alliteration

Alliteration is when you use words that have the same sound at the beginning, like
"Stellar students synthesize sweet sentences."

It's a time-honored poetic device to make a string of words start with the same
consonant sound, and that is what alliteration labels. For example, in A
Midsummer's Night Dream, Shakespeare broke out the B's: "With bloody blameful
blade he bravely broached his bloody boiling breast." And in the song "From A to G"
by Blackalicious, a verse with words beginning with the "C" sound describes a "crazy
character, constantly creating concoctions."

allusion

That little nod to a Dylan Thomas poem that you sneaked into your PowerPoint
presentation? That was an allusion, a quick reference to something that your
audience will have to already know in order to "get."

An allusion often references a famous work of art or literature, or to something from

your own life. For example, you might say, "I obviously am no expert at love" an
allusion to your failed relationships. The main thing to remember is that an allusion
is a brief hint or a quick mention. Its meant to bring to mind a particular subject,
but it always avoids getting into it in great depth.

allusion/illusion/delusion

Novelists, magicians, and other tricksters keep these words busy. Novelists love
an allusion, an indirect reference to something like a secret treasure for the reader
to find; magicians heart illusions, or fanciful fake-outs; but tricksters suffer
from delusions, ideas that have no basis in reality.

Blink and you'll miss it: an allusion is a quick indirect mention of something. It's a
literary device that stimulates ideas, associations, and extra information in the
reader's mind with only a word or two:

Littlemore was not quick at catching literary allusions. (Henry James)

Thomas Paine's writings contain several affectionate allusions to his father, but
none to his mother. (Daniel Moncure Conway)

Magicians love to create illusions, or visual tricks, like making a tiger disappear or
sawing a person in half. Your eye can be fooled by an optical illusion, and Dorothy
and the gang get to the bottom of the Wizard's illusion and discover he's just a
regular guy. Illusions aren't always glamorous; sometimes they're just hiding the
man behind the curtain:

"We have no illusion that these credits are going to create lots of new jobs," the
editorial said. (New York Times)
But while investing in your company's stock might feel safer than betting on the
stock market as a whole, that is usually an illusion. (Seattle Times)

Delusions are like illusions but they're meaner. A delusion is a belief in something
despite the fact that it's completely untrue. Hence the phrase is delusions of
grandeur. People with delusions often wind up on the shrink's couch. Whether you
are trying to deceive yourself or someone is trying to deceive you, if you believe the
false idea, you have a delusion about reality:

Delusions are closely allied to hallucinations and generally accompany the latter.
(Samuel Henry Prince)

Two medical experts had concluded then that the accused gunman suffered from
schizophrenia, disordered thinking and delusions. (Reuters)

"Basically, I think he's suffering from delusions of grandeur," he said. (Chicago

Tribune)

An allusion shows up in art, while illusions love kids' parties. If you believe
something despite reality, you have a delusion.

apostrophe

An apostrophe is a punctuation mark used in contractions to replace missing letters.

The contraction "we'll" stands for "we will," with the apostrophe replacing "wi." It
can also show possession, as in "Mary's car." The apostrophe indicates the car
belongs to Mary.

To correctly pronounce apostrophe, accent the second syllable: "uh-POSS-truh-fee."

In addition to being a punctuation mark, apostrophe can also be a literary device in
which the speaker of a poem talks to someone who is not there. A famous example
of this is Walt Whitman's "O Captain! My Captain!" in which he addresses the
deceased Abraham Lincoln: "O Captain! my Captain! rise up and hear the bells."

O stranger of the future!

O inconceivable being!
whatever the shape of your house,
however you scoot from place to place,
no matter how strange and colorless the clothes you may wear,
I bet nobody likes a wet dog either.
I bet everyone in your pub,
even the children, pushes her away.
To a Stranger Born in Some Distant Country Hundreds of Years from Now, Billy
Collins

assonance
"Blue cartoons play through the boob tube" is an example of assonance when a
bunch of words in a row share similar sounds (like the oo sound in the quote).

In poetry, assonance is when vowels within a word rhyme with other words, and
there are lots of examples. Heres one from English poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge:
That solitude which suits abstruser musings. Say it out loud and you can hear
assonance clearly. The word comes from the Latin assonare, which literally
translates as respond to. If youre reading a sentence, and the words sound like
theyre responding to each other you could be detecting assonance.

