Difficult Words : Incense, Incantation, Incessant, Incipient, Incisive and Incongruous





Difficult Words : Incense, Incantation, Incessant, Incipient, Incisive and Incongruous

Incantation (IN kan TAY shun) n: a chant, the repetition of statements or phrases in a way reminiscent of a chant

Much to our delight, the wizard's incantation eventually caused the small stone to turn into a sleek black doll.

The students quickly became deaf to the principal's incantations about the importance of school spirit.




Incessant (in SES unt) adj: unceasing

I will go deaf and lose my mind if you children don't stop your incessant bickering.

The noise from the city street was incessant. There always seemed to be a fire engine or a police car screaming by.




Incense (in SENS) v: to make very angry

Jeremy was incensed when I told him that even though he was stupid and loathsome, he would always be my best friend.

My comment about his lovely painting of a tree incensed the artist, who said it was actually a portrait of his mother.




Incipient (in SIP ee unt) adj: beginning, emerging

Sitting in class, Henrietta detected an incipient tingle of boredom that told her she would soon be asleep.

Support for the plan was incipient, and the planners hoped it would soon grow and spread.




Incisive (in SYE siv) adj: cutting right to the heart of the matter

When a surgeon cuts into you, he or she makes an incision. To be incisive is to be as sharp as a scalpel in a figurative sense.

After hours of debate, Louis offered a few incisive comments that made it immediately clear to everyone how dumb the original idea had been.

Lloyd's essays were always incisive. He never wasted any words, and his reasoning was always sharp and persuasive.




Incongruous (in KON groo us) adj: not harmonious, not consistent, not appropriate, not fitting in

The ultra-modern kitchen seemed incongruous in the restored eighteenth-century farmhouse. It was an incongruity.

Bill's membership in the motorcycle gang was incongruous with his mild personality and his career as a management consultant.




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