Surcease

[SUR-sees', sahr-SEES] 

intransitive verb

Meaning :

1. to come to an end
2. to desist; stop 

USAGE EXAMPLE :

If the karaoke howling does not surcease, we will be forced to make a hasty escape from this bar.

yen

\YEN\, noun:

Meaning :

1. A desire or craving.
2. An aluminum coin and monetary unit of Japan, equal to 100 sen or 1000 rin.

USAGE EXAMPLE:

verb:

To have a craving; yearn.

If you have a yen for real-life adventure stories, here are five paperbacks you want to be sure to slip into your vacation bag this summer.

"But the thing here is, Darcy, I've had a bit of a ... of a yen for him for ... well, forever. I just thought it was time to act on it or I'd always have one, and where would that get me?"

zephyr

\ZEF-er\, noun:

Meaning :

1. A gentle, mild breeze.
2. Literary. The west wind.
3. Any of various things of fine, light quality.

USAGE EXAMPLE :

And when my hand had had its fill of sport I used to seek The coolness of the shade and of the breeze, / The zephyr breathing from the chilly dales. / I sought the zephyr in the heat, / I waited for the zephyr, for its balm.

Exactly as when the sun rises and drives away the shades of night, a light zephyr flits with the sun's rays over the face of the reviving earth.

penumbra

\pi-NUHM-bruh\, noun:

Meaning :

1. An area in which something exists to an uncertain degree.
2. Astronomy. The partial or imperfect shadow outside the complete shadow of an opaque body, as a planet, where the light from the source of illumination is only partly cut off.

USAGE EXAMPLE :

But there is a penumbra about the Magna Carta, a shadow cast in which its vision of an ideal nearly eclipses the mundane circumstances of its origins.

The foregoing cases suggest that specific guarantees in the Bill of Rights have a penumbra, formed by emanations from those guarantees that help give them life and substance. See Poe v. Ullman, 367 U. S. 497, 516-522 (dissenting opinion). Various guarantees create zones of privacy. The right of association contained in the penumbra of the First Amendment is one, as we have seen.

Manichean

\man-i-KEE-uhn\, adjective:

Meaning :

1. Pertaining to a strongly dualistic worldview.
2. Of or pertaining to the Manicheans or their doctrines.

USAGE EXAMPLE :

An adherent of the dualistic religious system of Manes, a combination of gnostic Christianity, Buddhism, Zoroastrianism, and various other elements, with a basic doctrine of a conflict between light and dark.

And in such a Manichean national landscape of villains and heroes, either the government, the Church, or the "rich"-or, alternatively, the "communists" and the "agitators"-hoodwinked the noble people into doing what they in retrospect should not have.