mannerism
affectation
air
airs
exhibitionism
pose
preciosity
marginal
inconsequential
minor
negligible
flict among people: the first attempts of men to settle disputes through reason rather than violence. See folk, kin.
These words pertain to the use of attention-getting devices or to the adoption of insincere, artificial, forced, or pretentious behavior. Mannerism and affectation both disapprovingly indicate an instance of such behavior, but mannerism is the milder of the two words, suggesting a noticeable but minor oddity of gesture or speech that may be either deliberate or habitual: adopting a few British speech mannerisms because she thought they lent her a mark of distinction; He waved his hands about as he talked — a nervous mannerism that he’d unconsciously picked up from his parents. Sometimes, the word can apply to any obtrusive stylistic device: coy mannerisms that mar her prose style. Affectation concentrates more exclusively on the deliberate adoption of anything that is ornate or pretentious: speech studded with faded poeticisms and other affectations', He thought it was an affectation nowadays to include finger bowls in the table settings. The word can also serve as an abstract collective for pretentiousness in general: Sincerity and simplicity are the archenemies of affectation.
Air and pose can both indicate adopting a contrived appearance or manner in order to create an effect or to impress others: She walked with an air of haughty disdain past the other schoolchildren; his pose of being one of the world’s foremost authorities on contemporary art. Air mi ght well suggest a momentary attempt to create a certain mood; as such, it is less disapproving than pose, which suggests greater contrivance and willingness to deceive. Pose can, in fact, extend to roles assumed by swindlers or extortionists: his pose of being a blind man, adopted to win the sympathy of his victims. Both words, but particularly air, can also refer not to deliberate role-playing but to the mood or impression that someone gives off: She faced us with an air of utter bewilderment; inadvertently discovered him pleading with his wife in a pose of genuine contrition.
Airs refers exclusively to grandiose affectations that do not correspond to one’s real situation; the word’s use is mostly restricted to a few stock phrases: giving oneself airs', putting on airs. Preciosity refers to striving after a rarefied refinement that might appeal to an arty or genteel coterie: stilted speech and an overall preciosity of manner. Often the word refers to artistic style or esthetic taste: a preciosity that made him prefer the Pre-Raphaelite painters to Turner. By contrast, exhibitionism refers to any sort of attention-getting acts. By implication these may well constitute the very opposite of refinement by being loud, garish, crude, or obstreperous: muscle boys strutting and flexing their biceps in self-fascinated exhibitionism', the unruly exhibitionism of some habitues of the discotheque. In a psychiatric context, the word can refer to a serious disorder in which someone has a compulsion to expose his genitals to a passing stranger or bystander. See characteristic, eccentricity, TEMPERAMENT.
These words refer to anything that has little bearing on a given question or that is slight in quantity or importance. Marginal and peripheral both point to a small degree of value, usefulness, or importance: a marginal increase in pay. Of the two, however, only marginal can suggest something that an opposing force has almost but not quite canceled out: a marginal profit once costs had been accounted for; marginal culture traits left by an incomplete assimilation into the cultural majority.
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Peripheral is more restricted to something that has slight importance; at its most specific it can point to something that may be important in itself but is not relevant to a given situation: the Civil War being of peripheral concern to that period of California history. Both of these words can, of course, indicate something that is distant from a center or lies at the edge of some entity: a book filled with marginal notations; peripheral vision.
Negligible adds to the general possibilities of the previous pair a particular implication of a slight amount, suggesting something so small that it can be safely ignored: arguing that only a negligible rise in atmospheric radioactivity had resulted from the test; a negligible variation that could not affect the outcome of the experiment. Piddling is a much more informal substitute for negligible, concentrating more exclusively on amount or value, particularly monetary: a piddling allowance. But it can also refer more vaguely as invective to weak arguments or to anything thought to be small-time: a piddling explanation; a piddling second lieutenant.
Both inconsequential and minor concentrate mainly on a lack of importance. Inconsequential, like negligible, can indicate a lack of relevance: an inconsequential objection to our plan. But it can function explicitly as indicating a lack of power or social status: an inconsequential person. Minor may function similarly to other words here, but unlike them it can point to something of considerably greater importance, though such a thing would still remain clearly subsidiary, secondary, or subordinate to a main point or concern: any combination of minor failings that could yet add up to disaster; separating those important Elizabethan poets, major and minor, from those of marginal or negligible interest, while ignoring completely those who have proved to be totally inconsequential.
All the preceding words emphasize a relative slightness of quantity or importance. Nugatory is the one word here that emphatically stresses an absolute and unqualified lack, in this case of worth or meaning: avantgarde experiments with language that were nugatory both in sense and influence. See deficient, extraneous, scanty, trivial.
Antonyms: central, significant.
These words refer to stretches of land in which soil and water, often stagnant, are intermingled with no clear demarcations, a situation that results in unstable footing or presents resistance to navigation. Marsh indicates a shallow, stagnant expanse of standing water enclosed by wet and treacherous soil: a trail that swooped in a wide circle to avoid the marsh. Swamp suggests a large marsh that has some patches mainly of wet soil and others mainly of muddy water: They poled through the swamp in a flat-bottomed boat, but had to get out and drag the boat whenever it got mired. Both marsh and swamp may suggest the presence of vegetation such as grass or even trees; swamp, particularly, might suggest an almost impassable overgrowth.
At its most literal, fen can specifically suggest a swamp overgrown with vegetation and filled with fetid water. Morass more often indicates low-lying, soft, wet ground in which one can be easily mired. Both words, however, are now more often used metaphorically, fen for an evil or unsavory situation, morass for entangling complications into which it is easy to be drawn but from which it is difficult to escape, once involved: a city that was a fen of vice and corruption; a morass of work that threatened to overwhelm him.
marginal
(continued)
nugatory
peripheral
piddling
marsh
bayou
bog
everglade
fen
morass
paddy
swamp
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