Those images that yet,

Fresh images beget,
That dolphin-torn, that gong-tormented sea.
Byzantium, W.B. Yeats

caesura

A caesura is a break in a conversation, a line of verse, or a song. Usually,

a caesura means total silence, but not for long.

A caesura is a pause, or an interruption. In musical notation, a caesura is a break in

the music, which can be a good time for a trumpet player to catch his breath. A
caesura is also a break in the middle of a line of poetry. It is sometimes marked by a
question mark, exclamation point, or period, as in the Sylvia Plath poem Mirror: I
think it is a part of my heart. But it flickers."

I'm nobody! Who are you?

Are you nobody, too?
Then there's a pair of us don't tell!
I'm Nobody ! Who are you?, Emily Dickinson

consonance

Use consonance to describe a state of agreement or harmony of parts, and is often

refers to a pleasing combination of musical sounds.

In its musical sense, the opposite of consonance is dissonance. Consonance can

also refer to a repetition of consonants in words that are close together, as the "ck"
in "thick sock." In this sense, the opposite is assonance, which is a repetition of
vowel sounds, as the "a's" in "bake sale."

I'll swing by my ankles.

She'll cling to your knees.
As you hang by your nose,
From a high-up trapeze.
But just one thing, please,
As we float through the breeze,
Don't sneeze.
The Acrobats, Shel Silverstein

couplet

A couplet is two lines of poetry that usually rhyme. Here's a famous couplet: "Good
night! Good night! Parting is such sweet sorrow / That I shall say good night till it be
morrow."

The couplet above comes from Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet, which is a play, not
a poem. But Shakespeare often used rhyming couplets at the end of scenes to
signal the ending. Couplets are very common in poetry. Often whole poems are
written in couplet form two lines of rhyming poetry, followed by two more lines
with a different rhyme, and so on. Robert Frost, one of America's great poets, wrote
many poems using couplets.

For sweetest things turn sourest by their deeds;

Lilies that fester smell far worse than weeds.
- Sonnet 94, William Shakespeare

enjambment

When a phrase, a clause, or a sentence in a line of poetry doesn't finish at the line
break but spills over into the next line, that's an enjambment.

If you know French, you'll recognize the word jambe "leg" an enjambment is like a
leg striding from one line to the next. You can see that leap from one line into the
next in T. S. Eliot's poem "The Waste Land," where each of the first three lines ends
with an enjambment: "April is the cruelest month, breeding/Lilacs out of the dead
land, mixing/Memory and desire, stirring/Dull roots with spring rain."

A thing of beauty is a joy forever:

Its loveliness increases; it will never
Pass into nothingness but still will keep
A bower quiet for us, and asleep
Full of sweet dreams, and health, and quiet breathing.
Endymion, John Keats

hyperbole

Praising your favorite sports team is one thing, but if you call the team the most
incredible group of humans ever to walk the earth, then you're going overboard and
indulging in hyperbole.

The hyper- in hyperbole means "beyond," so it's a good sign that the word has to do
with going above and beyond what's necessary. Someone who gets hyperactive
about something and ends up hyperventilating (breathing too hard) might be prone
to the exaggerated style of speaking known as hyperbole. If you find yourself
talking about the absolutely best (or worst) thing of all time, it's time to take it down
a notch and cut down on the hyperbole.

Ill love you, dear, Ill love you

Till China and Africa meet,
And the river jumps over the mountain
And the salmon sing in the street,
Ill love you till the ocean
Is folded and hung up to dry
As I Walked One Evening, W.H. Auden

internal rhyme

An internal rhyme is a sneaky kind of rhyme between words either in the same line
or between a word in the middle of a line and the end of the following line. You need
advanced poetic license to use it.

American writer Edgar Allan Poe was the master of the internal rhyme. In his poem
"The Raven" he uses all kinds of them, including standard rhymes: "While I nodded,
nearly napping, suddenly there came a tapping,/ As of someone gently rapping,
rapping at my chamber door./" Kinda makes you dizzy which of course is the
intent.

Double, double toil and trouble,

Fire burn and cauldron bubble
Macbeth, William Shakespeare

litotes

You probably use litotes every day. Ever say, "He's not the brightest bulb in the
lamp," meaning "He's dumb"? Or "She's no beauty queen" meaning "She's ugly"?
Well, those are examples of litotes a way of saying something by saying what it's
not.

