Vocabulary Made Easy series: Improve language skills to excel in your career

Hard work meets success. This goes well for students as well as professionals who would want to drive change in their careers.

Hard work meets success. This goes well for students as well as professionals who would want to drive change in their careers. One such change would be to improve their communication skills and vocabulary.

Check out the words for the day and a small quiz to push yourself to improve your word power and language skills. (PTI Photo)

Here's a way to improve your vocabulary and communication skills. Check out the words for the day and a small quiz to push yourself to improve your word power and language skills.

Vitriol (Noun)

Meaning: bitter criticism or malice

Example: The body lies down and then the brain pours bitter vitriol on the day

Vex (Verb)

Meaning: make (someone) feel annoyed, frustrated, or worried, especially with trivial matters

Example: The memory of the conversation still vexed him

Winsome (Adjective)

Meaning: attractive or appealing in a fresh, innocent way

Example: This last one in particular wasn't much heeded by the programme's winsome presenter

Welter (Verb)

Meaning: move in a turbulent fashion

Example: Although welter John Green fights only once, his brother Andy, a lightweight, faces two fights

Vicissitude (Noun)

Meaning: a change of circumstances or fortune, typically one that is unwelcome or unpleasant

Example: He is as sharp a chronicler of the vicissitudes of love as he ever was

Usury (Noun)

Meaning: the action or practice of lending money at unreasonably high rates of interest

Example: As Mongolian incomes tended to be seasonal there was ample opportunity for usury

Terse (Adjective)

Meaning: sparing in the use of words; abrupt

Example: The author favours short, spare sentences and a terse descriptive style

Truculent (Adjective)

Meaning: eager or quick to argue or fight; aggressively defiant

Example: So how did this truculent loner become one of our best loved national mascot?

Trite (Adjective)

Meaning: (of a remark or idea) lacking originality or freshness; dull on account of overuse

Example: Children need to be aware of the real world, not force-fed trite fairytales

Syntax (Noun)

Meaning: the arrangement of words and phrases to create well-formed sentences in a language

Example: Sometimes a translation will not match the syntax of the original sentence

Put your thinking cap on and try to answer the following questions to understand how much you have grasped.

1. The document should at least demonstrate correct use of __________ and grammar. Which of the following words fits best in the sentence? (Syntax, Trite)
2. Her tone in doing so was __________________, self-satisfied and arrogant. Which of the following words fits best in the sentence? ( Truculent, Terse)
3. Can you think of some antonyms for the word Usury?
4. Can you think of some synonyms for the word Vex?

Watch out for this space for your weekly update on improving word power.

(Definitions and examples are from Oxford Languages)