IELTS Vocabulary Part – 221

Smugness: excessive pride in oneself or one’s achievements; self-satisfied.

Sentence – The endearing bathos and crassness of Laurel found an admirable foil in the elephantine smugness of his rotund partner.

Culpable: deserving blame; guilty; fault.

Sentence – At the same time, the culpable faction is viewed as exempt from organizational control.

Pillory: attack or ridicule publicly; criticize.

Sentence – Meanwhile, the transformation from pillory to drama incarnates the intention transformation of watch. Thus, it reflects some kind of mood of the writer and the society.

Hustings: a meeting at which candidates an election address potential voters

Sentence – Most candidates will be out on the hustings this week.

Appalling: Something that is appalling is awful or horrible, causing dismay or disgust; very bad.

Sentence – Aid workers were said to have been filled with dismay by the appalling conditions that the refugees were living in.

Shabby: (of behavior) mean and unfair; dishonorable; disreputable.

Sentence – The hotel looked shabby from the street, but it was fine on the inside.

Dubious: hesitating or doubting.

Sentence – They indulged in some highly dubious business practices to obtain their current position in the market.

Reluctant: unwilling and hesitant; disinclined.

Sentence – Children are sometimes understandably reluctant to wear glasses that are ugly or uncomfortable.

Homicides: the killing of one person by another.

Sentence – Most homicides were unplanned, and few brought any benefit to the offender even if he avoided punishment.

Caveat: warning or caution.

Sentence – There’s a legal term, caveat emptor, which means buyer beware, so when viewing it pays to be suspicious.

Futility: pointlessness or uselessness.

Sentence – What I see now is the complete futility, the gross over-production, the immeasurable waste of emotion and words.

Nagging: (of a person) constantly harassing someone to do something.

Sentence – He complained a little of a nagging pain between his shoulder blades.

Connivance: willingness to allow or be secretly involved in an immoral or illegal act.

Sentence – Their appalling treatment of their child could only have happened with the connivance of their neighbours.

Slothful: lazy.; inactive; sluggish.

Sentence – Then last month at the tender age of 8 he died quite suddenly. The long slobbering slothful decline we had been looking forward to was not to be.

Absurdity: The quality or state of being ridiculous or wildly unreasonable; stupidity; idiocy.

Sentence – That leads to the social absurdity of the poorer members of society paying taxes to subsidize the richer.

Cynicism: an inclination to believe that people are motivated purely by self-interest; skepticism; doubt; distrust

Sentence – But beneath the careful cynicism she was aware of another, less comfortable, emotion stirring inside her.

Jeopardy: danger of loss, harm, or failure.

Sentence – His reputation already in jeopardy, Young further offended gentiles with what they thought was his most heartless scheme.

Diligence: careful and persistent work or effort.

Sentence – Diligence is the mother of good plough deep while shuggards sleep,you will have corn to sell and to keep.

Dressing down: an act of speaking angrily to someone because they have done something wrong.

Sentence – The sergeant gave the soldier a good dressing down because his shoes were not shined.

Victimization: the action of singling someone out for cruel or unjust treatment.

Sentence – With the age, physical victimization is decreasing, but unknown control is increasing.

Impolitic: failing to possess or display prudence; unwise.

Sentence – It was considered impolitic of him to spend too much time with the party radicals.

Succumb: fail to resist pressure, temptation, or some other negative force; surrender.

Sentence – Most patients succumb when the diaphragm and rib muscles become paralyzed, and breathing becomes impossible.