TỪ VỰNG TOEIC unit 30

Unit 30
TOXI TEN/TENU TECHNI/TECHNO LONG IDIO AER/AERO CAD
TRIB Words from Mythology and History
Quiz 30-1 Quiz 30-2 Quiz 30-3 Quiz 30-4 Quiz 30-5 Review Quizzes 30
TOXI comes from the Greek and Latin words for “poison,” something the
Greeks and Romans knew a good deal about. Socrates died by taking a
solution of poison hemlock, a flowering plant much like wild carrot that now
also grows in the U.S. Rome's enemy Mithridates, king of Pontus, was
obsessed with poisons, experimented with them on prisoners, and tried to
make himself immune to them by eating tiny amounts of them daily. Nero's
mother Agrippina poisoned several of her son's rivals to power—and
probably did the same to her own husband, the emperor Claudius.


toxin
A substance produced by a living organism (such as
bacteria) that is highly poisonous to other organisms.
• Humans eat rhubarb stems without ill effects, while cattle may die from
eating the leaves, which seem to contain two different toxins.
Long before chemists started creating poisons from scratch, humans were
employing natural toxins for killing weeds and insects. For centuries South
American tribes have used the toxin curare, extracted from a native vine, to
tip their arrows. The garden flower called wolfsbane or monkshood is the
source of aconite, an extremely potent toxin. The common flower known as
jimsonweed contains the deadly poison scopolamine. And the castor-oil plant
yields the almost unbelievably poisonous toxin called ricin. Today we hear
health advisers of all kinds talk about ridding the body of toxins; but they're
usually pretty vague about which ones they mean, and most of these “toxins”
wouldn't be called that by biologists.

toxicity
The state of being poisonous; the degree to which
something is poisonous.
• Though they had tested the drug on animals, they suspected the only way to
measure its toxicity for humans was by studying accidental human exposures.
Toxicity is often a relative thing; in the words of a famous old saying, “The
dose makes the poison.” Thus, it's possible to die from drinking too much
water, and lives have been saved by tiny doses of arsenic. Even though
botulinum toxin is the most toxic substance known, it's the basic ingredient in
Botox, which is injected into the face to get rid of wrinkles. With some
poisons, mere skin contact can be lethal; others are lethal when breathed into
the lungs in microscopic amounts. To determine if a chemical will be
officially called a poison, researchers often use the “LD50” test: If 50
milligrams of the substance for every kilogram of an animal's body weight
results in the death of 50% of test animals, the chemical is a poison. But there
are problems with such tests, and toxicity remains a very individual concept.


toxicology
effect.

A science that deals with poisons and their

• At medical school he had specialized in toxicology, hoping eventually to
find work in a crime laboratory.
Even though most of us are aware of toxicology primarily from crime shows
on TV, toxicologists actually do most of their work in other fields. Many are
employed by drug companies, others by chemical companies. Many work for
the government, making sure the public is being kept safe from
environmental poisons in the water, soil, and air, as well as unhealthy

substances in our food and drugs. These issues often have to do with
quantity; questions about how much of some substance should be considered
dangerous, whether in the air or in a soft drink, may be left to toxicologists.
But occasionally a toxicology task may be more exciting: for instance,
discovering that what looked like an ordinary heart attack was actually
brought on by a hypodermic injection of a paralyzing muscle relaxant.


neurotoxin
system.

A poisonous protein that acts on the nervous

• From her blurred vision, slurred speech, and muscle weakness, doctors
realized she had encountered a neurotoxin, and they suspected botulism.
The nervous system is almost all-powerful in the body: all five senses depend
on it, as do breathing, digestion, and the heart. So it's an obvious target for
poisons, and neurotoxins have developed as weapons in many animals,
including snakes, bees, and spiders. Some wasps use a neurotoxin to paralyze
their prey so that it can be stored alive to be eaten later. Snake venom is often
neurotoxic (as in cobras and coral snakes, for example), though it may
instead be hemotoxic (as in rattlesnakes and coppermouths), operating on the
circulatory system. Artificial neurotoxins, called nerve agents, have been
developed by scientists as means of chemical warfare; luckily, few have ever
been used.


