1. Shibboleth
• A custom, principle, or belief distinguishing a particular class or group of people, especially a long-standing one regarded as outmoded or no longer important. A motto or catchphrase that members of a group tend to say.
Usage: He delighted in puncturing trendy shibboleths and was known among his peers as a “dark horse of literature.
2. Inculcate
• Teach someone an attitude, idea, or habit by persistent instruction.
Usage: Drill sergeants inculcate these differences into recruits during boot camp, teaching them they are better and tougher than civilians.
3. Rue
• Bitterly regret something one has done or allowed to happen and wish it undone.
Usage: Ferguson will rue the day he turned down that offer.
4. Bon mot
• A witty remark.
Usage: On a good day, her Twitter bon mots might get a few dozen retweets.
5. Bankroll
• Support a person, organization, or project financially.
Usage: The project is bankrolled by wealthy expatriates.
6. Salafism
• A militant group of extremist Sunnis who believe themselves the only correct interpreters of the Koran and consider moderate Muslims to be infidels; seek to convert all Muslims and to insure that its own fundamentalist version of Islam will dominate the world.
7. Excommunication
• A formal way of describing what happens when someone gets kicked out of his or her church, for good. Excommunication is really a kind of banishment, a punishment that’s handed out by a church when one of its members breaks some important church rule. The Latin root is excommunicare, meaning “put out of the community”.
8. A tall order
• A tall order is a task or job that is difficult to carry out.
• Some things in life are easy to do. Some can be done with a moderate amount of effort or skill. Others are tall orders: a tall order is hard to accomplish, and it might even be impossible.
Usage: This is a breathtakingly tall order — and one that pays commensurately large dividends for those with the courage to undertake it.
9. Puritanical
• Having or displaying a very strict or censorious moral attitude towards self-indulgence.
Usage: His puritanical parents saw any kind of pleasure as the road to damnation.
10. Sweep under the carpet/rug
• To ignore, deny, or conceal from public view or knowledge something that is embarrassing, unappealing, or damaging to one’s reputation.
Usage: The media mob’s disgusting bias, it is obvious, both from what they obsess over and what they choose to sweep under the carpet/rug.
