule as a subject;conquer, subdue

• The country's government claimed it was just trying to protect nationalsecurity, but some saw its actions as an attempt to subjugate the news media

Since jugus means “yoke” in Latin, subjugate means literally “bring under

the yoke.” Farmers control oxen by means of a heavy wooden yoke over theirshoulders In ancient Rome, conquered soldiers, stripped of their uniforms,might actually be forced to pass under an ox yoke as a sign of submission tothe Roman victors Even without an actual yoke, what happens to apopulation that has come under the control of another can be every bit ashumiliating In dozens of countries throughout the world, ethnic minoritiesare denied basic rights and view themselves as subjugated by their country'sgovernment, army, and police

subliminal Not quite strong enough to be sensed orperceived consciously

• A few worried parents claimed that some heavy-metal songs containsubliminal messages—in the form of words recorded backwards—that urgeyoung fans to take up devil worship

Since the Latin word limen means “threshold,” something subliminal exists

just below the threshold of conscious awareness The classic example of asubliminal message is “Eat popcorn” flashed on a movie screen so quicklythat the audience doesn't even notice it consciously Actually, no suchadvertising has ever been shown to work But ordinary ads, both in print and

on TV, do contain all kinds of images that shape our response to the productbeing advertised even when we don't realize it Try looking carefully at someads that you like, in order to discover how many ways they may be

subliminally affecting you.

subversion (1) An attempt to overthrow a government byworking secretly from within (2) The corrupting of someone or something

by weakening their morals, loyalty, or faith

• It's sometimes easier for a government to combat attack from outside thansubversion from within

Subversion is literally the “turning over” of something In the 1950s and '60s,many people worried about communist subversion of the U.S government,

though they often saw subversive activities where none existed.

Nondemocratic governments often claim that anyone who disagrees with

them or joins a demonstration is a subversive But subversion isn't always quite so serious a matter; when words like weekend, sandwich, job, and camping started being used by the French, for example, some of them began claiming that America was subverting their language.

HYPER is a Greek prefix that means “above or beyond,” so hyper- often

means about the same thing as super- Hyperinflation is inflation that's growing at a very high rate To be hypercritical or hypersensitive is to be critical or sensitive beyond the normal And if you hyperextend a knee or

elbow, it means you're actually bending it backward

hyperactive Excessively active

• Stephen King's hyperactive imagination has produced dozens of fantasticalstories, not to mention countless nightmares in his readers

For doctors and psychologists, hyperactive describes a condition with

unpleasant consequences Hyperactive children usually have a very short

attention span and can't sit still, and hyperactivity can lead to difficulty in

learning or just get them in trouble for disturbing their classes But not everyhigh-spirited child is hyperactive Having a high energy level is pretty normalfor children, and some parents think that prescribing drugs for hyperactivity

is mostly just good for the drug companies

hyperbole Extreme exaggeration

• The food at Chez Pierre was good, but it couldn't live up to the hyperbole ofthe restaurant critics

Advertisers and sports commentators make their living by their skillful use ofhyperbole Presenting each year's Superbowl as “the greatest contest in thehistory of sports” certainly qualifies as hyperbole, especially since the final

scores are usually so lopsided Equally hyperbolic are advertisers' claims that

this year's new car model is “the revolutionary vehicle you've been waitingfor” when it's barely different from last year's—which of course was oncedescribed in the same glowing terms Politicians love hyperbole too; some ofthem seem convinced that calling a new bill “the worst bill ever passed byCongress” or comparing the president to Hitler is a great way to win votes

hypertension High blood pressure

• Pregnancy is often accompanied by mild hypertension that doesn't threatenthe mother's life

You might have thought that hypertension was what a movie audience feelsnear the climax of a thriller, but you would have been wrong High bloodpressure—that is high pressure against the walls of your veins and arteriescaused by blood flow—often occurs when the arteries or veins becomeblocked or narrowed, making the heart work harder to pump blood But manycases seem to be the result of smoking or taking in too much salt, and manyare genetically caused Hypertension is serious, since it can lead to heartattacks and strokes Though it often produces no warning symptoms, yourblood pressure can be checked quickly and easily by a nurse If it's high, itcan usually be controlled by stopping smoking, losing weight, lowering yoursalt intake, and exercising—and if all else fails, by medication

hyperventilate To breathe rapidly and deeply

• They laughed so hard they began to hyperventilate and feel giddy

Hyperventilating can be a response to fear and anxiety A test pilot who

panics and hyperventilates faces a dangerous situation When the level ofcarbon dioxide in your blood goes down and the oxygen level goes up, bloodvessels constrict because of the chemical changes and the body can't getenough oxygen (even though it's there in the blood), and the pilot can becomelightheaded and may even faint To guard against this, pilots are taught to

control their breathing On the ground, the usual remedy for hyperventilation

is breathing into a paper bag, which raises the level of carbon dioxide andrestores normal breathing

