Visual Dictionary: Incendiary
Sometimes, a picture is worth a thousand words. Interestingly, just as “percent” means “per 100,” there’s a word for “per one thousand”: permille (also spelled permil, per mille, etc.) There’s even a symbol for it: °. So you could say that, in some cases, a word is 1° of a picture. Welcome to Visual Dictionary, a series of posts about words that are better expressed in pictures.
Also incendiary.
An incendiary (such as dynamite) can literally set things on fire, or an incendiary (such the rebels of the Boston Tea Party, or Thomas Paine’s pamphlet Common Sense) can incite people towards strife or revolution. The word can be an adjective or a noun. As a noun, it can be an object or a person.
Consider this Antonyms problem…
INCENDIARY:
A. mallet
B. peeler
C. extinguisher
D. conflagration
E. tenderizer
…and this one.
INCENDIARY:
A. lukewarm
B. inflammatory
C. fractious
D. diluted
E. conciliatory
Look, one more!
INCENDIARY:
A. ascetic
B. pacifier
C. revolutionary
D. legate
E. stoic
Wow, incendiary has a lot of meanings!
The answers are C, E, and B.