昨天的答案：
1. c 2. e 3. f 4. b 5. a 6. g 7. d 8. h
今天学习VOC和PHON两个词根。
VOC comes from the Latin words meaning "voice" and "speak." So a vocal ensemble is a singing group. A vocation was originally a "calling" from God to do religious work as a priest, monk, or nun, though today most people use the word just to mean a career. And a vocabulary is a set of words for speaking.
equivocate. (1) To use ambiguous language, especially in order to deceive. (2) To avoid giving a direct answer.
例句：As the company directors continued to equivocate, the union prepared to return to the picket lines.
With its root equi-, meaning "equal," equivocate suggests speaking on both sides of an issue at the same time. An equivocal answer is one that manages not to take a stand; an unequivocal answer, by contract, is strong and clear. Politicians are famous for equivocating, but equivocation is also typical of used-car salesmen, nervous witnesses in a courtroom, and guys whose girlfriends ask them how committed they are to a relationship.
irrevocable. Impossible to call back or retract.
例句：She had told him she wasn't going to see him again, but he couldn't believe her decision was irrevocable.
Irrevocable has a formal sound to it and is often used in legal contexts. Irrevocable trusts are trust funds that cannot be dissolved by the people who created them (the other kind is a revocable trust). An irrevocable credit is an absolute obligation from a bank to provide credit to a customer. Irrevocable gifts, under U.S. tax law, are gifts that are given by one living person to another and can't be reclaimed by the giver. But the word isn't always legal; we've all had to make irrevocable decisions, decisions that commit us absolutely to something.
advocate. To speak in favor of.
例句：Our lawyer is advocating a suit against the state, but most of us would rather try some other approaches first.
The verb advocate may be followed by for ("advocated for better roads.""advocated for merging the two school districts") or by a noun or gerund ("advocating an increase in the military budget,""advocated closing the budget gap"). But advocate isn't only a verb: An advocate is someone who advocates for you, or argues on your side. Originally, this was often a lawyer in court, and in Britain advocate is still a term for "lawyer."
vociferous. Making noisy or emphatic outcries.
例句：Whenever the referee at these soccer games makes a questionable call, you hear vociferous protests from half the parents.
A vociferous group shouts loudly and insistently, and they're usually not too happy about something. So, for example, we often hear about vociferous critics, vociferous demands, vociferous opponents, or a vociferous minority. When a small group makes itself vociferous enough, everyone else may even start thinking it's actually a majority.
PHON is a Greek root meaning "sound,""voice," or "speech." It's probably most familiar in the form of the English suffix -phone, in words that begin with a Greek or Latin root as well. Thus, the tele- in telephone means "far," the micro- in microphone means "small," the xylo- in xylophone means "wood," and so on.
phonics. A method of teaching beginners to read and pronounce words by learning the characteristic sounds of letters, letter groups, and especially syllables.
例句：My son's school switched to phonics instruction several years ago, and reading achievement in the early grades has been improving.
In the field of beginning reading, there are two basic schools of thought in the U.S. today. One emphasizes "whole language" teaching, which relies on teaching a lot of reading; the other emphasizes phonics, teaching how letters and syllables correspond to sounds. Phonics instruction may be especially difficult in English, since English has the most difficult spelling of any Western language. Consider the various ways we create the f sound in cough, photo, and giraffe, or the sh sound in special, issue, vicious, and portion, or the k sound in tack, quite, and shellac, and how we pronounce the o in do, core, lock, and bone, or the ea in lead, ocean, idea, and early. Teaching phonics obviously isn't an easy job, but it's probably an important one.
phonetic. Relating to or representing the sounds of the spoken language.
例句：In almost every Spanish word the pronunciation is clear from the spelling, so the phonetic part of learning Spanish isn't usually a big challenge.
The English alphabet is phonetic---that is, the letters represent sounds. The Chinese alphabet, however, isn't phonetic. since its symbols represent ideas rather than sounds. But even in English, a letter doesn't always represent the same sound; the "a" in cat, father, and mate, for example, represents three different sounds. Because of this, books about words often use specially created phonetic alphabets in which each symbol stands for a single sound in order to represent pronunciations. So in the book, cat, father, and mate would be phonetically represented as "kat,"'fɑ-thər, and 'mat.
polyphonic. Referring to a style of music in which two or more melodies are sung or played against each other in harmony.
例句：Whenever he needed something calming, he would put on some quiet polyphonic music from the Renaissance and just let the voices waft over him.
Since poly- means "many", polyphonic music has "many voices." In polyphony, each part has its own melody, and they weave together in a web that may become very dense; a famous piece by Thomas Tallis, composed around 1570, has 40 separate voice parts. Polyphony reached its height during the 16th century with Italian madrigals and the sacred music of such composers as Tallis, Palestrina and Byrd. Usually when we speak of polyphony we're talking about music of Bach's time and earlier; but the principles remain the same today, and songwriters such as the Beatles have sometimes used polyphony well.
cacophony. Harsh or unpleasant sound.
例句：In New York she was often dragged off by her boyfriend to downtown jazz concerts, where she struggled to make sense of what sounded like nothing but cacophony.
Cacophony employs the Greek prefix caco-. meaning "bad," but not everything we call cacophonous is necessarily bad. Grunge, thrash, hardcore, and goth music are unlistenable to some people and very popular to others. Open-air food markets may be marked by a cacophony of voices but also by wonderful sights and sounds. On the other hand, few people can really enjoy, for more than a few minutes, the cacophony of jackhammers, car horns, and truck engines that assaults the city pedestrian on a hot day in August.
Quiz:
Indicate whether the following pairs have the same or different meanings:
1. advocate / describe
2. phonetic / phonelike
3. equivocate / refuse
4. polyphonic / many-voiced
5. irrevocable / unfortunate
6. cacophony / din
7. vociferous / calm
8. phonics / audio
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