Dear Aspirants,
Vocabulary is an important part of English that helps you deal with all kinds of questions in objective as well as descriptive papers of various exams. You can learn new words daily from our Daily Word List. Learn the words and make your own sentences on the basis of the given word list. Here are a few words and phrases from articles published in a reputed Newspaper.
In his 1852 critique of Louis-Napoléon Bonaparte, Karl Marx begins by citing the Hegelian remark that “all great world-historic facts and personages appear, so to speak, twice. He forgot to add: the first time as tragedy, the second time as farce.” Whatever one might think of that opinion, it would surely be uncontroversial to argue that the artistic recreation of history, or even current affairs, as farce involves stepping into tricky terrain. It should be equally uncontentious to claim that the Scottish satirist and director Armando Iannucci is a past master in this genre, with his television comedies The Thick of It and Veep offering hilarious excoriations of, respectively, British and American politics. His most recent film, The Death of Stalin, shows him to be equally capable of tackling Soviet history with a sharp eye for absurdity. Josef Stalin was no joke, of course, particularly to his millions of victims, who included the cream of the Bolshevik intelligentsia. Small wonder, then, that his surviving colleagues were simultaneously relieved and petrified when he collapsed. And there was a kind of poetic justice in the way Stalin’s depredations possibly contributed to claiming his own life. One of the striking features of the final phase of his rule was a wave of anti-Semitism, a crucial aspect of which was the so-called doctors’ plot, whereby the nation’s leading medical experts — many of them Jewish — suddenly disappeared from their clinics, and consequently weren’t available to consult when the dictator lay dying. Such facts provide the underlayer for Iannucci’s sparkling comedy, and perhaps his greatest achievement lies in milking the bizarre circumstances for laughs without losing sight of the horrors inherent in Stalin’s legacy. He has been accused of taking liberties with the facts, but historical accuracy can hardly be expected from a satire. It is, in fact, the parallels that stand out more, and it’s worth noting that in some cases — notably the opening sequence, in which Stalin demands a recording of a Mozart concerto broadcast on Radio Moscow that in fact was not recorded, entailing a comedy of errors in the ensuing efforts to reproduce the performance — Iannucci felt obliged to tone down facts that audiences might have considered too unbelievable. In most cases, the actors lined up to portray historical figures, from Stalin (Adrian McLoughlin) and Nikita Khrushchev (Steve Buscemi) to Georgy Malenkov (Jeffrey Tambor), Vyacheslav Molotov (Michael Palin) and Lavrenti Beria (Simon Russell Beale), bear at best a passing resemblance to the characters — sometimes none at all — and, thankfully, none of them speaks in a Hollywood-prescribed Russian accent. Yet they manage collectively to reflect the spirit of the times. Sure, history records no military massacre at Stalin’s funeral, and Beria, the dreaded security police chief, was summarily executed a few months following Stalin’s demise rather than immediately afterwards. But then, no teacher of history would recommend this film as a lesson in accuracy. At the same time, though, for those familiar with what occurred, it offers an illuminating angle on events via an absurdist prism. The fact that the film was banned in Russia points to its resonance in an age when the ghost of Stalin stalks many parts of the world, albeit mainly from the right wing. It wouldn’t be entirely surprising, for instance, were the eventual demise of Vladimir Putin to be followed by a comparable discombobulation.
1. Farce: (noun) : तमाशा
Meaning: an event or situation that is absurd or disorganized.
Synonyms: absurdity, mockery, burlesque, caricature, skit, sham
Antonyms: seriousness, solemnity, sobriety, tragedy
2. Excoriate: (verb) : आलोचना (किसी की) गंभीरता से
Meaning: criticize (someone) severely.
Synonyms: berate, castigate, chastise, condemn, lambaste, rebuke, revile, upbraid
Antonyms: approve, compliment, flatter, praise, laud
3. Absurdity: (noun) : अनर्थकता
Meaning: the quality or state of being ridiculous or wildly unreasonable.
Synonyms: craziness, farce, folly, idiocy, insanity, silliness
Antonyms: intelligence, judgement, seriousness, wisdom
4. Petrify: (verb) : हक्का बक्का कर देना
Meaning: make (someone) so frightened that they are unable to move.
Synonyms: appall, astonish, astound, daze, horrify, startle, terrify
Antonyms: bore, calm, delight, expect, assure, encourage
5. Depredation: (noun) : लूट-मार
Meaning: an act of attacking or plundering.
Synonyms: devastation, desolation, desecration, pillage, plunder, ransacking, rapine, ravaging
Antonyms: boon, construction, goodness, miracle, wonder
6. Bizarre: (adjective) : अजीब
Meaning: very strange or unusual.
Synonyms: absurd, crazy, fanciful, fantastic, foolish, insane, nonsensical, preposterous, unreal, wild
Antonyms: realistic, reasonable
7. Satire:(noun) : कटुवाक्य
Meaning: a creative work that uses sharp humor to point up the foolishness of a person, institution, or human nature in general
Synonyms: banter, irony, mockery, parody, skit, sarcasm, skit, spoof
Antonyms: seriousness
8. Oblige: (verb) : नैतिक नियमों से मज़बूर करना
Meaning: make (someone) legally or morally bound to do something.
Synonyms: bind, compel, constrain, impel, obligate, coerce
Antonyms: delay, free, release
9. Dreaded: (adjective) : खतरनाक
Meaning: regarded with great fear or apprehension.
Synonyms: apprehend, fear, shudder, cringe, tremble
Antonyms: steady, encourage
10. Discombobulation: (noun) : मानसिक अनिश्चितता की स्थिति
Meaning: a state of mental uncertainty
Synonyms: bafflement, befuddlement, bemusement, bewilderment, confusion, distraction, fog, muddle, mystification, perplexity, puzzlement, tangle, whirl
Antonyms: assurance, certainty, certitude, confidence, conviction, positiveness
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