Communication skills give students and professionals an edge over their peers. To score well in exams or to climb up the career ladder, it always helps to have strong language skills.
Here’s a way to improve your vocabulary and communication skills. Check out the words for the day and a small quiz to push yourself to improve your word power and language skills.
Tawdry (Adjective)
Meaning: showy but cheap and of poor quality
Example: They were once looked down upon as the tawdry poor relations of the fashion industry
Terse (Adjective)
Meaning: sparing in the use of words; abrupt
Example: The author favours short, spare sentences and a terse descriptive style
Also Read: Vocabulary Made Easy series: Improve your word skills to score well in exams
Tenuous (Adjective)
Meaning: very weak or slight
Example: The tenuous link between interest rates and investment
Tangential (Adjective)
Meaning: diverging from a previous course or line; erratic
Example: The reforms were tangential to efforts to maintain a basic standard of life
Stint (Verb)
Meaning: supply a very ungenerous or inadequate amount of (something)
Example: She’s finishing her stint with accounts
Sycophant (Noun)
Meaning: a person who acts obsequiously towards someone important in order to gain advantage
Example: Because he is high-ranking, he’s surrounded by sycophants
Also Read: Vocabulary Made Easy series: Improve your word skills to score well in exams
Surreptitious (Adjective)
Meaning: kept secret, especially because it would not be approved of
Example: low wages were supplemented by surreptitious payments from tradesmen
Stingy (Adjective)
Meaning: mean; ungenerous
Example: His boss is stingy and idle
Put your thinking cap on and try to answer the following questions to understand how much you have grasped.
- Know what you are trying to achieve and don’t __________ on the preparation. Which of the following words fits best in the sentence? (Stint, Stingy)
- Thin-sections were made in the transverse, radial, and tangential planes. Which of the following words fits best in the sentence? (Tangential, Sycophant)
- Can you think of some antonyms for the word Surreptitious?
- Can you think of some synonyms for the word Tenuous?
Also Read: Vocabulary Made Easy series: Focus on improving your word power to succeed in competitive exams
Watch out for this space for your weekly update on improving word power.
(Definitions and examples are from Oxford Languages)
