Vocabulary learning #1

Thanks for the GRE words list provided by Professor Johanson. To make the best use of it, I decided to pick some words from the list every now and then and extract a sample sentence from British National Corpus for each of them. BNC stores abundant collections of sentences gathered from authentic sources, such as academic journals, periodicals, newspaper, published works and so on. As a graduate school student about to write a academic paper, I believe it is vital to escalate my vocabulary level and to know how a word is used by native speakers with sophisticated language ability.

abstemious - temperate, sparing in drink, etc.
There is a record of a severe lecture he delivered to Capuchin monks in Prague whom he found were living far more expansively than his own abstemious style would permit.

abstruse - obscure, profound
Although some of these analyses have proved abstruse and others untenable, this collective contribution (which can be only briefly explored here) has proved vital in re-orientating thinking on the urban problem and its resolution.

acidulous - slightly sour, sharp, caustic
In these circumstances I think that Darwin can rest quietly in his grave, that is to say of the acidulous palaeontologists haven't already been trying to dig him up to prove something.

acrimonious - stinging, caustic
But in the mid-1970s there was an acrimonious conflict between the different intelligence gathering agencies in the province.

adamant - hard, inflexible
The Government is equally adamant that councils' financial problems are being exaggerated and that the civil disobedience campaign is flopping.