TEN/TENU comes from the Latin tenuis, meaning “thin.” So to extend
something is to stretch it, and lots of things get thin when they're stretched.
The ten- root is even seen in pretend, which once meant to stretch something

out above or in front; that something came to be a claim that you were
something that you actually weren't.


tenuous

Having little substance or strength; flimsy, weak.

• It's a rather tenuous theory, and the evidence supporting it has been
questioned by several researchers.
Something tenuous has been stretched thin and might break at any time. A
person with a tenuous hold on his sanity should be watched carefully. If a
business is only tenuously surviving, it will probably go bankrupt in the next
recession. If there seems to be only a tenuous connection between two
crimes, it means the investigators have more work to do.


attenuated

Thinned or weakened.

• The smallpox shot is an injection of the virus in an attenuated form too
weak to produce an actual case of smallpox.
A friendship can become attenuated if neither person bothers to keep in
touch. Radio waves can become attenuated by the shape of the landscape, by
foliage, by atmospheric conditions, and simply by distance. Factory workers
and rock musicians often use noise-attenuating ear plugs to save their
hearing. To attenuate something isn't to stop it, just to tone it down.

extenuating

Partially excusing or justifying.

• A good college rarely accepts someone who has dropped out of high school
twice, but in his case there were extenuating circumstances, including the
death of both parents.
Extenuating is almost always used today before “circumstances.” Extenuating
circumstances are an important concept in the law. If you steal to feed your
children, you're naturally less guilty than someone who steals just to get
richer; if you kill someone in self-defense, that's obviously an extenuating
circumstance that makes your act different from murder. Juries will usually
consider extenuating circumstances (even when they're instructed not to), and
most judges will listen carefully to an argument about extenuating
circumstances as well. And they work outside of the courtroom as well; if
you miss your daughter's performance in the middle-school pageant, she may
forgive you if it was because you had to race Tigger to the vet's emergency
room.


distended

Stretched or bulging out in all directions; swelled.

• All the children's bellies were distended, undoubtedly because of inadequate
nutrition or parasites.
Before giving you a shot, the nurse may wrap a rubber tube around your
upper arm to distend the veins. When the heart isn't pumping properly, the
skin of the feet and ankles may become distended. A doctor who notices that
an internal organ has become distended will always want to find out the

cause. As you can see, distended tends to be a medical term.


Quiz 30-1
A. Fill in each blank with the correct letter:
a. attenuated
b. toxicity
c. extenuating
d. toxicology
e. distended
f. neurotoxin
g. tenuous
h. toxin
1. Guidebooks warn against the ___ of the water hemlock, the deadliest plant
in North America.
2. The dog we used to have bit everyone, and only my mother ever tried to
come up with ___ circumstances for his behavior.
3. We used to play with our cousins a lot in our childhood, but all those old
friendships have become ___ over the years.
4. He was now yelling, his face red and his veins ___, and I feared he might
have a heart attack.
5. Sarin, a manmade ___ 500 times more powerful than cyanide, was
outlawed by treaty in 1993.
6. The university offers a graduate degree in environmental ___, which deals
with chemical and biological threats to public health.
7. Everyone knows that the ceasefire is ___ and would collapse if one armed
soldier decided to go on a rampage.
8. Ricin, a ___ that comes from the castor bean, can be lethal if an amount the
size of a grain of sand is inhaled.
Answers

B. Match the definition on the left with the correct word on the right:
1. flimsy
a. toxicity
2. nerve poison
b. distended
3. study of poisons c. attenuated
4. bulging
d. extenuating
5. plant-based poison e. toxin
6. poisonousness
f. tenuous
7. weakened
g. neurotoxin
8. justifying
h. toxicology
Answers


TECHNI/TECHNO comes from the Greek techne, meaning “art, craft,
skill,” and shows up in dozens of English words. Some, such as technical,
technology, and technique, have long been familiar. Others, such as technothriller, were only coined in the current computer age, which has also seen
the new cut-down terms techno (for techno-pop, the electronic dance music)
and tech (for technician or technology).


technocrat
politics or industry.

