extenuate
gloss over
palliate
whitewash
extraneous
extrinsic
immaterial
inessential
irrelevant
superfluous
Stretch, as here considered, means to extend a thing in length, breadth, or in both dimensions: to stretch a rubber band; to stretch canvas; to stretch a sweater by pinning it while wet. Stretch is now also used as an adjective applied to articles of clothing made of synthetic fibers that can be stretched to fit a variety of sizes: stretch socks. Widen means to increase only a thing’s breadth: to widen a highway by adding two lanes. Widen, like extend, may be used figuratively to apply to any broadening: to widen (or extend) one’s interests to include the study of nature. See enlarge, escalate, persist.
Antonyms: contract, cut short, narrow, shorten, shrink, terminate, truncate .
These words all mean to make seem less wrong, evil, blameworthy, etc. Extenuate suggests the effort to lessen the blame incurred by an offense, while palliate implies concealment, as of the incriminating facts or the gravity of their consequences: to extenuate past neglect by present concern; to palliate the errors in a book. [Starvation may serve to extenuate an instance of theft; A doting parent may seek to palliate the excesses of an errant son.]
Gloss over stresses the disguising or misrepresentation of incriminating facts: to gloss over a mediocre academic record. To whitewash is to represent by completely false information or a dishonest judgment: The accused man went free, whitewashed by a packed board of investigation. See LESSEN, MISLEADING.
Antonyms: enhance, exaggerate, heighten, intensify.
These words refer to whatever is not an inherent part of a given consideration or entity. Extraneous stresses something that is not necessary or has no bearing, but the word is otherwise very general in its implications. It does suggest a difference in kind: sorting out the hard-core facts from the extraneous interpretations. The unnecessary element referred to may, if not excluded, be either harmless or deleterious: extraneous substances that make the sunburn preparation smell pleasant but have no healing effect; extraneous minerals in the water supply that made it unsafe to drink. Superfluous is different in its effect, often pointing to simple excess, not a difference in kind: wiping away the superfluous oil with a clean rag. Even where the word shows a less clearcut contrast with extraneous, it still points to what is useless or redundant: a room cluttered with superfluous furniture.
By contrast, extrinsic functions as an intensification of extraneous, emphasizing that something is by its very nature completely unlike a given entity or completely outside the scope of some concern: pointing out that oxygen consumption might well be extrinsic to the life cycle as it may have developed in other parts of the universe; literary standards that are extrinsic to any understanding of popular media. Inessential is more like extraneous in referring to what may be present and tolerated but is in any case not needed and may therefore be excluded by choice or necessity: an editor who helped the novelist cut from his book those scenes that were inessential to the main theme; ordering the people in the lifeboat to throw overboard everything that was inessential to their survival.
Immaterial refers not to what is unnecessary, in excess, or unlike something else, but to what has no effect or makes no difference: She told him that it was immaterial to her whether he stayed or left. In the context of reasoning, the word may point to what contributes nothing to an objective proof and thus is unimportant: the judge’s ruling that
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the political beliefs of the accused were immaterial to the question of his guilt.. Irrelevant also indicates what is unimportant or inapplicable, in this case because it lacks any direct bearing on the concern at hand: proof that the mother’s dreams were irrelevant to the development of the fetus. Most specifically, the word suggests a lack of logical relationship as in a non sequitur: injecting irrelevant details about the man’s life into our consideration of his candidacy. See marginal, trivial.
Antonyms: essential, intrinsic, material, relevant, significant.
F
These words refer to a loose grouping of like-minded people within a larger aggregate. Faction suggests a relatively small grouping that coheres because of attitudes or objectives that are different from that of others in the larger whole. A faction, by implication, is more concerned with winning acceptance for its views than for the welfare or effectiveness of the parent group; rather than compromise these views a faction might eave the parent body and form a rival group. Thus, the word may have pejorative connotations ranging from stubbornness, disharmony, to outri /j lt disloyalty : He begged them to set party unity above the bickering of factions. A splinter group is an even more cohesive and well-defined unit that has already or is just about to break away from the larger parent group, usually because of doctrinal disagreement; it may be of doubtful stability or endurance: splinter groups that vote with their party m national elections but against it in local elections; a movement that was destroyed by its tendency to break into splinter groups. Sect is used primarily of religious groups that adhere to their own special doctrines and either remain loosely associated with a larger group or break away from it completely: the formation of a number of Protestant sects. The word may also be used for any identifiable groupings within
a dogmatic aggregate: Maoist sects at work within de-Stalinized countries.
T 2 an< ^ r ©fer to far larger groupings than the previous words.
Both also refer to much looser allegiances. Wing, however, need not suggest actual membership in some organized parent group so much as a definable position within a spectrum of possibility: a rare agreement between tne left and right wings of the country’s political sentiment; disclosures that should be satisfying to gadflies of the right wing. More strictly, the word can apply within an organized group, but still with the notion of an extreme position on that group’s scale of values: cooperation between the left wing of the Conservative Party and the right wing ot the Labour Party. One could not, obviously, refer to middle-ground sentiment by using this word. Bloc is not restricted, like wing, to suggestmg simple polarization along a scale of values. It refers to a practical alliance of strength and consequently need not stress ideological intransigence at all: a power bloc made up of several political shadings. The W °a a joining of forces fostered by threatened security, rivalry,
and the will to survive: African delegates that vote as a bloc in the UN ssembly. The word is sometimes like wing, however, in suggesting no parent group that overarches rival blocs: the neutralist bloc of nations;
faction
bloc
sect
splinter group wing
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