English: Vocabulary Set 6

1. Drubbing – a beating; a thrashing, a resounding defeat in a match or contest.

Synonyms: beating, thrashing, walloping, thumping, battering, pounding, pummelling, slapping, smacking, punching, bludgeoning, thwacking, cuffing

Antonyms:success, triumph, victory, win

Sentence Usage: Scotland’s 3-0 drubbing by France.

2. Lethal – sufficient to cause death, very harmful or destructive

Synonyms: fatal, deadly, mortal, causing death, death-dealing, life-threatening, murderous, homicidal, killing, terminal, final, incurable.

Antonyms: harmless, innocuous

Sentence Usage: The Krakatoa eruption was the most lethal on record.

3. Affable – friendly, good-natured, or easy to talk to.

Synonyms: friendly, amiable, genial, congenial, cordial, warm, pleasant, pleasing, nice, likeable, personable, charming, agreeable, sympathetic, benevolent, benign, good-humoured.
Antonyms: disagreeable, discourteous, hateful. impolite, irritable, mean, nasty, rude, uncivil, uncivilized, unfriendly
Sentence Usage: ‘An affable person who had no bad habits’

4. Sanguine -optimistic or positive, especially in an apparently bad or difficult situation.


Antonyms: depressed, down, gloomy, heavy, pessimistic, sad, pale, pallid

Sentence Usage: The Congress is quite sanguine about the stability of the United Progressive Alliance (UPA) coalition.

5. Whim – a sudden desire or change of mind, especially one that is unusual or unexplained

Synonyms: impulse, urge, notion, fancy, whimsy, foible, idea, caprice, conceit, vagary, kink, megrim, crotchet, craze, fad, passion, inclination, bent

Antonyms: actuality, certainty, dislike, fact, hate, reality

Sentence Usage: Were interest rates cut on a whim?

6. Prelude – an action or event serving as an introduction to something more important.

Synonyms: preliminary, overture, opening, preparation, introduction, start, beginning, curtain-raiser, lead-in, precursor, forerunner, harbinger, herald

Antonyms: completion, conclusion, end, ending, epilogue, finish

Sentence Usage: The launch party is a prelude to the MetroPlus Lifestyle Show 2011.

7. Dawdle – move slowly and idly in a particular direction.

Synonyms: amble, stroll, go/walk slowly, loiter (along), move at a snail’s pace, not keep pace, hold back, lag behind, fall behind, trail behind

Antonyms: go, run, rush, forward, hasten, hurry, push, speed

Sentence usage: He is obviously concerned that people are dawdling over their belongings rather than getting out of the plane as quickly as possible.

8. Niggard – a mean or ungenerous person; a miser.

Synonyms: cheap, chintzy, close, closefisted, mean, mingy, miserly, niggard, stingy, parsimonious

Antonyms: bounteous, bountiful, charitable, freehanded, generous, liberal, munificent, openhanded, unsparing

Sentence Usage: She is a niggardly woman, so don’t expect a handout from her

9. Pervert – distort or corrupt the original course, meaning, or state of (something).

Synonyms: distort, warp, corrupt, subvert, twist, bend, abuse, divert, deflect, misapply, misuse, misrepresent, misinterpret, misconstrue, falsify, garble

Antonyms: applaud, benefit, care for, cherish, conserve, consider, eulogize, extol, favor, laud, panegyrize, praise, protect

Sentence Usage: He was charged with conspiring to pervert the course of justice

10. Obverse – the opposite or counterpart of a fact or truth.

Synonyms: antipode, antithesis, contrary, counter, negative, opposite, reverse

Antonyms: reverse, verso

Sentence Usage: The obverse of the coin.


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