Unit 7
VIS SPECT VOC PHON CUR PERI SENS SOPH Words from Mythology
and History
Quiz 7-1 Quiz 7-2 Quiz 7-3 Quiz 7-4 Quiz 7-5 Review Quizzes 7
VIS comes from a Latin verb meaning “see.” Vision is what enables us to
see, visual images are visible to our eyes, and a visitor is someone who comes
to see something. The same verb actually gives us another root, vid-, as in
Julius Caesar's famous statement about his military exploits, “Veni, vidi,
vici” (“I came, I saw, I conquered”), and such common English words as
video.


vista
(1) A distant view. (2) An extensive mental view, as over a
stretch of time.
• The economic vista for the next two years looks excellent, according to a
poll of business economists.
Vista is generally used today for broad sweeping views of the kind you might
see from a mountaintop. But the word originally meant an avenue-like view,
narrowed by a line of trees on either side. And vista has also long been used
(like view and outlook) to mean a mental scan of the future—as if you were
riding down a long grand avenue and what you could see a mile or so ahead
of you was where you'd be in the very near future.


vis-à-vis

In relation to or compared with.

• Many financial reporters worry about the loss of U.S. economic strength
vis-à-vis our principal trading partners.

Vis-à-vis comes from Latin by way of French, where it means literally “faceto-face.” In English it was first used to mean a little horse-drawn carriage in
which two people sat opposite each other. From there it acquired various
other meanings, such as “dancing partner.” Today it no longer refers to actual
physical faces and bodies, but its modern meaning comes from the fact that
things that are face-to-face can easily be compared or contrasted. So, for
example, a greyhound is very tall vis-à-vis a Scottie, and the Red Sox have
often fared badly vis-à-vis the Yankees.


visionary
(1) A person with foresight and imagination. (2)
A dreamer whose ideas are often impractical.
• His followers regarded him as an inspired visionary; his opponents saw him
as either a con man or a lunatic.
A visionary is someone with a strong vision of the future. Since such visions
aren't always accurate, a visionary's ideas may either work brilliantly or fail
miserably. Even so, visionary is usually a positive word. Martin Luther King,
Jr., for instance, was a visionary in his hopes and ideas for a just society. The
word is also an adjective; thus, for example, we may speak of a visionary
project, a visionary leader, a visionary painter, or a visionary company.


envisage

To have a mental picture of; visualize.

• A mere three weeks after they had started dating, the two were already
arguing, and none of us could envisage the relationship lasting for long.
One of the imagination's most valuable uses is its ability to see something in
the “mind's eye”—that is, to visualize, envision, or envisage something.

Envisaging a possibility may be one of the chief abilities that separate human
beings from the other animals. What we envisage may be physical (such as a
completed piece of furniture) or nonphysical (such as finishing college).
Envisaging life with a puppy might lead us down to the pound to buy one,
and envisaging the sinking of an island nation may focus our minds on
climate change.


SPECT comes from the Latin verb specere, meaning “to look at,” and
produces several familiar English words. Spectacles can be glasses that you
look through; but a spectacle can also be a remarkable sight—in Roman
times, perhaps a spectacular chariot race or a spectacularly bloody battle
between gladiators and wild beasts, mounted for the pleasure of its
spectators.


aspect
(1) A part of something. (2) A certain way in which
something appears or may be regarded.
• Many experts believe the mental aspect of distance racing is more important
than the physical aspect.
Since aspectus in Latin means “looked at,” an aspect of something is
basically the direction from which it's looked at. So we may say that travel is
your favorite aspect of your job, or that eating well is one aspect of a healthy
life. If you look at a stage set from the front, it looks completely different
than from behind, where all the mechanisms are visible, and both aspects are
important. The word can be very useful when you're analyzing something,
and it's used a great deal in the writings of scholars.



prospect
(1) The possibility that something will happen in the
future. (2) An opportunity for something to happen.
• There was little prospect of a breakthrough in the negotiations before the
elections.
Since the Latin prefix pro- often means “forward” (see PRO), prospect refers
to looking forward. The prospect of a recession may lead investors to pull
their money out of the stock market. Graduates of a good law school usually
have excellent prospects for finding employment. Prospective students roam
campuses with their parents in the year before they plan to enter college.


