Unit 5 Challenge Words and Nota Bene

abase

to lower in rank, office, prestige, or esteem

acclivity

an ascending slope (as of a hill)

basso

a low deep voice

basso relievo

a technique where carved, molded, or stamped figures and shapes project only slightly from a flat background surface

escalade

an act of scaling especially the walls of a fortification

impend

to be about to occur

propensity

an often intense natural inclination or preference

scansion

the analysis of verse to show its meter

Nota Bene

Dictionaries give levity a second definition, “lightness in weight”; however, scientific usage requires buoyancy when applied to objects in water, or density when they are weighed.

The Latin antonym of "levis, “light,” is gravis, “heavy,” from which comes many familiar words, among them aggravate, gravitate, grave, and grief. The opposite of levity is gravity, “seriousness” or “weightiness.” In its literal sense gravity is what causes objects to have weight.

Nota Bene

Although penchant and proclivity may seem similar in meaning, they function differently. A penchant is a preference for something; dogs may have a penchant, or fondness, for bones and a proclivity, or inclination, to bark at the mail carrier. A proclivity is an inner impulse or direction, a characteristic action: a proclivity altruism, spending money, or fatalism, for example.

Nota Bene

The word transcendental has a meaning similar to that of transcendent: “rising above common thought or ideas.” Transcendental also has a more philosophical meaning: “asserting a supernatural or mystical element in experience.” In the 1860s, a group of New Englanders known as Transcendentalists believed in the presence of God in nature, and placed great faith in individualism and self-reliance, especially as expressed by Ralph Waldo Emerson, Margaret Fuller, and Henry David Thoreau.