1. Commensurate
• Corresponding in size or degree.
• In proportion.
Usage: Salary will be commensurate with age and experience.
2. Clampdown
• A concerted or harsh attempt to suppress something.
Usage: According to the Economist, this clampdown has been extended to non-political activity.
3. Treacherous
• Guilty of or involving betrayal or deception.
Usage: I thought that in my years as a reporter I had navigated some fairly treacherous terrain.
Synonyms: traitorous, disloyal, perfidious, faithless, and unfaithful.
4. Tight-fisted
• Not willing to spend or give much money.
• Miserly.
Usage: Tight-fisted to the point of miserliness.
5. Goldilocks principle
• The Goldilocks principle is named by analogy to the children’s story The Three Bears, in which a little girl named Goldilocks tastes three different bowls of porridge and finds that she prefers porridge that is neither too hot nor too cold, but has just the right temperature.
6. Asymmetric federalism
• Asymmetric federalism or asymmetrical federalism is found in a federation or confederation in which different constituent states possess different powers: one or more of the sub-states has considerably more autonomy than the other sub-states, although they have the same constitutional status.
7. Cause celebre
• A cause célèbre is an issue or incident arousing widespread controversy, outside campaigning, and heated public debate.
• The term continues in the media in all senses.
8. Adrift
• Of a boat or its passengers floating without being either moored or steered.
Usage: The Titanic went adrift in the middle of the ocean.
• Failing to reach a target or winning position.
Usage: The team are three points adrift of the leaders.
9. Pandora’s Box
• A process that once begun generates many complicated problems.
Usage: These policies might open a Pandora’s Box of inflationary wage claims.
10. Evisceration
• An evisceration is the removal of the eye’s contents, leaving the scleral shell and extraocular muscles intact.
• The procedure is usually performed to reduce pain or improve cosmesis in a blind eye, as in cases of endophthalmitis unresponsive to antibiotics.
11. Abate
• Become less intense
Usage: The storm suddenly abated.
Synonyms: subside, lessen, ease off, let up, decrease, diminish, moderate, decline.
12. Thrall
• The state of being in someone’s power.
• Of having great power over someone.
Usage: And funnily enough, the females who go in for this low-grade misandry are usually the ones who are most in thrall to men.