perspective
(1) Point of view; the angle, direction, or
standpoint from which a person looks at something. (2) The art or technique
of painting or drawing a scene so that objects in it seem to have depth and
distance.
• From the perspective of the lowly soldier, the war looked very different.
To the modern mind, it's hard to believe that perspective had to be
“discovered,” but before the 1400s paintings simply lacked accurate
perspective. Instead, important people and objects were simply shown larger
than less important ones; and although distant objects were sometimes shown
smaller than near ones, this wasn't done in a regular and accurate way. Just as
odd, many paintings didn't represent the other meaning of perspective either
—that is, a scene might not be shown as if it were being seen from one single
place. Today, perspective is used much like standpoint. Just as standpoint
once used to mean simply the physical place where you stand but today also
means the way you “see” things as a result of who you are and what you do,
the same could be said about perspective.



prospectus
A printed statement that describes something
(such as a new business or a stock offering) and is sent out to people who
may be interested in buying or investing.
• The prospectus for the mutual fund says nothing about how its profit
forecasts were calculated.
Like prospect, prospectus looks forward. Thus, a prospectus originally
outlined something that didn't yet exist, describing what it would become.
This might even be a book; the great dictionary of Noah Webster, like that of
Samuel Johnson, was first announced in the form of a prospectus, so that
well-to-do people might actually subscribe to it—that is, pay for it in advance
so that Webster would have money to live on while writing it. Soon,
prospectus was being used to mean a description of a private school or
college, intended to attract new students. Today the word very often means a
description of a stock offering or mutual fund, whether new or not.


Quiz 7-1
A. Fill in each blank with the correct letter:
a. perspective
b. vis-à-vis
c. prospectus
d. prospect
e. envisage
f. aspect
g. visionary
h. vista
1. When she considered Cleveland ___ other cities where she might have to
live, she always chose Cleveland.

2. The ___ of spending an evening with such an unhappy couple was just
depressing.
3. His ambitious plans for the city marked him as a true ___.
4. The most troubling ___ of the whole incident was the public reaction.
5. The ___ for the new development was full of glowing descriptions that
made both of us suspicious.
6. Turning a corner, they found themselves gazing out on the broad ___ of
the river valley.
7. Some judges only look at crimes like these from the ___ of the police.
8. Her therapist keeps asking her if she could ___ getting back together with
her husband.
Answers


B. Match the definition on the left to the correct word on the right:
1. compared to
a. perspective
2. advance description b. envisage
3. prophet
c. vis-à-vis
4. imagine
d. aspect
5. standpoint
e. prospectus
6. outlook
f. visionary
7. element
g. prospect
8. view
h. vista

Answers


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.
• 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 contrast, 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.

• 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.

• 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.

• 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.
• 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
language.

Relating to or representing the sounds of the spoken

• 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 this book, cat, father, and mate
would be phonetically represented as
,
, and
.


polyphonic
Referring to a style of music in which two or
more melodies are sung or played against each other in harmony.
• 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” (see POLY), 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 as well.


cacophony

Harsh or unpleasant sound.

• 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 7-2
A. Complete the analogy:
1. initial : beginning :: irrevocable : ___
a. usual b. noisy c. final d. reversible
2. arithmetic : numbers :: phonics : ___
a. letters b. notes c. meanings d. music
3. prefer : dislike :: advocate : ___

a. oppose b. support c. assist d. boost
4. multistoried : floor :: polyphonic : ___
a. poetry b. melody c. story d. harmony
5. reject : accept :: equivocate : ___
a. decide b. specify c. detect d. delay
6. melodic : notes :: phonetic : ___
a. sounds b. signs c. ideas d. pages
7. monotonous : boring :: vociferous : ___
a. vegetarian b. angry c. favorable d. noisy
8. stillness : quiet :: cacophony : ___
a. melodious b. dissonant c. creative d. birdlike
Answers


B. Indicate whether the following pairs have the same or different
meanings:
1. advocate / describe
same ___ / different ___
2. phonetic / phonelike
same ___ / different ___
3. equivocate / refuse
same ___ / different ___
4. polyphonic / many-voiced
same ___ / different ___
5. irrevocable / unfortunate
same ___ / different ___
6. cacophony / din
same ___ / different ___
7. vociferous / calm
same ___ / different ___

8. phonics / audio
same ___ / different ___
Answers


CUR, from the Latin verb curare, means basically “care for.” Our verb cure
comes from this root, as do manicure (“care of the hands”) and pedicure
(“care of the feet”).