forswear
abjure
disavow
disclaim
disown
recant
retract
take back
or effeminacy; affected behavior in a woman suggests the inability to distinguish between a bad or cheap imitation and the real elegance she can only affect. Pompous refers mostly to inflated manners of a stuffy or officious kind, and tends to be used mostly in describing men. It would be used when super-solemn rather than effeminate behavior is indicated: the droning of the pompous judge. One must remember that what one observer might call affected, pompous, or punctilious, another might call formal, ceremonious, or ritual. The observer’s choice depends on what he considers proper or appropriate to the situation before him. See artistic, CONCEITED, ELEGANT, SYSTEMATIC.
Antonyms: haphazard, improvisatory, informal, natural, spontaneous.
These words apply when a person rejects something, gives up his past behavior, or withdraws from a previously stated stand or belief. Forswear indicates the renunciation of past behavior; once, it referred to taking an oath to this effect, but now it can suggest an emphatic willingness to give up something completely. Most often, the word suggests an open admission of guilt or fault arising out of such behavior: a country that forswore future military aggression as a result of its decisive defeat; no use asking alcoholics to make high-minded oaths forswearing drinking. Where forswear can suggest moral resolve or penitence, abjure is more forceful in sometimes implying an angry rejection; it also referred once to renunciation under oath, but less often applies in this way now: a union official who abjured mediation as a solution to the dispute, especially considering the unwillingness of management to negotiate; bitter disappointments that made him abjure marriage in favor of a series of affairs.
Disavow and disclaim are now most commonly used to deny complicity or responsibility; thus both contrast with forswear, where an admission of guilt is often implied. Disavow once could involve a formal oath; now it more often points to a refusal to acknowledge something as valid or an insistence that no connection exists between one’s own stand and that of another. [The candidate disavowed completely the statement that had been attributed to him by newsmen; The board disavowed the action of the executive and denied that his promises were binding on the company.] Disclaim can also function as a denial of responsibility, but its special point is the giving up of a right or title that might be offered in one’s own behalf. [He disclaimed all complicity in the assassination plot; The company disclaimed any interest in the disputed land, even though the oldest deeds bore its name.]
Disown at its most general can suggest any sort of abandonment: The bureau disowned the project after the poor showing it made during its first year in operation. The word is often used in a special way, however, referring to the total rejection of a disliked person, often a near relative: a father who disowned his son and wrote him out of his will.
The remaining words all deal with a retreat from previously stated positions. Take back is the most informal of all these words, applying to an apologetic withdrawal of anything one has said previously. [His friend kept him pinned to the floor until he took back the insult; She immediately took back her accusation once she saw how wrong she had been.] Retract can apply to the same situation, often indicating a formal, official, or public statement. [He threatened to sue unless his opponent retracted the libelous allegation; The defendant retracted his confession, claiming that it had been coerced.] Recant once indicated the solemn retracting of a heresy by a former adherent: Witches were
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required to recant publicly or be hanged. It still applies to the repudiation of doctrine or ideology and is more forceful than retract in suggesting a total disavowing or abject capitulation, including an admission of past guilt and an implied promise to forswear the error in the future: those who recanted Communism after the infamous nonaggression pact. See ABSTAIN, FORGO, RELINQUISH.
Antonyms: acknowledge, assert, claim, uphold.
These words refer to things easily broken. Fragile, beyond this general meaning, may suggest weakness or delicacy as well: a fragile teacup; the shipping of fragile materials; her fragile health; a lovely, fragile embroidery of flower motifs. Frail carries its own implication of slenderness or enfeeblement, as well as of breakability or weakness: a frail scaffold; frail columns bearing the architrave; made frail by persisting bouts of malaria. The norm frail is a slang term for a young woman or girl, regarded as a member of the weaker sex.
Brittle, like fragile, need not suggest slightness or slenderness, and it is also less apt than either of the previous words to indicate weakness or delicacy of construction. It refers to any hard material that tends to shatter easily under a direct impact: Glass is brittle ; choosing building stones less brittle than marble or granite. More metaphorically, it contrasts sharply with the softness that may be implied by frail, suggesting instead a hard, brusque manner or appearance: giving him a brittle, contemptuous reply.
The remaining pair of words are considerably more formal than the foregoing and are also much more specific in meaning. Frangible may be used only to indicate breakability; but more relevantly here, it is often applied to materials specifically designed to be broken: a frangible capsule of ammonia that is broken and held under the fainting person’s nose. Friable is even more restricted in meaning, referring exclusively to materials that can be easily crumbled: sandstone slabs that are not brittle but tend to be friable. Occasionally the word can refer to anything vulnerable to being worn down: topsoil made less friable by the planting of trees. See break (v.), flimsy, weak.
Antonyms: elastic, flexible, malleable, strong, supple, tough.
These words refer to a small part or piece separated from a larger whole. Fragment stresses breakage. In a literal sense, a fragment is a broken piece or shard: Archeologists discovered fragments of a marble column; a prehistoric man imaginatively reconstructed from bone fragments. Where fragment is typically, though not always, used of a brittle substance, the other words in this set may all apply to bits and pieces of cloth or food. In a specific sense, a remnant is a piece of cloth left over, as from a bolt, after the final measured cutting: to buy carpet remnants on sale. In a general sense, it may refer to any remaining part or portion: the remnants of the unfinished meal. A scrap is a small, odd piece that has been cut, broken, or torn from a larger piece: a scrap of silk. Scrap may refer to paper as well as to cloth or food; and where remnants may be saved for future use, scraps are often disposed of. Like scrap, shred may apply to a variety of substances. A shred is a long and narrow piece or strip, as one torn, cut, or shaved off lengthwise: shreds of carrot in a salad; shreds of crepe paper. Used of fabric, the plural shreds suggests a reduction to rags and tatters: In the fight, his suit was torn to shreds. Shred may also refer to a stringlike piece of something, as food: shredded wheat.
fragile
brittle
frail
frangible
friable
fragment
remnant
scrap
shred
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