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Words :
Amiable, Amnesty, Amoral, Amorous, Amorphous and Anachronism
This is a list of Difficult Words: Amiable, Amnesty, Amoral, Amorous, Amorphous and Anachronism
Amnesty (AM ni stee) n: an official pardon for a group of people who have violated a law or policy
• Amnesty comes from the same root as amnesia, the condition that causes characters in movies to forget everything except how to speak English and drive their cars.
• An amnesty is an official forgetting. When a state government declares a tax amnesty, it is saying that if people pay the taxes they owe, the government will officially forget that they broke the law by not paying them in the first place.
• The word amnesty always refers to a pardon given to a group or class of people. A pardon granted to a single person is simply a pardon.
Amiable (AY mee uh bul) adj: friendly, agreeable
• Our amiable guide made us feel right at home in what would otherwise have been a cold and forbidding museum.
• The drama critic was so amiable in person that even the subjects of negative reviews found it impossible no to like her.
• Amicable is a similar and related word. Two not very amiable people might nonetheless make an amicable agreement. Amicable means politely friendly, or not hostile. Two countries might trade amicably with each other even while technically remaining enemies. Jeff and Charisma had a surprisingly amicable divorce and remained good friends even after paying their lawyer's fees.
Amoral (ay MAWR ul) adj: lacking a sense of right and wrong, neither good nor bad, neither moral nor immoral, without moral feelings good nor bad, neither moral nor immoral, without moral feelings
• Very young children are amoral. When they cry, they aren't being bad or good; they're merely doing what they have to do.
• Amoral person does right. An immoral person does wrong.
Amorous (AM or us) adj: felling loving, especially in a sexual sense in love, relating to love
• The amorous couple made quite a scene at the movie. The movie they were watching, Love Story, was pretty amorous itself. It was about an amorous couple, one of whom died.
Amorphous (uh MAWR fus) adj: shapeless, without a regular or stable shape, bloodlike
• Ed's teacher said that his term paper was amorphous. She said that it was as shapeless and disorganized as a cloud.
• The sleepy little town was engulfed by an amorphous blob of glowing protoplasm-a higher intelligence from outer space.
• To say that something has an "amorphous shape" is a contradiction. How can a shape be shapeless?
Anachronism (uh NAK ruh NIZ um) n: something out of place in time or history, an incongruity
• In this day of impersonal hospitals, a family doctor who will wait you at home seems like an anachronism.
• In these modern, liberated times, some women disdain the anachronistic practice of a man's holding open a door for a woman.