New words fro learning

wunderkind \VOON-duhr-kint\, noun;
plural wunderkinder \-kin-duhr\:
1. A child prodigy.
2. One who achieves great success or acclaim at an early age.
It was even written that, at 20, his best days were behind him. He had gone from a wunderkind to an object of sympathy, a hero struggling not to be forgotten.
-- "Owen shines like a beacon amid the wrecks", Times (London), May 29, 2000
In the mid-thirties, he became the youngest and best state director of FDR's National Youth Administration, a Texas wunderkind who at age twenty-eight beat several better known opponents for a south-central Texas congressional seat.
-- Robert Dallek, Flawed Giant
Wunderkind comes from German, from Wunder, "wonder" + Kind, child.


masticate \MAS-tih-kayt\, transitive verb:
1. To grind or crush with or as if with the teeth in preparation for swallowing and digestion; to chew; as, "to masticate food."
2. To crush or knead (rubber, for example) into a pulp.
intransitive verb:
1. To chew food.
Honestly, folks, the people at the next table ordered the same dish, and I watched as a young couple tried in vain to masticate those fossilized pieces of "toast."
-- Pat Bruno, "Hits and misses", Chicago Sun-Times, June 2002
Their powerful jaws allow hyenas to masticate not only flesh and entrails, but bones, horns, and even the teeth of their prey.
-- Sam Tauschek, "A Hyena is no laughing matter", Sports Afield, May 2001
In 1820, Thomas Hancock invented a machine that could masticate, mix and soften rubber.
-- Rikki Lamba, "Effect of carbon black on dynamic properties", Rubber World, April 1, 2000
The middle ear gives us our sound bite, our capacity to masticate without being forced to turn a momentarily deaf ear to the world, as most other vertebrates are.
-- Natalie Angier, "In Mammals, a Complex Journey to the Middle Ear ", New York Times, October 12, 2009
Masticate comes from the past participle of Late Latin masticare, "to chew," from Greek mastichan, "to gnash the teeth." The noun form is mastication.

Posted in: Learning English