October 12th Vocab Words

Note that I study all material, even that which is just a review. Feel free to post challenges for me, make memorization suggestions, correct misused words, or whatever else you want. The reason I am doing this is for the fun of an interactive study experience.

Here are three vocab words (this must be depressing vocab day), with a link to a sound clip and definition as well as the definition given by my GRE study manual...and several vocabulary sentences made up by yours truly.

enervate (verb): to weaken; to reduce in vitality (or as adjective: lacking physical, mental or moral vigor)

• The recession has had an enervating effect on my friend Eli, who has been out of work for months and has yet to get up the steam to begin applying for new work.
• This particular word enervates my vocabulary studies, as it has no appeal to me when I try to use it functionally in a sentence.
• Each instance in which she stole a block of cheese or a box of butter from the market enervated her, until her moral substance and will to do right-- let alone her belief that she was worthy of upright behavior--no longer existed.
• The war was enervating for the troops, and the soldiers returned home broken and disillusioned.
• The heat was enervating, and we were soon out of water, but we kept up our strength with spirited conversation and the common will that we would all survive.
• Early parenthood and the resulting disturbance of sleep can not only enervate, but cause something of a temporary insanity.
• In a self-destructive effort to enervate, he proceeded to create a self-loathing, self-depreciating list of his top 100 worst qualities.
• Listening to her speech served to enervate rather than motivate her audience of medical interns.

fulminate (verb): to loudly attack or denounce (noun form is a salt that is often explosive)

• In his attack on the politicians, he fulminated at length the whole lot of them.
• His lecture was a fulminating one, full of harsh words for all but the top students in his class.
• At length she fulminated, and by the end of the conversation she had demolished the candidate's rapport with the community activist.
• If you publicly fulminate in any way, you will no longer be considered a fair and unbiased reporter.
• She didn't plan to fulminate on the city manager's lack of accountability, but by the end of the city council meeting she had had enough.
• It was hurtful enough to listen to the fulminating and mini-lectures, but when the direct insults began, I simply walked out.
• Sometimes, a little fulminating is exactly what is needed, as we tend to look at these issues with too great an apathy.
• I'll blame my excessive fulmination on the fact that I had just had a very long week and these particular matters stir in me the greatest concerns for our shared future.

inured (adjective): accustomed to accepting something undesirable (an an intransitive verb is inurement, which is to become of advantage)

• The children in this foster home had all become inured to parental drug use, so the foster parent behavior did not raise alarms and unfortunately was long silently considered as a given.
• She was so inured to hardship that it became her strength.
• (Verb form) She wrote the contract for the inurement of the company's interests.
• Having become inured to the conditions of the classroom, he did not realize that some children had electric lights under which to study and desks at which to sit.
• In prison he became inured to the constant verbal batterings of those who had authority.
• Having no idea that the same behavior might provoke in others intense recoiling, she treated her bodily discharges as inevitably public events just as she had become inured during her childhood with her abusive, exhibitionist mother.
• Inured to the truculence of his father, he had no idea that he could be treated with any manner of kindness, let alone predictability.