CRYPTIC WORDS (WORDS # 23)

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CALAMITOUS

Adjective (Formal) – Causing serious damage, or causing a lot of people to suffer

Everybody agreed that the change had produced calamitous results

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COHESIVE

Adjective – Combining well to form a strong well-organized unit

The leader worked hard to make the group more cohesive

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CURSIVE

Adjective – cursive handwriting is written with each letter joined to the next letter. Children refer to this as joined-up writing

The old account books were written out in beautiful cursive hand-writing

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CREVICE

Noun (Countable) – A narrow crack in a rock or in a wall

Her pencil fell into the deep crevice and was lost for ever

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 MY COMMENTS ON THESE WORDS

Another nice group of words taken from the lists provided for the graduate entry tests. They are certainly not cryptic, that title is just for fun!

“Calamitous” is a rather resonant word, it makes me think of the expression “Calamity Jane” and this in turn reminds me of my grandmother. Whenever I caused some havoc as a child, which was quite often, she would refer to me as a “Calamity Jane”. I didn’t like that very much, it just made me feel clumsy, which of course at that age I really was!

“Cohesive” makes me think of glue, and of sticking something together. The dictionary explanation refers the word to people and groups, but chemical substances also have cohesive power, just think of all the elements in a car or a plane that need to be firmly stuck.

“Cursive” is not a very fashionable word at the moment, it seems to me. At present, educators are all for letting a child write freely, with very little discipline, and that doesn’t really work so well with cursive writing. In my days we had special copybooks with guiding lines and we had to fill out pages of orderly handwriting. I have always been very thankful for this! Now everything is on the computer and nobody seems to be working on improving cursive writing. Maybe Doodle Art could be an incentive? There is a certain similarity!

"Crevice" is a word that is frequently used in everyday life! Especially in newspaper reports that are referring to accidents on high mountains! The climbers are frequently lost down a “Crevice”, or there is a landslide and they are dragged into one. During earthquakes, new crevices could be formed on surfaces that up to that moment have not shown any deep cracks. 

The good news for Spanish speakers is that the words calamitoso, cohesivo, and cursiva all exist, sound the same and mean the same, so this should be a big help!

So study your words and I will see you on the next post!

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© 2013  joanveronica  (Joan Robertson)

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