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.
