In this lecture, we’ll explore a number of powerful words to describe cheats, swindlers, charlatans, scam artists, barracudas, sharks, and sharpies and their swindles, hustles, flimflams, and double dealings.
Mountebank (noun)
A flamboyant swindler; a flimflammer; someone who claims to be an expert but isn't
Mountebanks often claim to be doctors, but they can also claim to be other types of experts; underneath their authentic appearance, they're frauds.
Remember, making personal connections to
word meanings will help you to store these words in your lexicon
for later use in conversation and writing.
Synonyms for mountebank include charlatan, con artist, flimflammer, conniver, and shyster
Sophist(noun)
One skilled in elaborate and devious argumentation
Their detractors claimed that sophists weren’t on a journey
to find the truth; instead, they were trying to persuade others
by any argumentative trick or intellectual sleight of hand
that would enable them to win. In this light, you can see how
sophist became a term of contempt
Specious (adjective)
Having the ring of truth or plausibility but actually fallacious.
Specious comes from the Latin speciosus, meaning “good looking,”
which came from species, meaning “appearance.” Thus, a specious
argument is one that “looks good” on the surface but isn’t sound.
Specious is also related to the Latin root spec, meaning “look.”
To remember this word, highlight the spec in specious in your
vocabulary notebook and connect it to the root spec.
As you recall, chunking words that are semantically related is one
of the key principles of vocabulary learning. Thus, it’s useful to
think of the target words sophist and specious together, as in: “That
sophist is spewing forth specious arguments! I won’t trust another
word he says.”
Spurious (adjective)
Not genuine, authentic, or true; false.
Spurious is often used as a synonym for specious, but it actually
has a slightly different connotation. Like specious, spurious refers
to something that is false or counterfeit, including an argument or
claim. However, as we saw, a specious argument seems plausible
on the surface; in contrast, a spurious argument is immediately
recognized as false.
Apocryphal (adjective)
Of doubtful or dubious authenticity; false
Use the word apocryphal if you want to emphasize that a story or
claim is not only probably false but also difficult to verify or find evidence for.
后面单词讲解的太难了............
