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| Main Entry: | |
| Part of Speech: | adjective |
| Definition: | bookish, precise |
| Synonyms: | abstruse, academic, arid, didactic, doctrinaire, donnish, dry, dull, egotistic, erudite, formal, fussy, hairsplitting, learned, nit-picking, ostentatious, overnice, particular, pedagogic, pompous, priggish, punctilious, scholastic, schoolish, sententious, stilted |
| Antonyms: | imprecise, informal |
| Main Entry: | affected |
| Part of Speech: | adjective |
| Definition: | changed in a bad or artificial way |
| Synonyms: | apish, artificial, assumed, awkward, campy, chichi*, conceited, contrived, counterfeit, counterfeited, faked, false, feigned, fraud*, gone Hollywood, ham, hammy, high falutin', hollow, imitated, insincere, melodramatic, ostentatious, overdone, pedantic, phony, playacting, pompous, precious, pretended, pretentious, put-on, schmaltzy, self-conscious, shallow, sham*, simulated, spurious, stiff, stilted, studied, superficial, theatrical, unnatural |
| Antonyms: | ok, unchanged, unhurt, unimpaired, uninjured |
* = informal/non-formal usage
| Main Entry: | didactic |
| Part of Speech: | adjective |
| Definition: | educational |
| Synonyms: | academic, advisory, donnish, edifying, enlightening, exhortative, expository, homiletic, hortative, instructive, moral, moralizing, pedagogic, pedantic, preachy, preceptive, schoolmasterist, sermonic, sermonizing, teacherish, teacherly, teachy |
| Main Entry: | learned |
| Part of Speech: | adjective |
| Definition: | well-informed |
| Synonyms: | abstruse, academic, accomplished, bookish, brainy, conversant, cultivated, cultured, deep*, educated, erudite, esoteric, experienced, expert, grave, grounded, highbrow, in the know, intellectual, judicious, lettered, literary, literate, omniscient, pansophic, pedantic, philosophic, philosophical, polymath, posted, professorial, recondite, sage, sapient, scholarly, scientific, sharp, skilled, solemn, solid, sound, studied, studious, versed, well-educated, well-grounded, well-read, well-rounded |
| Antonyms: | ignorant, stupid, uninformed |
* = informal/non-formal usage
| Main Entry: | ponderous |
| Part of Speech: | adjective |
| Definition: | dreary, tedious |
| Synonyms: | arid, barren, cardboard, dry, dull, heavy, humdrum*, labored, lifeless, long-winded, monotonous, pedantic, pedestrian, plodding, prolix, stiff*, stilted, stodgy, stuffy, vapid, verbose, wooden |
| Antonyms: | fun, light |
* = informal/non-formal usage
| Main Entry: | recondite |
| Part of Speech: | adjective |
| Definition: | mysterious, obscure |
| Synonyms: | abstruse, academic, acroamatic, arcane, cabalistic, concealed, cryptic, dark, deep, difficult, esoteric, hard, heavy*, hermetic, hidden, involved, little-known, mystic, mystical, occult, orphic, pedantic, profound, scholarly, secret |
| Antonyms: | obvious, plain, simple, straightforward |
* = informal/non-formal usage
| Main Entry: | stilted |
| Part of Speech: | adjective |
| Definition: | artificial, pretentious |
| Synonyms: | affected, angular, aureate, bombastic, constrained, decorous, egotistic, euphuistic, flowery, forced, formal, genteel, grandiloquent, high-flown, high-sounding, inflated, labored, magniloquent, mincing, overblown, pedantic, pompous, prim, rhetorical, sonorous, stiff, unnatural, wooden |
| Antonyms: | genuine, honest, true |
| Main Entry: | stodgy |
| Part of Speech: | adjective |
| Definition: | dull, stuffy |
| Synonyms: | banausic, boring, dim, dreary, formal, heavy, labored, monotonous, pedantic, pedestrian, plodding, ponderous, staid, tedious, turgid, unexciting, unimaginative, uninspired, uninteresting, weighty |
| Antonyms: | adventurous, exciting, ready, willing |
| Main Entry: | theoretical |
| Part of Speech: | adjective |
| Definition: | hypothetical |
| Synonyms: | abstract, academic, analytical, as a premise, assumed, codified, conjectural, contingent, formalistic, formularized, general, ideal, idealized, ideational, ideological, imaginative, impractical, in the abstract, in theory, instanced, intellectual, logical, metaphysical, notional, on paper, pedantic, philosophical, postulated, presumed, problematical, pure, quixotic, speculative, suppositional, tentative, transcendent, transcendental, unearthly, unproved, unsubstantiated, vague |
| Notes: | empirical describes results determined by experiment and observed behavior or facts; theoretical describes results that are based on guesswork or hypothesis - and pragmatic is contrasted with theoretical on the grounds that the former proceeds from what is demonstrably practical, the latter from conjecture |
| Antonyms: | certain, definite, factual, proven, real |
Roget's 21st Century Thesaurus, Third Edition
Copyright © 2013 by the Philip Lief Group.
Cite This Source
Copyright © 2013 by the Philip Lief Group.
Cite This Source
Copyright © 2013 Dictionary.com, LLC. All rights reserved.