Beware using litotes too often, especially in written form. George Orwell, who had a
lot to say about the misuses of language, once suggested that a good cure for the
excessive use of the "not un-" format (a classic litotes), as in "a not unintelligent
person," was to memorize the following sentence: "A not unblack dog was chasing a
not unsmall rabbit across a not ungreen field." It usually does the trick.
We were going through the three first acts, and not unsuccessfully upon the whole.
--Mansfield Park, Jane Austen

metaphor

If you brag that "the world's your oyster," you're using a metaphor from
Shakespeare, who knew a thing or two about figures of speech.

Good writers know their way around a metaphor, where you make an analogy
between two things to show how one resembles the other in some way. When a
character from Shakespeare calls the world his oyster, that's his boastful way of
saying that all the riches of the world are his for the taking, like plucking a pearl
from an oyster shell. Shakespeare also wrote, "All the world's a stage." Oyster?
Stage? Come on, Will, get your metaphors straight!

metaphor/simile

Both make comparisons, but a metaphor compares one thing to another straight up,
while a simile uses "like" or "as."

The word metaphor comes from the Greek metaphora "to transfer." With
a metaphor, an idea is transferred from one word to another. It's implicit, like in this
metaphor from Flannery O'Connor, "He had measured five feet four inches of pure
gamecock." But don't mix them mixed metaphors get confusing. Don't put all of
your eggs in one doghouse. Wha? Here are some examples of the word itself:

Driving is such a metaphor, literally and figuratively, for freedom as it is in the

movie so I'm amazed when some people never learn it. (Los Angeles Times)

Never mind what Lemmy said with respect, 'Ace of Spades' can be viewed as
a metaphor. (BBC)

Then it was all about finding the right analogy or metaphor for the way to tell an
audience. (New York Times)

A simile is similar but it always uses "like" or "as." In fact, the word simile comes
from the Latin for "a like thing." A simile's comparison is explicit. Just like that old
joke from Fat Albert, "You're like school on Saturday: no class!" But seriously folks,
here are some examples of the word in action:

Clouds roasted like marshmallows; everything eventually scorched

beyond simile. (The New Yorker)

It's like McDonald's,' she said, pleased to have landed on a simile that an American
reporter would surely appreciate. ( New York Times)
A metaphor is direct Rudolpho is a cow! But a simile can soften the blow
Rudolpho is like a cow. Use them in descriptive writing or any time you're feeling
sassy.

She really was a most charming girl, and might have passed for a captive fairy,
whom that truculent ogre, Old Barley, had pressed into his service.
-Great Expectations, Charles Dickens

octave

An octave is a musical interval of eight notes. Sing from do to do on key

and you will have an octave.

Like octagon and octopus, the key to an octave is eight. An octave may be the
entire eight-note scale, or just the bottom and top notes, like C and C. Octave can
also refer to an eight-line group in an Italian sonnet, or an eight-day festival; in fact,
the word comes from the Latin expression octava dies, meaning eighth day as
in the eighth festival day after a feast. The ave in octave is usually pronounced iv.

For the moon never beams without bringing me dreams

Of the beautiful Annabel Lee;
And the stars never rise but I feel the bright eyes
Of the beautiful Annabel Lee;
And so, all the night-tide, I lie down by the side
Of my darling, my darling, my life and my bride,
In the sepulchre there by the sea,
In her tomb by the sounding sea.
Annabel Lee, Edgar Allan Poe

onomatopoeia

Boom! Bang! Crash! When a word is formed from the sound that an associated thing
makes, call it an example of onomatopoeia.

In Greek, onomatopoeia (on-uh-mah-tuh-PEE-ah) simply means "word-making," but

in English it refers to a very specific process of word-making: an attempt to capture
the sound of something. Examples of onomatopoeia in English include burble, buzz,
slosh, ratatat, and thud. Words created by onomatopoeia can seem totally natural,
but they can be surprisingly different from language to language: in Japanese, dogs
say wan wan, but in Greek they say gav gav.

It went zip when it moved and bop when it stopped,

And whirr when it stood still.
I never knew just what it was and I guess I never will.
The Marvelous Toy, Tom Paxton

paradox

Here's a mind-bender: "This statement is false." If you think it's true, then it must be
false, but if you think it's false, it must be true. Now, that's a paradox!

