500 Words You Should Know

That blue dress really complements your eyes. That remark is, of course, a compliment, which That red dress really complements your eyes probably isnt.

ignoble

In front of a word beginning with n, the prefix ig- means ‘not’, so ignoble is simply ‘not noble

combination of distorted, distasteful and bizarre:

gratuitous

Unnecessary, uncalled for, as in a gratuitous insult o

flagrant

From the Latin for burning, this means very much the same as BLATANT

those who are inconstant in their affections

fastidious

This means picky, critical, hard to please an

bit too easy and thus having little value: a facile victory is more or less a walkover;

excoriate

Even harsher than DENOUNCE, this means literally to take the skin off, so metaphorically to flay someone alive, to criticize very severely. A critic might, for example, write an excoriating review of a film or play he

seemed not to realize the enormity of his crime’ means he didn’t acknowledge he had done something dreadful,