📘 Part 3: Books

This episode's vocabulary

Intangible  (adj.) - impossible to touch, to describe exactly, or to give an exact value:

She has that intangible quality which you might call charisma.

Engrossing  (adj.) - very interesting and needing all your attention: an engrossing book/story

Antiquated  (adj.) - old-fashioned or unsuitable for modern society:

antiquated ideas/attitudes/values; antiquated laws/machinery/technology

Alien (adj.) - coming from a different country, race, or group: an alien culture

Put you off (phrasal verb) - to make someone dislike something or someone, or to discourage someone from doing something: The smell of hospitals always puts me off.

Paperbacks  (noun)- a book with a cover made of thick paper: a best-selling paperback

Go for (phrasal verb) - to choose something: Instead of butter, I always go for margarine or a low-fat spread.

Classics(noun)- classic books; the study of ancient Greek and Roman culture, esp. their languages and literature

Outliers  (noun)- a person, thing, or fact that is very different from other people, things, or facts, so that it cannot be used to draw general conclusions:

People who live past 100 are genetic outliers, whose longevity is unreachable for most of us.

Contain  (verb) - to have something inside or include something as a part.

Shave smth off (phrasal verb) - to reduce something by the stated amount:

The new high speed trains will shave 25 minutes off the journey time. Our prices have been shaved by five percent!

Conceive of (verb) - to imagine something: I think my uncle still conceives of me as a four-year-old. He couldn't conceive of a time when he would have no job.

Autobiographies  (noun)- a book about a person's life, written by that person.

A recipe for success/disaster/trouble - (collocation) – to be very likely to become a disaster,

success; All those children unsupervised sounds to me like a recipe for disaster.

Wages  (noun)- the money earned by an employee, esp. when paid for the hours worked.

Dispense with (verb) - to get rid of or stop using something or someone that you do not need: They've had to dispense with a lot of luxuries since Mike lost his job.

Quasi (prefix) /kweɪ.zaɪ-/- used to show that something is almost, but not completely, the thing described: the school uniform is quasi-military in style.

Crucial  (adj.) - extremely important or necessary: a crucial decision/question.

Aberrant  (adj.) - different from what is typical or usual, especially in an unacceptable way.

Appeal to smb (verb) - to interest or attract someone: It's a programme designed to appeal mainly to 16 to 25-year-olds. I think what appeals to me about his painting is his use of colour.

Utility  (noun)- the usefulness of something, especially in a practical way.

Phase smth out (phrasal verb) - to remove or stop using something gradually or in stages.

Obsolete  (adj.) - not in use any more, having been replaced by something newer and better or more fashionable: Gas lamps became obsolete when electric lighting was invented.

A listicle (noun)- a newspaper, magazine, or online article that is in the form of a list:

I hate those listicles called things like "10 Things You Didn't Know About Cats".

Shrink -shrank -shrunk (verb) - to become smaller, or to make something smaller:

Your sweater will shrink if you wash it at too high a temperature. The company's profits have shrunk from $5.5 million to $1.25 million.

Dense (adj.) - having parts that are close together so that it is difficult to go or see through: dense fog; a dense forest

A medium (noun) - a method or way of expressing something: the broadcasting/print medium

Digest a single book  (collocation) – to read or hear new information and take the necessary time to understand it: this chapter is so difficult to digest, I'll have to read it again later.

Whereas (conjunction) - compared with the fact that; but.