A paradox is a logical puzzler that contradicts itself in a baffling way. "This

statement is false" is a classic example, known to logicians as "the liar's paradox."
Paradoxical statements may seem completely self-contradictory, but they can be
used to reveal deeper truths. When Oscar Wilde said, "I can resist anything except
temptation," he used a paradox to point to our fundamental weakness to give in to
tempting things (like chocolate or a pretty smile), all the while imagining that we
can hold firm and resist them.

paradox/oxymoron

A paradox is a logical puzzle that seems to contradict itself. No it isn't. Actually, it is.
An oxymoron is a figure of speech words that seem to cancel each other out, like
"working vacation" or "instant classic."

A paradox makes your brain hurt because it seems like something is true and false
at the same time. M.C. Escher's "Relativity" is a visual paradox. The floor is the
ceiling! Part of the fun of a paradox is figuring out if it really is one. How about this
one: A father and son get in a car wreck and the father dies. The son goes to the
hospital, but the doctor says, "I can't operate on him. He's my son." Confused? Ha!
Not a paradox, though the doctor is his mom. Here's a paradox by William
Wordsworth, "The child is father of the man." Check out the word in action:

"He seemed to absorb the baffling paradoxes of quantum theory with ease." (Big
Science)

"The answer, for Muji, is a neat paradox, like a Zen koan: massive minimalism
through perpetual growth." (New Yorker)

Oh jumbo shrimp of the world, we're not calling you morons. You're oxymorons! The
word itself is an oxymoron, a contradiction. It comes from the Greek oxys for
"sharp" and moros for "stupid." Sharply stupid. Oxymorons gone mild wild:

"This article proves that good economic news is an oxymoron." (New York Times)

"The ultimate oxymoron: I was once invited to an agoraphobic convention," he said.

(Washington Post)
Both are contradictions, but a paradox is something to think on, and an oxymoron is
a description, enjoyed in the moment then gone.

I can resist anything but temptation.

Oscar Wilde

personification

Personification means "giving humans qualities to an abstract idea," as in a movie

villain who is the personification of evil.

You can use the noun personification in two ways. In the first, a person who is
known for a certain quality, like wisdom, is said to represent that quality in a way
any can understand, like a patient, generous person who is the personification of
kindness. On the other hand, personification can give human qualities to something
that isnt human. For example, you might say, The sea is angry, assigning it a
human emotion.

Pearl Button swung on the little gate in front of the House of Boxes. It was the early
afternoon of a sunshiny day with little winds playing hide-and-seek in it.
How Pearl Button Was Kidnapped, Katherine Mansfield

anapest

Twas the night before Christmas, when all through the house
Not a creature was stirring, not even a mouse;
'Twas the Night Before Christmas, Clement Clarke Moore

An anapest here is "Twas the night".

a metrical unit with unstressed-unstressed-stressed syllables

An Anapest is a three-syllable foot accented on the last syllable.

dactyl

metrical unit with stressed-unstressed-unstressed syllables

There's a lovely contrast between the skippety dactyl of "Merry mites" and the
surprising, ceremonious spondee, "Welcome".

Half a League, Half a League, Half a League, onward

The Charge of the Light Brigade, Alfred Lord Tennyson

spondee
a metrical unit with stressed-stressed syllables

"Hot sun" and "cool fire" are both spondees.

The Guardian Oct 11, 2010

By the shore of Gitche Gumee,

By the shining Big-Sea-Water,
The Song of Hiawatha, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

A spondee here is "By the".

trochee

a metrical unit with stressed-unstressed syllables

"Beauty" by this usage, is a trochee, "beautiful" a dactyl, "relate" an iamb,

"intercede" an anapest.
Paull Franklin Baum

I have been one acquainted with the night.

I have walked out in rain -- and back in rain.
I have outwalked the furthest city light.
I have looked down the saddest city lane.
Acquainted with the Night, Robert Frost

sestet

The noun sestet means the six final lines of a sonnet, or another group of six lines of
poetry. You might discuss a sestet during a college literature class.

Use sestet to talk about very specific lines of verse, the last six in a sonnet. It's most
common to find a sestet in Italian sonnets, such as those written by Petrarch and
Dante. In English poetry, it's more usual to see a couplet two lines of verse at
the end of a sonnet. The noun sestet occasionally fills in for the word sextet, or
group of six things. The Latin root is sextus, or "sixth."

O mistress mine, where are you roaming?

O stay and hear! your true-love's coming
That can sing both high and low;
Trip no further, pretty sweeting,
Journey's end in lovers' meeting
Every wise man's son doth know.
Twelfth Night, Act II, Scene 3, William Shakespeare

simile
Use the noun simile when describing a comparison between two fundamentally
different things, such as: "His voice was smooth, like butter in a warm pan."

