DEFINITIONS AND EXAMPLES PRESENTED IN THE DICTIONARY

COMPRESS (v)

Flatten by pressure; squeeze or press.

  • For Asia, the demographic changes that occurred gradually over 100 years in the West have been compressed into a few decades.

Squeeze or press (two things) together.

  • She compressed her lips, and spoke with conviction.

Express in a shorter form; abridge.

  • The agenda can be compressed into nine critical questions.

COMPRESSION (n)

The action of compressing or being compressed.

  • Lossless data compression is used for data that must not be changed even a single bit.

CONFORM (v)

Comply with rules, standards, or laws.

  • The changes were introduced to conform with international classifications.

Behave according to socially acceptable conventions or standards (of a person).

  • People are defined as illiterate when they do not conform to a set of cultural criteria defined by the ruling elite of a particular society.

Be similar in form or type; agree.

  • At a press conference, he was asked if his thinking as a scientist could conform to the thinking of a politician.

CONFORMITY (n)

Compliance with standards, rules, or laws.

  • The goods were in conformity with the contract.

Behaviour in accordance with socially accepted conventions.

  • The moral framework implies conformity to ideals of right human conduct.

Similarity in form or type; agreement in character.

  • The changes are intended to ensure conformity between all schemes.

CONFORMIST (n)

A person who conforms to accepted behaviour or established practices.

  • There is good evidence that instead of being passive conformists, Americans are extremely skeptical of anything their government says.

CONFORMIST (adj)

Conforming to accepted behaviour or established practices; conventional.

  • But sometime in the past 40 years, Western society decided that deferential, ordered and conformist societies cramped creativity and personal expression.

CONFORMISM (n)

A term used to describe the suspension of an individual’s self determined actions or opinions in favor of obedience to the mandates or conventions of one’s peer group, or deference to the imposed norms of a supervening authority.

  • It’s one of those untransportable American plays that, in rejecting social conformism and political correctness, ends up celebrating anything dysfunctional.

DECRY (v)

Publicly denounce.

  • The group decried the lack of critical press treatment in this country.

DELIBERATE (adj)

Done consciously and intentionally.

  • Genocide is the deliberate and preplanned attempt to wipe out a particular race of people.

Careful and unhurried.

  • The introduction of a national ID card should be careful and deliberate, not something done in excess haste.

Fully considered; not impulsive.

  • It was this committee that took the deliberate decision that the coronation of Charles II would be conducted as if the previous ten years had not happened.

DISGUISE (v)

Give (someone or oneself) a different appearance in order to conceal one’s identity.

  • Police disguised themselves as tourists, secretly videoing visitors as they moved round the exhibition site.

Make (something) unrecognizable by altering its appearance, sound, taste, or smell.

  • He asked that we disguise his voice and face, afraid of retribution by those who run the criminal enterprise.

Conceal the nature or existence of (a feeling or situation)

  • Elizabeth was always good at disguising her feelings and keeping herself under control.

DISGUISE (n)

A means of altering one’s appearance to conceal one’s identity.

  • His job was to create disguises, conjuring up such convincing new identities for agents that even their own families were not able to recognize them.

The state of having altered one’s appearance in order to conceal one’s identity.

  • You may have seen the computer-enhanced pictures the police released which allegedly show what she might look if she was in disguise.

The concealing of one’s true intentions or feelings.

  • Scarlet’s childish behavior was only a disguise; her true self was a woman of virtue, courage, honor, and determination.

DISTORT  (v)

Pull or twist out of shape.

  • Their faces were distorted with fear and anguish.

Give a misleading or false account or impression of.

  • Many investors now distrust pension accounting because it distorts reported earnings.

Change the form of (an electrical signal or sound wave) during transmission, amplification, or other processing.

  • The voice had been distorted with some sort of audio device.

DISTORTION  (n)

The action of distorting or the state of being distorted.

  • The program helps avoid damage, data loss or distortion.

A distorted form or part.

  • The distortions turn dangerous zealots into icons.

The action of giving a misleading account or impression.

  • The policies have to deal with the real world of interest groups, elections and media distortion.

Change in the form of an electrical signal or sound wave during processing.

  • Even in clear skies, however, atmospheric distortion is a challenge.

EVADE (v)

Escape or avoid (someone or something), especially by guile or trickery.

