Pledge (engagement/promesse)

A pledge is basically very serious formal promise.

>>You can pledge allegiance to your country,
>>you can pledge to keep a secret,
>>and you can pledge a sum of money to a cause.

A plight (détresse / sit. desespérée)

is a situation that's hard to get out of.

Learning about the plight of people trying to rebuild their homes after a devastating earthquake
might inspire you to send money to a charity.

Plight means predicament. It comes from the word for pleat, which means fold.
A plight is a tough bind. You'll usually hear the word plight for groups of people or animals
struggling to survive, or struggling for better lives.
We talk about the plight of refugees, or the plight of sea birds after an oil spill.
An old-fashioned use of plight is for pledge. If you get engaged, you give a plight of your love.

Barely
only just, just, hardly, scarcely, at a push, almost not: “His voice was barely audible.”

Scrutiny: (examen approfondie)

careful and thorough examination

Discretionary
Means it's up to you to decide. Bathing regularly is a discretionary act, so you can opt not to do it if
you want; note, however, that your friends might disagree with us on this.

Discretionary is often used to describe money that isn’t designated for a particular purpose. It’s up
to the people in charge to decide how discretionary funds should be spent.
Discretionary comes from the word discretion, which can be used to mean “the right to decide
something based on one’s own judgment.”
If you're given a task to complete at your discretion, you can decide how you want to do it — or
whether you want to do it at all.

Discretionary income: (revenu disponible)

the part of someone's income that is available to spend on things other than necessary things such as
food, clothing and fuel:

be on the breadline (seuil de pauvreté / dans la misère)

To be very poor, as if one could (or does) rely on food donations to survive. A "breadline" is a line
of people seeking food distributed by a charitable or government agency.

Daunting (intimidant, décourageant)

Something daunting can scare you off. If you have a lot of studying to do, it may seem like a
daunting task. Good news is you can get through it by working hard. Or weasel out of it by playing
sick.

Often used in the phrases “daunting prospect” and “daunting task,” daunting describes something
that you are not looking forward to doing. Having to fill out complicated tax forms every year is a
daunting task for many people. Once a daunting task is complete, you no longer describe it as
daunting, but instead can call it a job well done, or at least another life experience survived.

Base code: Code de conduite based on the International Labor Organization

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Block letter = indented letter