What’s a word that rhymes with the name of the 1970s all-female singing group (strange and mysterious in a way that might trouble you and Charity Ball are clues). A word for a cutting tool is used by the King of Navarre in “Love’s Labor’s Lost,” and if you ever complain about mowing the grass this spring be glad that you don’t have to cut it with one of those.
Here’s one more. This is a five-letter synonym for discontinue; insert an ”r” after its first letter and you get the noun used in my instructions to students. (“To help bring about unbroken eye contact with your audience in the beginning of your speech, fold, long before you come to the podium, your typed speaking outline from top to bottom and really get that _ in the middle of the pages so that the outline opens easily after it’s placed on the podium.”)
1. Which one is a synonym for lengthy?
A. sententious
B. extended
C. parsimonious
D. obstreperous
I teach not to begin a presentation by looking down and to strive for lengthy intervals of unbroken eye contact with the audience. No. 1 is B.
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2. trope (TROHP)
A. a carrying case
B. sweet tasting
C. any literary or rhetorical device that uses words in other than their literal sense
D. a word, phrase or image used in a new and different way to create an artistic effect
Once I asked my readers, “What’s the word that if you discard a vowel and add another you would have a noun meaning a body of soldiers?” What you have before the change means the use of a word or expression in a figurative sense. The word is trope. Both C and D are correct for No. 2.
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3. trousseau (true-SO)
A. the attire collected by a groom for his marriage
B. the clothes and linen collected by a bride for her marriage
C. a box in which items are stored
D. de rigueur
E. another word for trousers
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4. rue (ROO)
A. a darker shade of blue
B. a darker shade of red
C. regret, sorrow
D. pride
B is the answer for trousseau and C is the answer for rue.
Editor’s Note: Dr. Don Rodney Vaughan is the pastor of Mt. Vernon Baptist Church near Eupora and is on the faculty of East Mississippi Community College, Golden Triangle Campus. Contact him at
dvaughan@eastms.edu.