  • Many of the suspected murderers continue to evade police capture for months or even years.

Elude (someone) (of an abstract thing).

  • He was sure sleep would evade him, with his mind still spinning fruitlessly on its search for information that wasn’t there.

Avoid giving a direct answer to (a question).

  • Parliamentary question time is full of wonderful examples of extended verbs, conjunctions and prepositional phrases employed to evade answering a question.

Avoid dealing with or accepting (something unpleasant or morally or legally required).

  • This is a matter of deliberate policy from management, who hope to evade some of their responsibilities for training and supporting workers and to cut costs.

Escape paying (tax or duty), especially by illegitimate presentation of one’s finances.

  • She was sentenced on three counts of conspiracy to evade taxes.

Act contrary to the intention of (a law or rule), especially while complying with its letter.

  • Thus the US and Canadian vessel owners re-registered their vessels under Japanese and other flags to evade the US and Canadian regulations.

EVASIVE (adj)

Tending to avoid commitment or self-revelation, especially by responding only indirectly. 

  • At Westminster, a series of written questions has produced singularly evasive answers.

Directed towards avoidance or escape.

  • In the pursuit of this aim several attempts have to be made, which results in the surrounding traffic having to take evasive action.

EXTENT (n)

The area covered by something.

  • The universe is infinite, both in the number of atoms and in the extent of space.

The size or scale of something.

  • They claim the Government is covering up the true extent of the disease outbreak.

The particular degree to which something is or is believed to be the case.

  • Everyone will have to compromise to some extent.

FUEL (n)

Material such as coal, gas, or oil that is burned to produce heat or power.

  • As around half of Australia’s primary energy is derived from coal, a better alternative could be the production of liquid fuels from coal using the South African Sasol processes.

Short for nuclear fuel.

  • Currently China stores spent fuel in water tanks inside the plants.

Food, drink, or drugs as a source of energy.

  • Food is not only fuel, but it can also have a powerful psychological effect.

A thing that sustains or inflames passion, argument, or other intense emotion.

  • His comments are certain to add fuel to the already fiery debate between councils and the Government over urban planning in the region.

FUEL (v)

Supply or power (an industrial plant, vehicle, or machine) with fuel.

  • Most US power plants are fueled by coal, fuel oil, and natural gas, the only fuels available in sufficient quantities to meet the demand.

Cause (a fire) to burn more intensely.

  • Dry conditions and wind gusts of up to 40 miles per hour are fueling the fires.

Sustain or inflame (an intense feeling).

  • His resignation fuelled speculation of an imminent cabinet reshuffle.

INHIBIT (v)

Hinder, restrain, or prevent (an action or process)

  • All the problems act to inhibit the process of renewing country’s economic infrastructure.

Prevent or prohibit (someone) from doing something.

  • The earnings rule inhibited some retired people from working.

Make (someone) self-conscious and unable to act in a relaxed and natural way.

  • You are easily inhibited by setbacks, and you seek projects that don’t require minute accountability.

INHIBITED (adj)

Unable to act in a relaxed and natural way because of self-consciousness or mental restraint.

  • She was inhibited and self-conscious about her accent when she first arrived in this country.

INHIBITION (n)

A feeling that makes one self-conscious and unable to act in a relaxed and natural way.

  • A good alternative is vacation class — martial arts, music, dance — which colours a child’s life, enhancing confidence and wiping away diffidence and inhibitions.

The action of inhibiting a process.

  • There is no reason to think other large single-currency areas, such as China, pay any smaller cost in terms of overall GDP inhibition and regional disparity.

INTRUDE (v)

Put oneself deliberately into a place or situation where one is unwelcome or uninvited.

  • People do not like the idea of the government intruding on their private lives.

Enter with disruptive or adverse effect.

  • There are concerns that some of the Government’s proposed changes will intrude on the independence of Australian universities.

Introduce (something) into a situation with disruptive or adverse effect.

  • To intrude political criteria into military decisions risks reducing efficiency.

INTRUSION (n)

The action of intruding.

  • We in the UK hold certain freedoms sacred — freedom of speech, freedom of movement, freedom of religious belief, freedom from intrusion into our private lives.

A thing that intrudes.

  • Traffic generates noise and pollution, and is an intrusion for many areas.

