The 17th-century Spanish novel Don Quixote (originally titled El ingenioso hidalgo don Quijote de la Mancha) relates the story of a would-be knight and his companion Sancho Panza as they travel around on a quest for rights to wrong, giants to slay, and maidens to save. Although he’s only an old and slightly crazy retired gentleman, Don Quixote sees it as his duty to fight the forces of evil and to rescue those he thinks are in danger. Unfortunately, he’s usually mistaken about exactly what it is he needs to fight, and thinks that a field of windmills is an army of giants. We get the English idiom “tilting at windmills” from this book; this phrase describes the act of going up against forces that are so much larger than you are that you won’t have any effect on them, but doing it nonetheless in a spirit of chivalry and nobility, hoping to protect the weak from the powerful. The word quixotic also comes from this novel, an adjective meaning impractically romantic, given to impulsive gestures and impossible goals.

Example: Brian bought thousands of red roses on February 14th, with the quixotic desire to give one to every woman he saw, so that no one would go without flowers on Valentine’s Day.

If you were walking down the street and a stranger came up to you and tried to give you a flower, would you accept it, or would you repudiate his gesture and walk away? Repudiate means to reject or deny, to refuse to have anything to do with a person or a situation, a statement or a philosophy.

Example 1: The head of the political party repudiated the rhetoric of the members who were calling for acts of violence against the opposition.

Example 2: A former devout parishioner, she repudiated the Catholic Church after all of the recent scandals, and is seeking a new spiritual home.

The Catholic Church has long been known for its stringent rules of conduct for members of the clergy and their congregations. Stringent means strict, severe, or rigid. Some rules, such as not eating meat on Fridays, are not always stringently observed. The breaking of other rules, however, can lead to excommunication – a repudiation by the Church of the one who has broken the rules.

Example 1: The hospital established a stringent policy that all visitors had to follow when visiting patients, including a complete change of clothes and hourly hand-washing.

Example 2: The graduate program at that university has a stringent set of requirements that must be met before a student is admitted.

Your vocabulary study will help you meet any requirements of a graduate degree program. Keep up the good work!