Vocabulary Set 3 English 2

Root: Sent/Sens From the Latin verb sentire, meaning “to feel,” or the noun sensus, meaning “feeling” or “sense,” can signify different kinds of feelings.

Sensational Definition: (1) Exciting an intense but usually brief interest or emotional reaction. (2) Extremely or unexpectedly excellent Sentence: The sensational newspaper accounts of the marital problems of the royal couple fascinated many readers but made other a little uncomfortable.

Sentient Definition: Aware of and responsive to sense impressions. Sentence: The planet Earth supports the only sentient beings that we yet know of in the universe.

Sentiment Definition: (1) A thought or attitude colored by feeling; opinion. (2) Tender feelings of affection. Sentence: We don’t care whose nephew he is; hiring decisions must be based on merit, not sentiment.

Sensuous Definition: (1) Highly pleasing to the senses. (2) Relating to the senses. Sentence: A chef like Craig Claiborne takes sensuous pleasure in the smell and taste of well-prepared food.

Root: Soph Is a Greek root from the word meaning “wise” or “wisom.”

Sophistry Definition: Cleverly deceptive reasoning or argument. Sentence: The defendant’s claim that he wasn’t guilty of the crime because he didn’t actually pull the trigger was dismissed as pure sophistry.

Sophisticated Definition: (1) Having a thorough and refined knowledge of the ways of society. (2) Highly complex or developed. Sentence: A lot of people feel that celebrities are sophisticated individuals.

Sophomoric Definition: Overly impressed with one’s own knowledge, but in fact undereducated and immature. Sentence: The kids at summer camp played the usual sophomoric pranks—short-sheeted beds, salt in the sugar bowl, shaving cream on the light switch, water bucket balanced on the door.

Philosophy Definition: A belief and heavy study of a subject. Sentence: Many college students study philosophy.

Root: Tend/Tent From the Latin tendere, meaning “to stretch, extend or spread.”

Contentious Definition: Having a tendency to pick fights; quarrelsome. Sentence: The school board meeting lasted late into the night as contentious parents argued over every detail of the new bus routes.

Distend Definition: To swell or become expanded. Sentence: Television viewers were shocked to see the distended bellies of the young children, usually a sign of malnutrition and starvation.

Portend Definition: (1) To give a sign or warning beforehand. (2) To indicate or signify. Sentence: Although the warm spell in February was welcome, the huge puddles by the melting snowbanks portended the spring floods that were likely to follow.

Tendentious Definition: Leaning toward a particular point of view; biased. Sentence: In his later years, the professor wrote a series of tendentious essays attacking many modern novelists and praising authors from earlier eras.