Example: Today Bangalore is a desiccated myth.
1. Desiccated [des-i-key-tid]
- Adjective: dehydrated or powdered.
- Synonyms: dehydrate, deplete, devitalize, divest, drain, dry, evaporate, exsiccate, parch, sear, shrivel, wither, anhydrate, dry up, wizen.
- Antonyms: dampen, expand, fill, grow.
Example: No technocrat is as much a part of folklore, subject to immediate recall and celebration as the ectomorphic Visvesvaraya.
2. Folklore [fohk-lawr, -lohr]
- Noun: the traditional beliefs, legends, customs, etc., of a people; lore of a people; the study of such lore; a body of widely held but false or unsubstantiated beliefs.
- Synonyms: custom, fable, legend, myth, mythology, superstition, tradition, wisdom, ballad, folk story, mythos, oral literature.
- Antonyms: fact, reality, truth.
3. Ectomorphic [ek-tuh-mawr-fik]
- Adjective: having a thin body build, roughly characterized by the relative prominence of structures developed from the embryonic ectoderm (contrasted with endomorphic, mesomorphic ).
Example: If one wrote, “industrialise and perish”, the other replied, “industrialise or perish”. Their contrasts were stark but each was home grown.
4. Perish [per-ish]
- Verb: to die or be destroyed through violence, privation, etc; to pass away or disappear; to suffer destruction or ruin; to suffer spiritual death.
- Synonyms: cease, crumble, disappear, disintegrate, pass away, rot, succumb, vanish, wither, collapse, corrupt, croak, decease, decompose, demise, depart, end, expire, fall.
- Antonyms: appear, arrive, build, grow.
5. Stark [stahrk]
- Adjective: sheer, utter, downright, or complete; harsh, grim, or desolate, as a view, place, etc.; extremely simple or severe; the stark reality of the schedule’s deadline; stiff or rigid in substance, muscles, etc.
- Synonyms: blunt, simple, abrupt, arrant, bald, bare, blasted, blessed, complete, confounded, consummate, downright, entire, firm, flagrant, gross, infernal, out-and-out, outright, palpable, patent, pure.
- Antonyms: clothed, covered, indefinite.
Example: He balanced in himself, the public and private, the national and vernacular, the scientific and the managerial.
6. Vernacular [ver-nak-yuh-ler, vuh-nak-]
- Adjective: (of language) native or indigenous (opposed to literary or learned ); expressed or written in the native language of a place, as literary works; using such a language; of or relating to such a language.
- Noun: the native speech or language of a place; the language or vocabulary peculiar to a class or profession; a vernacular word or expression.
- Synonyms: indigenous, vulgar, common, local, natural, ordinary, dialectal, domesticated, idiomatic, informal, ingrained, inherent, plebian, popular.
- Antonyms: abnormal, different, extraordinary, refined.
Example: Raman in his heyday could assert that he was more interested in the properties of a diamond than worry about its industrial uses.
7. Heyday [hey-dey]
- Noun: the stage or period of greatest vigor, strength, success, etc.; prime.
- Synonyms: acme, culmination, day, height, peak, pinnacle, time, zenith, high point, high spot, prime time, salad days.
- Antonyms: base, bottom, nadir, low point.
Example: Worse, IT became cocky, overconfident about its powers convinced that what was good for IT should be good for Bangalore.
8. Cocky [kok-ee]
- Adjective: arrogant; pertly self-assertive; conceited.
- Synonyms: arrogant, brash, confident, overconfident, presumptuous, self-confident, bumptious, certain, cocksure, conceited, egotistical, hotdogger, hotshot, hubristic, know-it-all, lordly, nervy, overweening, positive, smart aleck.
- Antonyms: cautious, humble, meek, unsure.
Example: There was a managerial hubris at the centre of it, symptomised in the tragedy of the Aadhaar card, which not only created a split between technocracy and politics but a fissure between the formal and informal economy destroying a sense of the openness and availability of citizenship, confusing identity with identification.
9. Hubris [hyoo-bris, hoo-]
- Noun: excessive pride or self-confidence; arrogance.
- Synonyms: audacity, chutzpah, cockiness, pretension, vanity, airs, brass, cheek, conceitedness, contemptuousness, disdain, insolence, loftiness, nerve, ostentation, pomposity, pompousness, presumption, pretentiousness, self-importance, overbearance.
- Antonyms: humility, modesty, respect, timidity.
10. Fissure [fish-er]
- Noun: a narrow opening produced by cleavage or separation of parts.
- Synonyms: cleavage, crevice, cleft, crack, hole.
- Antonyms: closure, solid.