Daily Vocab for various Competitive Exams

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 an article published in a reputed newspaper.

When does it become obvious that a (1) heist has occurred? Loud alarms and (2) smatterings of broken glass (3) strewn are an obvious indication. Yet many of the greatest heists in history have been without spectacle, only becoming obvious much after the fact.  Russia’s privatization in the early 1990s is a classic tale of deceit and (4) gullibility.  Russia tried to shake off the all-encompassing ideology of communism and re-organized its economy. The reformers at the time undertook this through the means of a voucher privatization scheme, wherein vouchers for shares in more than 15,000 public-sector firms were freely distributed to 98% of the general Russian public. But soon a lack of understanding about this voucher programme resulted in people quickly trading away their shares for more material short term needs. The mistake made by Russian people only became apparent several years later when a whole new class of (5) oligarchs was born, who systematically stripped away assets from the newly-privatized enterprises. The consequences for the economy were devastating between 1991 and 1998. The rise of Vladimir Putin, who campaigned for (6) dismantling the oligarch class, and the erosion of any (7) semblance of democracy can be tied to this privatization effort. History is replete with similar examples of the unconscious heist and its effects when the heist becomes known.

An examination of Facebook’s business model bears out this statement. Facebook owns the digital version of our real-life relationships. While the internet permits a theoretically infinite number of digital (8) replications of these relationships in terms of monetary value, reside on and are owned by Facebook. We are not used to thinking of our digital relationships, and data as having value or being classified as assets due to smartphone era. The arguments made in Facebook’s defense range from ‘’most users like the product offering’’ to ‘’people who don’t like the service can just leave’’. It is reflected that we are stuck with Facebook, until another (9) paradigm shift as transformative as the smartphone era begins.

The current (10) backlash against Facebook, in the wake of the 2016 US presidential election and the Cambridge Analytica fracas, should serve as a flashing red light. People have begun to feel a sense of disquiet around their relationship with the platform. Certainly, technologically elite opinion has turned sharply against Facebook. The question remains when that sentiment will filter down to the ordinary Facebook user. Perhaps the realization of one of the greatest unconscious heists in the modern world will be the straw that breaks the camel’s back.

1. HEIST (noun) : डकैती
Meaning: a crime in which valuable things are taken illegally and often violently from a place or person.
Synonyms: grab, theft, break-in, burglary, holdup, mugging, larceny, pilferage, robbery.
Antonyms: buying, purchasing, bestow, contributing, donating, handing over, presenting.

2. SMATTERING (noun) : कम मात्रा में
Meaning: a small amount of something.
Synonyms: couple, few, handful, scattering, smatter, sprinkling, fragment, iota, jot, modicum, scrap.
Antonyms: abundance, excess, plenty, surplus, peck, pile, plenitude, plenty, profusion, raft, reams, flock, horde, host, legion.

3. STREW (verb) : बिखेरना
Meaning: scatter or spread (things) untidily over a surface or area.
Synonyms: scatter, sow, spray, sprinkle, drizzle, dapple, fleck, speckle, stipple, spatter, disperse, distribute.
Antonyms: unnoticed, unfurnished, concentrated, gathered, collected.

4. GULLIBLE (adjective) : आसानी से धोखा खानेवाला
Meaning: easily deceived or tricked, and too willing to believe everything that other people say.
Synonyms:  exploitable, naïve, unwary, credulous, uncritical, unsuspecting, unsuspicious
artless, guileless, innocent, unworldly, pliable.
Antonyms: cynical, mistrustful, skeptical, suspicious, wary, sophisticated, hardheaded
shrewd, streetwise.

5. OLIGARCHY (noun) : कुलीनतंत्र
Meaning: a small group of people having control of a country or organization.
Synonyms: autocrat, tyrant, oppressor, ringleader, usurper, authoritarian, absolutist, mogul.
Antonyms: follower, employee, worker, commoner, democrat.

6. DISMANTLING (noun) : उद्ध्वंसन
Meaning:  the act of causing an organization or system to stop functioning by gradually reducing its power or purpose.
Synonyms: breaking down, disassembling, dismembering, dismounting, knocking down, detach, disaggregating, disuniting, dividing, separating.
Antonyms: building, erecting, combining, uniting, assembling, constructing, restoring, repairing.

7. SEMBLANCE (noun) : अनुरूपता
Meaning: the outward appearance or apparent form of something, especially when the reality is different.
Synonyms: appearance, seeming, impression, implication, insinuation, resemblance, demonstration, display, imitation, imposture, pose, pretense, representation.
Antonyms: difference, contrast, dissimilarity, assortment, distinction, dissimilitude, divergence, discord.

8. REPLICATION (noun) : प्रतिकृति
Meaning: the action of copying or reproducing something.
Synonyms: duplication, facsimile, imitation, reduplication, replica, reproduction, reiteration, renewal, repetition, reprise.
Antonyms:  create, imagine, initiate, invent, originate, prototype.

9. PARADIGM (noun) : प्रतिमान
Meaning: a typical example or pattern of something; a pattern or model.
Synonyms: exemplar, model, standard, archetype, ideal, epitome, norm, paragon, idol.
Antonyms: imperfection, follower, atypical, antithesis.

10. BACKLASH (noun) : प्रतिक्रिया
Meaning: a strong negative reaction by a large number of people, especially to a social or political development.
Synonyms: backfire, ricochet, counteraction, retaliation, reverberation, opposition, resentment, rebuff, rebound.
Antonyms: decertify, forbid, invalidate, cause.

The straw that breaks the camel’s back (idiom): the last in a series of bad things that happen to make someone very upset, angry, etc.

Reasons of Failure in Competitive Exams | Avoid them!