A simile (pronounced SIM-uh-lee) is a comparison that usually uses the words "like"
or "as": "Me without a mic is like a beat without a snare," rapped Lauryn Hill in the
song "How Many Mics." The word comes from similus, a Latin word meaning "the
same." A simile is different from a metaphor, in which the comparison is less
explicit, as in Shakespeare's line "All the world's a stage."

metaphor/simile

Both make comparisons, but a metaphor compares one thing to another straight up,
while a simile uses "like" or "as."

The word metaphor comes from the Greek metaphora "to transfer." With
a metaphor, an idea is transferred from one word to another. It's implicit, like in this
metaphor from Flannery O'Connor, "He had measured five feet four inches of pure
gamecock." But don't mix them mixed metaphors get confusing. Don't put all of
your eggs in one doghouse. Wha? Here are some examples of the word itself:

Driving is such a metaphor, literally and figuratively, for freedom as it is in the

movie so I'm amazed when some people never learn it. (Los Angeles Times)

Never mind what Lemmy said with respect, 'Ace of Spades' can be viewed as
a metaphor. (BBC)

Then it was all about finding the right analogy or metaphor for the way to tell an
audience. (New York Times)

A simile is similar but it always uses "like" or "as." In fact, the word simile comes
from the Latin for "a like thing." A simile's comparison is explicit. Just like that old
joke from Fat Albert, "You're like school on Saturday: no class!" But seriously folks,
here are some examples of the word in action:

Clouds roasted like marshmallows; everything eventually scorched

beyond simile. (The New Yorker)

It's like McDonald's,' she said, pleased to have landed on a simile that an American
reporter would surely appreciate. ( New York Times)

A metaphor is direct Rudolpho is a cow! But a simile can soften the blow
Rudolpho is like a cow. Use them in descriptive writing or any time you're feeling
sassy.
synaesthesia

a sensation that normally occurs in one sense modality occurs when another
modality is stimulated

Synaesthesia is where the senses are mixed together - for example seeing colour
when listening to music - or tasting food and hearing chords.
BBC Apr 19, 2014

Tasting of Flora and the country green,

Dance, and Provencal song, and sun burnt mirth!
Ode to a Nightingale, John Keats

gouge

To gouge can mean to make a hole or dent in something, or to swindle or steal by

overcharging. If your local gas station raises prices because a storm is coming, you
may say that the station owner is gouging you and that's illegal.

The verb gouge means to cut or carve. You can use special chisels
to gouge linoleum for interesting design in printing. As a noun, a gouge is the tool
you would use instead of a flat-head chisel, a gouge has a trough to make the
gouge marks of the design. Another meaning of the verb gouge is an indentation in
the surface of something. If you're not careful with the screwdriver, you'll
accidentally gouge a hole in the wall.

make a groove in

The bite marks could have been chiselled out, so deep are they cut into the metal,
with whole chunks gouged from the frame.

refractory
Imagine yourself pulling a dog who doesn't want to walk. The dog is refractory, or
stubbornly resisting your authority.

The word refractory comes from a Latin word meaning obstinate and can also be
used to mean not responsive to something. If you have a cold you can't shake, you
could say you have a refractory cough. The word can also be used to describe a
material that maintains its strength at very high heats. The outside of the space
shuttle is made of refractory material, so that it can reenter the atmosphere without
burning up.

stubbornly resistant to authority or control

In process of time, Parliament and public opinion brought

these refractorylandlords to their senses.

supersede

If you click on the link after this description, a new screen will supersede, or replace,
this one. A longer description will supplant, or supersede, by replacing this brief
one.

Most words that include super have something good going on. Supersede is from
the 16th-century Latin for "sit on top," and it often means to replace with something
better. A version 10 of a computer game will supersede, version 9, making it more
exciting. Unfortunately, a person might be replaced too, as in "the younger running
back will supersede the veteran player as he gets older." To supersede is generally a
good thing, but being superseded is not always that great for the replaced person.

stolid

A stolid person cant be moved to smile or show much sign of life, in much the same
way as something solid, like a giant boulder, is immovable. Both are expressionless.

