Full of energy or courage; very lively or determined.

You may see *spirited* used to describe a conversation, a debate, a horse, or a campaign. And it often shows up in such words as *high-spirited* (“bold and energetic”), *mean-spirited* (“spiteful”), and *public-spirited* (“generous to a community”), all of which reflect the original meaning of *spirit*, a notion much like “soul” or “personality.”

Causing a loss of hope or enthusiasm.

Lots of things can be dispiriting: a bad job interview, an awful film, a relationship going sour. Maybe for that reason, *dispiriting* has lots of synonyms: *discouraging, disheartening, demoralizing, depressing,* etc.

(1) A device worn over the nose and mouth to filter out dangerous substances from the air. (2) A device for maintaining artificial respiration.

*Respiration* means simply “breathing.” We usually come across the word in *artificial respiration,* the lifesaving technique in which you force air into the lungs of someone who's stopped breathing. Respirators can take several different forms. Scuba-diving equipment always includes a respirator, though it doesn't actually do the breathing for the diver. Medical respirators, which are used especially for babies and for emergency care and actually take over the job of getting oxygen into the lungs, are today usually called ventilators, so as to distinguish them from simple oxygen systems (which merely provide a steady flow of oxygen into the nostrils) and face masks.

(1) To happen. (2) To become known.

Since the prefix *trans-* means “through,” *transpire*'s most literal meaning is something like “breathe through.” Thus, the original meaning of the English word—still used today—is to give off a watery vapor through a surface such as a leaf. From there, it came to mean also the gradual appearance of previously secret information, as if leaking out of the pores of a leaf (as in “It transpired that she was not only his employee but also his girlfriend”). And soon it was being used to mean simply “happen” (as in “I wondered what had transpired in the cafeteria at lunchtime”).

(1) To prove to be true or correct. (2) To check or test the accuracy of.

During talks between the United States and the former Soviet Union on nuclear weapons reduction, one big problem was how to verify that weapons had been eliminated. Since neither side wanted the other to know its secrets, *verification* of the facts became a difficult issue. Because of the distrust on both sides, many doubted that the real numbers would ever be *verifiable.*

To state positively as true; declare.

Since *aver* contains the “truth” root, it basically means “confirm as true.” You may aver anything that you're sure of. In legal situations, *aver* means to state positively as a fact; thus, Perry Mason's clients aver that they are innocent, while the district attorney avers the opposite. If you make such a statement while under oath, and it turns out that you lied, you may have committed the crime of perjury.

(1) The appearance of being true or probable. (2) The depiction of realism in art or literature.

From its roots, *verisimilitude* means basically “similarity to the truth.” Most fiction writers and filmmakers aim at some kind of verisimilitude to give their stories an air of reality. They need not show something actually true, or even very common, but simply something believable. A mass of good details in a play, novel, painting, or film may add verisimilitude. A spy novel without some verisimilitude won't interest many readers, but a fantastical novel may not even attempt to seem true to life.

(1) Truth or accuracy. (2) The quality of being truthful or honest.

People often claim that a frog placed in cold water that then is gradually heated will let itself be boiled to death, but the story actually lacks veracity. We often hear that the Eskimo (Inuit) peoples have dozens of words for “snow,” but the veracity of the statement is doubtful, since Eskimo languages seem to have no more snow words than English (with *flake, blizzard, powder, drift, freezing rain,* etc.). In 2009 millions accepted the veracity of the claim that, against all the evidence, the elected president wasn't a native-born American. Not all the “facts” we accept without thinking are harmless.