1 Stealing elections through fraud represents a _ of democracy.

2 She's warned me that there's plenty of _ in her brother's big talk and that

I shouldn't take it too seriously

3 Accident-prone people may have a _ desire to do themselves harm

4 In yoga class we're often warned not to _ during our breathing exercises

5 Napoleon hoped to _ all of Europe and make it his empire

6 Both my parents are on medication for _, and the doctor monitors theirblood pressure regularly

7 He claims the ice cubes in whiskey ads contain images that send _messages to readers

8 A _ imagination can transform every creak and rustle in a dark houseinto a threat

Answers

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

1 hyperactive a breathe deeply and rapidly

2 subjugate b secret effort to overthrow

3 hyperventilate c extreme overstatement

4 subconscious d not strong enough to be sensed

5 hypertension e beneath the level of consciousness

6 subversion f overly active

7 hyperbole g conquer

8 subliminal h high blood pressure

Answers

PRE, one of the most common of all English prefixes, comes from prae, the

Latin word meaning “before” or “in front of.” So a prediction forecasts what will happen before it occurs The 5:00 TV news precedes the 6:00 news And someone with a prejudice against a class of people has judged them before

having even met them

preclude To make impossible beforehand; prevent

• If we accept this cash offer from the company, that will preclude our joining

in the big suit against it with the other investors

Preclude is often used in legal writing, where it usually refers to making

something legally impossible A new law may be passed by Congress topreclude any suits of a certain kind against a federal agency, for example.Some judges have found that the warnings on cigarette packs preclude anysuits against the tobacco companies by lung-cancer sufferers But there areplenty of nonlegal uses as well Bad weather often precludes trips to thebeach, and a lack of cash might preclude any beach vacation at all

precocious Showing the qualities or abilities of an adult at

an unusually early age

• Everyone agrees that their seven-year-old daughter is smart and precocious,but she's also getting rather full of herself

Growing from a child to an adult is like the slow ripening of fruit, and that's

the image that gave us precocious The word is based on the Latin verb coquere, meaning “to ripen” or “to cook,” but it comes most directly from the adjective praecox, which means “ripening early or before its time.” Precocity

can occasionally be annoying; but precocious children don't come precooked,only “preripened.”

predispose (1) To influence in advance in order to create aparticular attitude (2) To make one more likely to develop a particulardisease or physical condition

• Growing up in a house full of sisters had predisposed her to find herfriendships with other women

Predispose usually means putting someone in a frame of mind to be willing

to do something So a longtime belief in the essential goodness of people, forexample, will predispose us to trust a stranger Teachers know that comingfrom a stable family generally predisposes children to learn And viewing

television violence for years may leave young people with a predisposition to

accept real violence as normal The medical sense of the word is similar.Thus, a person's genes may predispose her to diabetes or arthritis, andmalnutrition over a long period can predispose you to all kinds of infections

prerequisite Something that is required in advance toachieve a goal or to carry out a function

• In most states, minimal insurance coverage is a prerequisite for registering

an automobile

Prerequisite is partly based on requirere, the Latin verb meaning “to need or

require.” So a prerequisite can be anything that must be accomplished oracquired before something else can be done Possessing a valid credit card is

a prerequisite for renting a car A physical exam may be a prerequisite forreceiving a life-insurance policy And successful completion of anintroductory course is often a prerequisite for enrolling in a higher-levelcourse

PARA is a Greek prefix usually meaning “beside” or “closely related to.” So

parallel lines run beside each other And a Greek paragraphos was originally

a line written beside the main text of a play to show where a new person

begins speaking; today we just start a new paragraph on a new line.

paraphrase To restate the meaning (of something written orspoken) in different words

• She started off the class by asking one of the students to paraphrase theTennyson poem, to make sure everyone understood its basic meaning

When we paraphrase, we provide a version that can exist beside the original(rather than replace it) We paraphrase all the time When you tell a friendwhat someone else has said, you're almost always paraphrasing, since you'renot repeating the exact words If you go to hear a talk, you might paraphrasethe speaker's main points afterward for your friends And when writing a

paper on a short story, you might start off your essay with a paraphrase of

the plot Paraphrasing is especially useful when dealing with poetry, sincepoetic language is often difficult and poems may have meanings that are hard

to pin down

paralegal Of, relating to, or being a trained assistant to alawyer

• Part of the firm's business involved researching real-estate properties, whichthe senior lawyers regarded as paralegal work

Much of the work in a law office can be done by paralegal assistants, also

called legal aides or simply paralegals, who work alongside licensed

lawyers Often a paralegal is trained in a narrow field and then entrusted with

it In this respect, paralegals are similar to paraprofessionals in other fields,

such as engineering Paraprofessionals used to be trained in the office itself,but today it's common to study for a paraprofessional certificate or degree at acommunity college or university

paramedic A specially trained medical technician licensed

to provide a wide range of emergency services before or during transportation

to a hospital

• Five ambulances had already arrived, and a dozen paramedics werecrouched over the victims with bandages and IVs