INTRUSIVE (adj)

Causing disruption or annoyance through being unwelcome or uninvited.

  • Hardly anyone responded, put off by either the slightly intrusive questions or perhaps my impatient demand for a quick response.

OBSCURE (adj)

Not discovered or known about; uncertain.

  • Even now, a hundred years on, the precise cause and surrounding circumstances of Oscar Wilde’s death remain obscure, shrouded about with mystery.

Not important or well known.

  • That kind of data may seem obscure and unimportant, but it’s a useful tool for researchers and insurance companies wanting to know long-term hurricane trends.

Not clearly expressed or easily understood.

  • If the communication gap is too wide, the message is too obscure for people to understand.

Hard to define; vague.

  • Most of the people are scared stiff of entering the political arena on their own but eager to do so hidden under some obscure umbrella.

OBSCURE (v)

Keep from being seen; conceal.

  • The sun was obscured by high, grey cloud, its disc appearing at once flat and lifeless.

Make unclear and difficult to understand.

  • The debate has become obscured by conflicting ideological perspectives.

Keep from being known.

  • Exploring a subject that has involved controversies and sensitivities, their research revealed an important story that was obscured for 50 years.

REVEAL (v)

Make (previously unknown or secret information) known to others.

  • Hastie was previously reluctant to reveal details of the contracts until he was sure the company had a secure future.

Cause or allow (something) to be seen.

  • Some years ago, an advisor tried to get Hillary Clinton to soften her image by publicly revealing some hitherto unknown weakness.

Make (something) known to humans by divine or supernatural means.

  • People as well as objects may reveal the presence of the supernatural.

REVELATION (n)

A surprising and previously unknown fact that has been disclosed to others.

  • The cascade of recent revelations has left human rights groups understandably alarmed.

The making known of something that was previously secret or unknown.

  • The Prime Minister’s revelation of a possible Government ban on public smoking has been welcomed by Swindon health watchdogs.

Used to emphasize the remarkable quality of someone or something.

  • The Van Gogh Museum is a revelation, even for people who hadn’t previously considered themselves huge lovers of his work.

The divine or supernatural disclosure to humans of something relating to human existence.

  • Sunlight, for instance, often stands in for divine grace or revelation.

SPIN (v)

Turn or cause to turn or whirl round quickly.

  • I spun around quickly, hiding the piece of paper behind my back.

Give a sensation of dizziness (of a person’s head).

  • My head is spinning, and I feel a huge sense of responsibility for my colleagues.

Draw out and twist (the fibres of wool, cotton, or other material) to convert them into yarn, either by hand or with machinery. 

  • The textile workshop spins local wool and uses natural dyes to produce an array of knitted, crocheted, and woven items.

(of a spider or a silkworm or other insect) produce (gossamer or silk) or construct (a web or cocoon) by extruding a fine viscous thread from a special gland.

  • Spiders spin their webs in zero gravity.

Give (a news story) a particular emphasis or bias.

  • Ministers may now find it difficult to use the programme to spin stories in their favour.

SPIN (n)

A rapid turning or whirling motion.

  • Mr. Callaghan has taught me how important spins and connecting steps are in addition to high quality jumps in a program.

Revolving motion imparted to a ball in a game, especially cricket, tennis, or snooker.

  • The racket enables the player to impart more spin to the ball.

An uncontrolled fast revolving descent of an aircraft, resulting from a stall.

  • He tried to stop the plane from going into a spin.

A brief trip in a vehicle for pleasure.

  • We continued our driving tour with a little spin through downtown and up Yonge Street before we turned east on Bloor Street.

The presentation of information in a particular way; a slant, especially a favourable one.

  • He tried to put a positive spin on the president’s campaign.