A scientist or technical expert with power in

• The new president, a great fan of science, had surrounded himself with an
impressive team of technocrats.
In 1919 W. H. Smyth coined the term technocracy to mean basically
“management of society by technical experts.” Technocracy grew into a
movement during the Great Depression of the 1930s, when politicians and
financial institutions were being blamed for the economic disaster, and fans
of technocracy claimed that letting technical experts manage the country
would be a great improvement. (They also suggested that dollars could be
replaced by “energy certificates” representing energy units called ergs.)
Today technocrat and technocratic are still popular words for experts with a
highly rational and scientific approach to public policy issues. But these
experts aren't always the best politicians, and when a terrific technological
solution to a problem is opposed by a powerful group or industry, lawmakers
find it easier to just ignore it.


technophobe
One who fears or dislikes advanced technology
or complex devices and especially computers.
• The new employee was a middle-aged technophobe, who seemed startled
every time a new page popped up on her computer screen.
The condition known as technophobia got its name around 1965 (though its
synonym Luddite had been around for a long time), and since then we've
been flooded with electronic gadgetry. But even today few people actually
understand any electrical technology more complicated than a lightbulb, so
there's still plenty of technophobia around. And it isn't limited to computer
users. The explosion of the atomic bomb made technophobes out of millions
of people; and since human-caused climate change has been a result of

technology, it's not surprising that it too has produced a technophobic
response. But if technology turns out to be part of a solution, maybe that will
change.


technophile

One who loves technology.

• Back in my day, the high-school technophiles subscribed to Popular
Mechanics, built ham radios, and were always taking apart the engines of
their clunkers.
The word technophile came along soon after technophobe, which seemed to
need an antonym. Its own synonyms include geek, gearhead, and propellerhead (for the characters in 1950s comic books who wore propeller beanies to
indicate that they were sci-fi fans). Even before American inventors began
amazing the world with their “Yankee ingenuity” in the 19th century, most
Americans could be described as technology lovers. Today, American
technophilia may be seen most vividly when a new version of a popular
video game sells millions of copies to young buyers on the day of its release.


pyrotechnic

Of or relating to fireworks.

• Her astonishing, pyrotechnic performance in the concerto left the audience
dazed.
You've read about funeral pyres, and you may even have survived a
pyromaniac (“insane fire-starting”) stage in your youth, so you might have
guessed that pyr means “fire” in Greek. Pyrotechnic refers literally to

fireworks, but always seems to be used for something else—something just
as exciting, explosive, dazzling, sparkling, or brilliant. The performances of
sports stars and dancers are often described as pyrotechnic, and a critic may
describe the pyrotechnics of a rock guitarist's licks or a film's camerawork. A
pyrotechnic performance is always impressive, but the word occasionally
suggests something more like “flashy” or “flamboyant.”


LONG comes from Latin longus, which, as you might guess, means “long.”
The English word long shows up in many compound terms such as longsuffering (“patiently enduring lasting offense or hardship”) and long-winded
(“boringly long in speaking or writing”), but the long- root also sometimes
shows up less obviously. To prolong something is to lengthen it, for example,
and a chaise longue (not lounge!) is “a long reclining chair.”


longitude
Distance measured by degrees or time east or west
from the prime meridian.
• Checking the longitude, she was surprised to see that the tip of South
America is actually east of New York City.
The imaginary (but very important) lines of longitude run from the North
Pole to the South Pole. Each is identified by the number of degrees it lies east
or west of the so-called prime meridian in Greenwich, England (part of
London). A circle is divided into 360°; so, for example, the longitude of the
Egyptian city of Cairo is about 31°E—that is, about 31° east of London. The
“long” sense of the root may be easier to see in some uses of the adjective
longitudinal: A longitudinal study is a research study that follows its subjects
over many long years, and a longitudinal engine is one that drives a
crankshaft that runs lengthwise under a vehicle (as in rear-wheel-drive cars)
rather than crosswise.

elongate
length.