In ground warfare, wounded troops must usually be transported from the

front lines back to field hospitals, and trained paramedical personnel—that

is, nondoctors, usually known as medics or corpsmen—were first widely used

in such situations It took many decades for the wartime model to be appliedeffectively to ordinary peacetime medicine With advances in medicaltechnology (such as defibrillators, for restarting a heart after a heart attack),paramedics became an essential part of emergency medicine, and todayhundreds of thousands of people owe their lives to paramedics

Paraprofessionals who work only in hospitals and clinics usually go by other

titles

paramilitary Relating to a force formed on a militarypattern, especially as a possible backup military force

• In the country's most remote regions, the real power was held by largelandowners, who actually kept paramilitary forces, their own private armies,

on their estates

This term paramilitary can take in a wide range of organizations, but is

usually applied to forces formed by a government Groups opposing agovernment, even when organized along military lines, are more oftenreferred to as guerrillas or insurgents In countries with weak centralgovernments (such as, in recent times, Afghanistan, Somalia, Iraq, or Congo),warlords may form their own paramilitary forces and take over all local

police and military functions Paramilitary often has a sinister sound today,

since it's also applied to groups of off-duty military or police personnel whocarry out illegal violence, often at night, with the quiet support of agovernment

B Fill in each blank with the correct letter:

1 No one in her class of high-school seniors was able to _ the proverb

“Blood is thicker than water.”

2 At 13 she was _ enough to mingle with the guests at her parents' cocktailparties

3 Everything I had heard about the guy from my friends didn't exactly _

META is a prefix in English that generally means “behind” or “beyond.” In

medicine, for example, the metacarpal bones are the hand bones that come right after, or beyond, the carpal or wrist bones And metalanguage is

language used to talk about language, which requires going beyond normallanguage

metadata Data that provides information about other data

• Before putting videos up on the Web site, she always tags them with adecent set of metadata

Metadata is electronic data that somehow describes an electronic file or itscontents, and is usually included in the file itself An important use formetadata is for searching A piece of metadata might identify the file, its size,the date it was compiled, its nature, and so on Metadata is particularlyimportant for making pictures searchable; since a picture of a landscape in theSouthwest, for example, can't be “read” by a search engine, data tags such as

“Southwest,” “mesa,” and “arroyo” might be included in the digitized imagefile The same can be done for audio files; the tags for a speech might read

“Gore,” “climate,” and “Copenhagen.” Metadata tags for a Web page,including tags identifying its most important content, ensure that the pagewon't be overlooked by a search engine

metaphorical Relating to a figure of speech in which aword or phrase meaning one kind of object or idea is used in place of another

to suggest a similarity between them

• He always points out to his classes that metaphors can be found in poetry ofall kinds, from “The eyes are the windows of the soul” to “You ain't nothin'but a hound dog.”

Metaphor comes from a Greek word meaning “transfer” (or, to stay close to

its roots, “carry beyond”) Thus, a metaphor transfers the meaning of one

word or phrase to another Metaphors often include a form of the verb be (as

in the examples above), and they're often contrasted with similes, which are

usually introduced by like or as (“O, my luve's like a red, red rose”) But, they don't have to include be; when you say that the teacher gave us a

mountain of homework or that we're drowning in paperwork, these too are

metaphorical statements.

metaphysics The part of philosophy having to do with theultimate causes and basic nature of things

• Most of the congregation prefers to hear their minister preach about virtue,and they get restless when his sermons head in the direction of metaphysics

Just as physics deals with the laws that govern the physical world (such as

those of gravity or the properties of waves), metaphysics describes what isbeyond physics—the nature and origin of reality itself, the immortal soul, and

the existence of a supreme being Opinions about these metaphysical topics

vary widely, since what's being discussed can't be observed or measured oreven truly known to exist So most metaphysical questions are still as farfrom a final answer as they were when Plato and Aristotle were asking them

metonymy A figure of speech in which the name of onething is used for the name of something else that is associated with it orrelated to it

• When Wall Street has the jitters, the White House issues a statement, andthe people wait for answers from City Hall, metonymy is having a busy day

At first glance, metaphor and metonymy seem close in meaning, but there are

differences In a metaphor we substitute one thing for something else that's

usually quite different; for example, Web for a worldwide network of linked

computers and their technology In metonymy, we replace one word orphrase (such as “stock market” or “local government officials” in theexamples above) with another word or phrase associated with it Most

familiar metonyms are place-names, such as Hollywood for “the film industry,” or K Street for “Washington lobbyists.” But saying “the press” to

refer to the news media, or “sweat” to refer to hard work, could also be calledmetonymy

PER is a Latin preposition that generally means “through,” “throughout,” or

“thoroughly.” Thus, perforate means “to bore through,” perennial means

“throughout the years,” and permanent means “remaining throughout.” And the “thoroughly” sense shows up in persuade, for “thoroughly advise,” and perverted, “thoroughly turned around.”