EXAMPLES PRESENTED IN THE UP-TO-DATE AUTHENTIC CONTEXT

  • Azahálea Solís of the Civic Alliance opposition group said the amnesty “attempts to disguise impunity for those who ordered, directed or participated in murders of citizens.”
  • “These two countries along with other authoritarian adversaries and their proxies will likely use deep fakes as part of disinformation campaigns seeking to distort the reality of American audiences and the audiences of American allies.”
  • There is a key difference between framing issues and facts in a positive but politically-slanted light and engaging in a systematic campaign of distortion and disinformation designed to deceive the American public.
  • While businesses in other areas highlight finance and skills shortages as factors inhibiting growth, nearly one-third of firms in York and North Yorkshire said inadequate transport infrastructure was a major stumbling block.
  • Iran’s use of commercial entities such as Mahan Air to perpetuate terror and violence will be greatly inhibited by Germany’s decision to deny future landing rights to the Iranian airline. 
  • A growing number of voices, including the UK’s trade union body want businesses to cut the standard working week from five days to just four. Still some employees worried about their workload being compressed into four days, and part-time workers were concerned that a new working week would mess up their childcare or other arrangements.
  • Bill Clinton punctuated speeches with a fist, topped with a thumb extended, compressing his lips inward until they disappeared.
  • Running for a second term, Franklin Roosevelt decried the reactionary business and financial leaders who opposed every part of the New Deal to battle the Depression.
  • The backlash began years ago in authoritarian countries, in developing countries that saw human rights as an affront to their traditions and as a mask for imperialist goals, and in highly religious countries. These countries advanced interpretations of human rights law that conform with their values or interests but made little headway against dominant elite opinion.
  • The ministry said that in welcoming De Grazia into its Caracas residence, Italy was operating “in full conformity with diplomatic conventions”.
  • In Scandinavia, the dominant conformist zeitgeist is called the Law of Jante, a reference to a fictional Danish town that enforces being ordinary in every possible way.
  • The descendants of Genghis Khan implemented their own management system based on totalitarian values, the absence of the institution of human rights, complete conformism and suppression of political dissent.
  • The current system requires prosecutors in most cases to exhaust all obvious investigative methods for identifying leaks before seeking to intrude on a journalist’s free-speech rights,” Mr. Solomon reports.
  • The cyber intrusions are expected to continue disrupting ill-prepared local governments and public services, with devastating financial impacts and potentially life-threatening consequences, experts warned.
  • Concerned that some new surveillance technologies may be too intrusive, San Francisco became the first U.S. city to ban the use of facial recognition tools by its police and other municipal departments.
  • JoAnn Morgan told the Nasa website: “It was just meant to be for me to be in the launching business. I’ve got rocket fuel in my blood.”
  • Mendez said her vote in favor of the executive order was voicing her support for the immigrant community, particularly given that agriculture and migrant workers fuel much of Yakima’s economy.
  • Thunberg, meanwhile, is phenomenally articulate, well-informed and self-assured, holding her own in conversation with an elected official nearly twice her age and speaking in deliberate, thoughtful English.
  • There was no breach of sensitive data files, but the attacks in which somebody deliberately overwhelmed the Avon Public Schools system in Connecticut still proved costly.
  • Edelstein’s initiative, however, was treated with skepticism by analysts and Netanyahu’s rivals, who termed it political spin and another way for the formidable leader to deflect from his legal woes to stay in office.
  • Voters electing seven of nine council members this fall should note City Hall’s current priorities and how it spins policies favoring special interests over current residents.
  • Gomes, a former member of the parliament’s special committee on tax evasion, thinks Luxembourg police and tax authorities do not have adequate access to the data collected by the logistics firms working in Le Freeport. “It is a major scheme to evade paying taxes, to avoid money-laundering controls,” she alleges.
  • Mr. Netanyahu said in the past that he would not promote a new immunity law. But when pressed in a television interview days before the election, he was more evasive, saying only that he was currently “not dealing” with the issue.
  • Every elected official – Democratic, Republican and independent – faces criticism to some extent.
  • People are notoriously bad at evaluating the extent to which they understand things — a phenomenon referred to as the “illusion of explanatory depth.
  • Fox News, and the right-wing media in general, frame reality for their audiences by focusing on some stories and excluding others. If you are watching Sean Hannity, for example, you are constantly hearing about Hillary Clinton’s emails. Or with the Mueller report, there will be a focus on some obscure people who worked for the FBI.
  • Last year, the United States Citizenship and Immigration Services dropped the phrase “nation of immigrants” from its mission statement. That phrase, like most foundational myths and more than some, obscures much of the country’s history: the first immigrants would more accurately be described as settler colonialists, who brought Africans here as slaves.
  • The breach, which the credit bureau Equifax revealed in September 2017, included Social Security and driver’s license numbers and was one of the most severe exposures of Americans’ personal data.