Make Your Point > Archived Issues > USURIOUS

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explore the archives: It's no coincidence that usury and usurious look and sound like use. They're related. Someone loans you money, but at an interest rate so high it's criminal. That's usury. You used their money. But they used you. Let's review some similar relationships. See if you can explain the actual in actualize, the cloud in becloud, the cap in capstone, and the class in déclassé. There are no tricks here; the pairs belong together for logical reasons. What are they? make your point with... "USURIOUS" Usury is the crime of lending money at interest rates that are way, way too high. So, something usurious involves usury or reminds you of usury. In other words, usurious things are unfairly taking advantage of people by charging them way too much money. More generally, "usurious" means unreasonably high in a way that takes advantage of people. Pronunciation: you ZURE ee us Part of speech: Adjective. (Adjectives are describing words, like "large" or "late." They can be used in two ways: 1. Right before a noun, as in "a usurious thing" or "a usurious person." 2. After a linking verb, as in "It was usurious" or "He was usurious.") Other forms: usuriously, usurer(s) (the people who commit usury) How to use it: Usurious things often involve interest charged on money loaned, but you can use the word much more generally, too. So while you'll often talk about usurious interest rates, usurious loans, and usurious lending, you can also discuss usurious prices and fees and charges and rates, usurious businesses, usurious business practices (like usurious fundraising schemes), usurious deals and agreements and arrangements, usurious claims, and so on. So far I've listed usurious things. Can you have usurious people? Yup: a usurious creditor, a usurious solicitor, a usurious vendor, some usurious organizations, etc. If you wonder why I've been writing "a usurious thing" instead of "an usurious thing", recall that "a" and not "an" comes before consonant sounds, and that "u" sometimes makes the consonant sound of "y." So, say "a usurious thing" just like you say "a university," "a unicorn," "a ubiquitous trend," and so on. examples: Hands up if you're still paying off a usurious student loan. It's a manipulative if not downright usurious arrangement when you "work for" a company by buying its products and pushing them onto your friends. study it now: Look away from the screen to explain the definition in your own words. You’ll know you understand what "usurious" means when you can explain it without saying "unreasonably high" or "charging way too much money." try it out: Think of a time you or someone you know paid way, way too much for something. Fill in the blanks: "For (a specific product or service,) (someone) paid a usurious $_____."  Example: "For this admittedly delicious bowl of nachos at the theater, I paid a usurious $12." before you review: Spend at least 20 seconds occupying your mind with the game below. Then try the review questions. Don’t go straight to the review now—let your working memory empty out first. Language Techniques: When language sounds beautiful or memorable, often there’s some particular technique responsible for that effect. Each day this month, I’ll give you a specific stylistic technique or quality, and I’d like you to recreate (as closely as you can) the quote that I’ve botched by removing it. We’ll work our way from the easiest to the hardest techniques. Enjoy! From yesterday: Asyndeton is the omission of the connecting words that you'd usually expect, like when Shakespeare described old age as a second infancy: "Sans teeth, sans eyes, sans taste, sans everything." (Note how there's no "and" or "or" before "sans everything.") And here's Zora Neale Hurston describing herself as a "brown bag of miscellany"--but make the tiny change necessary to restore her asyndeton and with it, the concision and drama: "A first-water diamond, an empty spool, bits of broken glass, lengths of string, a key to a door long since crumbled away, a rusty knife-blade, old shoes saved for a road that never was and never will be, a nail bent under the weight of things too heavy for any nail, and a dried flower or two, still a little fragrant." Answer: Simply delete the and: "...things too heavy for any nail, a dried flower or two, still a little fragrant." Try this one today: Normally you expect lists to sound like this: "A, B, and C." While asyndeton omits all the connecting words ("A, B, C"), polysyndeton puts them everywhere ("A and B and C"). Here's some polysyndeton from the book of Ecclesiastes: "I returned, and saw under the sun, that the race is not to the swift, nor the battle to the strong, neither yet bread to the wise, nor yet riches to men of understanding, nor yet favour to men of skill; but time and chance happeneth to them all." Put the polysyndeton back into these sentences from Antoine de Saint Exupéry's The Little Prince: "Then I would never talk to that person about boa constrictors, primeval forests, or stars. I would bring myself down to his level. I would talk to him about bridge, golf, politics, and neckties." review today's word: 1. The closest opposite of USURIOUS is A. CONCEIVABLE B. REASONABLE C. ENJOYABLE 2. They charged first-time home buyers usurious interest rates, in some cases _____. A. as little as 0.9% B. as much as 2% C. as much as 9% Answers are below. a final word: To be a sponsor and send your own message to readers of this list, please contact Liesl at Liesl@HiloTutor.com. Disclaimer: Word meanings presented here are expressed in plain language and are limited to common, useful applications only. Readers interested in authoritative and multiple definitions of words are encouraged to check a dictionary. Likewise, word meanings, usage, and pronunciations are limited to American English; these elements may vary across world Englishes. Answers to review questions: 1. B 2. C