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Welcome to Online English Section with explanation in AffairsCloud.com. Here we are providing some difficult words from editorials , which is important and very helpful for IBPS PO/CLERK/LIC AAO/RRB & SSC CGL EXAM and other !!!
TH Editorial :Turn the page: On ANC’s future
This month South Africa will have a rare opportunity to break away from the difficult political legacy of corruption and governance failures that have blighted its post-apartheid years. At a conference during December 16-20, the African National Congress will pick its candidate for party leader, and that person will go on to replace 10-year incumbent President Jacob Zuma. Whoever Mr. Zuma hands over the reins of power to will be the favourite to become the country’s next President in 2019. But he or she will also inherit a troubled political system and a nervous, gloomy economy. Steadily rising unemployment, now nearly touching 28%, has been the chief characteristic of what some describe as Mr. Zuma’s “scandal-ridden decade” at the helm of the ANC. This has been, by most accounts, a period during which allegations of grand corruption and cronyism multiplied exponentially. Promising to root out this pervasive rot in institutional quality is one of two leading candidates: Deputy President Cyril Ramaphosa, a policy centrist and firm member of the party’s constitutionalist wing. The other serious candidate in the reckoning is Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma, Mr. Zuma’s ex-wife, who was a minister across several cabinets and chair of the African Union.
Ms. Dlamini-Zuma, if she prevails, is expected to muddy the prospects of any investigation into alleged murky financial dealings between Mr. Zuma’s son and three brothers of the wealthy, Indian-origin Gupta family of South Africa, owners of a massive business conglomerate that controls stakes in the computer equipment, media and mining industries. She is also expected to be the candidate of continuity inasmuch as she will echo Mr. Zuma’s call for “radical economic transformation” and continue policies that are ostensibly aimed at redistributing control of resources to the nation’s relatively impoverished black majority. Either way, her nomination will boost the forces of “state capture,” or economic rent-seeking built on the marketisation of the South African state itself. Already, there are 783 counts of corruption relating to a 1999 arms deal pending against Mr. Zuma, yet no charges have been pressed.
1. Incumbent – निर्भर
Meaning – necessary for (someone) as a duty or responsibility.
Synonyms – binding, obligatory, mandatory, necessary, compulsory, required, requisite, essential, imperative.
Antonyms – displaced person.
Usage – “the government realized that it was incumbent on them to act”.
2. Reins – लगाम
Synonyms – administrate, be in the driver’s seat, be in the saddle, boss, carry out, conduct, control, crack the whip, direct, execute, govern, head, head up, hold the reins, oversee, pull the strings, pull the wires, render, ride herd on, run, run the show, sit on top of, sup.
Antonyms – forego, mismanage, neglect.
Usage – he reined in his horse and waited.
3. Gloomy – उदास
Meaning – dark or poorly lit, especially so as to appear depressing or frightening.
Synonyms – bleak, caliginous, cheerless, clouded,cloudy, crepuscular,desolate,dim,dismal,dreary,dull, dusky,forlorn, funereal, lightless,murky,obscure, overcast, overclouded, sepulchral, shadowy,somber,tenebrous, unilluminated, unlit, wintry.
Antonyms – bright,light,sunny.
Usage – a gloomy corridor badly lit by oil lamps.
4. Cronyism – अंतरंग मित्र
Meaning – the appointment of friends and associates to positions of authority, without proper regard to their qualifications.
Usage – it looked like an end to the cronyism with which many of the government’s appointments had been tainted.
5. Pervasive – व्यापक
Meaning – (especially of an unwelcome influence or physical effect) spreading widely throughout an area or a group of people.
Synonyms – all over the place, can’t get away from, common, general, inescapable, omnipresent, permeating, pervading, prevalent, rife, ubiquitous, universal, wall-to-wall, widespread.
Antonyms – light, limited, narrow.
Usage – ageism is pervasive and entrenched in our society.
6. Reckoning – गणना
Meaning – the action or process of calculating or estimating something.
Synonyms – expect, anticipate, evaluate, pass judgment, judge, think, believe, consider, conceive, reason, trust, swear, rely, bank, estimate, gauge, approximate, guess, judge.
Antonyms – introduction,start.
Usage – “the sixth, or by another reckoning eleventh, Earl of Mar”.
7. Prevails – तस
Meaning – prove more powerful or superior.
Synonyms – brace, brave, buck, combat, confront, contest, cope, cross, defy, dispute, duel, face, fight, fly in the face of, grapple with, hang on, hang tough, hold off, hold one’s ground, hold out, oppose, prevail against, put up struggle, put up with, remain firm, repel, resist, ride out, sit and take it, stand, stand fast, stand firm, stand one’s ground, stand up against, stand up to, stick fast, stick, suffer, take, take it, take on, thwart, tolerate, traverse, violate, weather, win out.
Antonyms – surrender, yield.
Usage – we can only hope that common sense will prevail.
8. Murky – बदली का
Meaning – dark and gloomy, especially due to thick mist.
Synonyms – black, caliginous, cheerless, cloudy, dark, darkened, dim, dingy, dirty, dismal, drab, dreary, dull, dun, dusk, dusky, filthy, foggy, foul, fuzzy, glowering, gray, grubby, impenetrable, lowering, misty, mucky, muddy, nasty, nebulous, nubilous, overcast, roily, sad, smoky, somber, squalid, stormy, tenebrous, turbid, unclean.
Antonyms – bright, clear, light, luminous, sparkling, unobscured.
Usage – the sky was murky and a thin drizzle was falling.
9. Conglomerate – समूह
Meaning – a thing consisting of a number of different and distinct parts or items that are grouped together.
Synonyms – amassed, assorted, blended, clustered, heterogeneous, indiscriminate, massed, melded, miscellaneous, mixed, motley, multifarious, promiscuous, varied, variegated.
Antonyms – individual, separate, single.
Usage – the Earth is a specialized conglomerate of organisms.
10. Impoverished – गरीब
Meaning – make (a person or area) poor.
Synonyms – make poor, make penniless, reduce to penury, reduce to destitution, bring to ruin, bring someone to their knees, bankrupt, ruin, make insolvent.
Antonyms – adorn,aggrandize,ameliorate,augment, beef up,better,build,build up,cultivate,decorate,develop,endow,enhance, figure in, flesh out,grace, hike up, hop up, jack up, jazz up, make rich,ornament, pad,parlay, pour it on, pyramid,refine, run up, soup up,spike.
Usage – the wars had impoverished him.