(1) To extend the length of; stretch. (2) To grow in

• When mammals gained the ability to fly, it wasn't by means of feathered
wings; instead, over thousands of years the digits of their “hands” elongated
and a web formed between them.
Elongate is often found in scientific writing, but the adjective elongated is
more common, and frequently used to describe body parts in discussions of
anatomy. This was even the case when the superhero Elongated Man made
his appearance back in 1960. But some other characters with the same powers
—Plastic Man, Elastic Lad, and Mr. Fantastic—ended up having longer
careers.


longueur

A dull and boring portion, as of a book.

• She tells me the book is extremely rewarding, in spite of some longueurs
during which she occasionally drops off to sleep.
Longueur comes straight from French, a language based on Latin. When we
borrow a foreign word, it's usually because English doesn't have a really good
synonym, which is the case here. Longueur is used mostly when talking
about books, but also when describing lectures and speeches. Like certain
other French words, longueur tends to be used mainly by critics and
professors—but lots of us who aren't either could find plenty of use for it too.

oblong

Longer in one direction than in the other.

• Their apartment was awkwardly oblong, with a long skinny hall running
past the cramped rooms.
Oblong is a general but useful term for describing the shape of things such as
leaves. There's no such thing as an oblong circle, since a stretched circle has
to be called an oval, and any rectangle that isn't square is oblong, at least if
it's lying on its side (such rectangles can actually be called oblongs). Pills are
generally oblong rather than round, to slide down the throat more easily. An
oblong table will often fit a living space better than a square or round one
with the same area. And people are always buried in oblong boxes.


Quiz 30-2
A. Indicate whether the following pairs of words have the same or
different meaning:
1. technophobe / computer genius
same ___ / different ___
2. longueur / boring passage
same ___ / different ___
3. pyrotechnic / spectacular
same ___ / different ___
4. oblong / unnatural
same ___ / different ___
5. technocrat / mechanic
same ___ / different ___

6. elongate / stretch
same ___ / different ___
7. longitude / lines parallel to the equator
same ___ / different ___
8. technophile / technology hater
same ___ / different ___
Answers


B. Fill in each blank with the correct letter:
a. technocrat
b. longitude
c. technophile
d. elongate
e. oblong
f. technophobe
g. longueur
h. pyrotechnic
1. By following a few basic tips, you can ___ your laptop battery's life by a
month or more.
2. Even the Greeks knew how to calculate latitude from the sun and stars, but
no one managed to measure ___ accurately until the 18th century.
3. All through high school and college, computer jocks like him were called
nerds or geeks, but he always preferred to be described as a ___.
4. The talk was just one ___ after another, and she finally got up and tiptoed
out of the lecture hall.
5. The shields used by Celtic warriors were ___ rather than round, and thus
able to protect much of the body.
6. As governor, he had the reputation of being a ___, convinced that much of
the state's problems could be solved by using proper technology and data.

7. The debate between these two remarkable minds was a ___ display of
brilliant argument and slashing wit.
8. My father is making a real effort to master e-mail, but my mother is a
genuine ___ who just wishes the computer would go away.
Answers


IDIO comes from the Greek idios, meaning “one's own” or “private.” In
Latin this root led to the word idiota, meaning “ignorant person”—that is, a
person who doesn't take in knowledge from outside himself. And that led to a
familiar English word that gets used too often, usually to describe people who
aren't ignorant at all.