It's hard to get excited about the word stolid. It refers to emotionless people or
things, and it even sounds pretty dull. Your face may be stolid, as you plod through
the unemotional history of the word born in the 17th century of little more than
Latin words for "foolish." In some definitions, stolid does have more complimentary
synonyms, such as "dependable" or "calm," but these can be overshadowed by
other words for stolid "empty," "blank," and "vacant," to name a few.

placate

When a husband shows up with flowers after he's fought with his wife, he's trying
to placate her. If you placate someone, you stop them from being angry by giving
them something or doing something that pleases them.

If your little sister is mad that the dog ate her favorite teddy bear, you could placate
her by buying her an ice cream cone. A near synonym for placate is appease. The
origin of placate is Latin placare "to calm or soothe." The related Latin
verb placere is the source of English please.

inadvertently

Inadvertently is an adverb that means "without knowledge or intent," like when

you inadvertently take someone else's coat from the coatroom because it looks just
like yours.

When you do something inadvertently, you don't mean to do it you might

inadvertently step in a puddle, leave something important at home, or hurt your
friend's feelings. Some things that happen inadvertently aren't mistakes, though:
They happen by chance. For example, if you just happen to park your car at the
exact place that blocks a bus from hitting a pedestrian, you've inadvertently saved
a life.

apprise

To apprise someone about something is to fill them in, to give them the scoop. If
someone in your immediate family wins the mega-bucks lottery, you want to be the
first one to be apprised of that event!

Don't confused the verbs apprise and appraise. Appraise means to determine the
value of something either its quality or its monetary worth. Apprise, on the other
hand, means to inform or make aware. This word has a rather formal, weighty tone.
Presidents get apprised of foreign affairs, but you will most likely not get apprised of
weather conditions or dinner plans.

efficacy

The degree to which a method or medicine brings about a specific result is

its efficacy. You might not like to eat it, but you can't question the efficacy of
broccoli as a health benefit.

Efficacy is a more formal way to say effectiveness, both of which stem from the
Latin verb efficere "to work out, accomplish." The effectiveness, or efficacy, of
something is how well it works or brings the results you hoped for. A scientist does
research to determine the efficacy of a vaccine or medicine under development. If it
is efficacious, it will cure or prevent a disease.

diffidence

The noun diffidence refers to a lack of self-confidence. Your diffidence might be the
reason why you never say "hi" to the cute guy or gal in the elevator or why you
never ask for a raise.
The noun diffidence comes from the Latin word diffidere meaning "to mistrust" or
"to lack confidence." Diffidence is often mistaken for snootiness because people
don't understand that the diffident person is shy and lacking in confidence. "They
asked him to be the team leader, but he expressed diffidence, saying that he didn't
think he had enough time to do the job justice, nor did he think he had enough
experience."

tractable

If your little brother quietly obeys your instructions and waits for you at the food
court while you and your friends wander around the mall, he's probably
a tractable child, meaning he's obedient, flexible, and responds well to directions.

Note the similarity between tractable and tractor. Both come from the Latin
word tractare, which originally meant "to drag about." You can think of a tractable
person as someone who can be dragged about easily, like a plow being dragged by
a tractor.

lethargic

When you feel lethargic, you're sluggish or lacking energy. Being sleepy or hungry
can make anyone lethargic.

Being lethargic makes it hard to get anything done: you feel weak and sleepy.
Whatever the reason, a lethargic person needs to snap out of it and get some
energy, maybe by eating something or by taking a nap. Being lethargic also goes
well with watching TV, since that takes almost no energy at all. When you feel
lethargic, you don't have any energy to spare.

acidify

To acidify something is to chemically turn it into an acid or make it more acidic.

Farmers often acidify soil by adding fertilizer to it.

When you acidify something, you increase its acid content or make it more sour. Too
much carbon dioxide dissolving into oceans acidifies them, one of the many
negative effects of global warming. When it comes to food, you're most likely to
acidify a dish by adding citrus fruits, like lemons, which taste sour. The root word of
the verb acidify is the Latin acidus, which means "sour or sharp."

amplify

The verb amplify means to crank up the volume. Speakers amplify, or raise, the
volume of the noise coming through a microphone so that everyone at the rock
show can hear.

Amplify comes from the Old French word amplifier meaning "to enlarge or expand."
It refers to making a sound expand, but it can also crank up something like a
disagreement if you spread rumors, you might amplify an argument. It can
enlarge an idea if you don't realize how bad your health is, your doctor might
amplify your test results by explaining them to you in simple, and possibly
frightening terms.