invidious

Modifying Another Word

• perhaps: It is perhaps invidious to criticize such an ambitious and fundamentally valuable undertaking as this on these grounds.
• however: It is however invidious to have different funding mechanisms applying to young people's learning opportunities.
• always: Naming names within a short exercise in reminiscence like this is always invidious, but there are two names which must not go unrecorded.
• very: What often happens in such cases can be very invidious for all concerned.
• not: Q If ITV merges, is it not invidious that two sales houses will report to one Plc?

Infinitive complement

• pick: I enjoyed reading so many of the essays in this book that it is invidious to pick out favorites.
• single: It would be invidious to single out any by name.
• name: But it would be invidious to name some, when all our teachers were so friendly and approachable.
• select: So many officials have made so many mistakes over so many years that it would be invidious to select a single example of incompetence.
• say: That being so, it is the less invidious to say that the charge was a gross blunder.
• make: Sometimes I think it is invidious to make comparisons with one type of terrorism and another.

Modifies a noun

• comparison: Keith Hill: I would not want to make that kind of invidious comparison.
• distinction: Segmentation is a social technology whose primary function is the creation of invidious distinctions.
• position: You will never be in the invidious position of not knowing whether you are making or losing money at any particular time.
• discrimination: This article addresses the most common colloquial sense of the word, invidious discrimination.
• choice: Blair was confronted with an invidious choice that nobody in the British establishment has wanted to make: Europe or America.
• task: In trying to determine where we are, I fear we would leave an invidious task for judges and juries.

Used with adjective complement

• seem: So it seems particularly invidious to encourage the use of other smokable drugs, such as cannabis.