English Vocabulary Week 1: July 28-Aug 04, 2018

Hello Everyone! And, welcome to 'English is Easy with RB'! My name is Rajdeep Banerjee. This is the first post of the series, 'English Vocabulary'. Each week I will help you learn new English words chosen from world renowned newspapers. For obvious reasons, this series would be important for those who would like to increase their word stock. So, make sure you go through the entire write-up. 

Let's begin.

1. Sabotage- a deliberate action aimed at spoiling something in order to prevent it from being successful... Let me explain it...

Suppose there are two multinational companies, X and Y, who are competing against each other. Now, X is prepared to do anything to topple Y in order to take over the market. So, what does X do? X bribes some of the staff members of Y whose job would be to harm their own company secretly.

In this situation, we can say that X is planning to sabotage Y. And, if X is successful in this task, we would say X has sabotaged Y. We can even use 'sabotage' as a noun. X is behind the sabotage.

This word is especially used in American politics at this moment, where many news agencies reported that the 2016 Presidential elections may have been sabotaged by a foreign superpower.

2. Redress- to rectify or correct something which is unfair or wrong

Let us try to understand it.

Imagine a situation where the recruiting process run by the government in a certain country was biased for many years. In that country, only those people got the jobs who supported the political party in power. However, after the elections, the new party in power is trying to get things done properly. They are trying to redress the injustices of the past.

Now, there is an idiomatic expression where 'redress' is used-

Redress the balance

It means 'to make a situation equal or fair again'.

3. Cleave- to split something into different parts

For example, The war cleaved the country into two parts.

Cleave is also a part of an Idiomatic expression, 'cleave to a belief/idea'. Interestingly, it means 'to continue to believe in or be loyal to a belief.'

For example, 'He is cleaved to the belief that there cannot be life on other planets.'

4. Disparage- to suggest that something or somebody is not important

For example,

Her parents disparaged her success in badminton.

We get to learn two more words derived from 'disparage'- its adjective, 'disparaging' as in 'His disparaging remarks made her cry',

and, its adverb, 'disparagingly' as in 'He spoke disparagingly about her success in the competition.'

5. Affluent- someone who has a lot of money and a good standard of living

For example,

She belongs to an affluent family. So, she spends a lot of money.