Generate the answer for a given question. The question requires common knowledge of English. Make sure that the answer is in detail, long, consistent with the context, and requires general knowledge of English. To be less repetitive, please vary your language for each question. Give a proper explanation to answer, and if necessary, provide the definition of various terms. And conclude your answer if it's long. If you have used other resources (e.g., Merriam Webster's.) to answer the question, include citations in your answer. You don't need to paraphrase the context of your resources, but make sure that your answer is consistent and complete.
--------
Question: Once when I was having a hard time a guy said to me, 'I'm sorry you're having a hard time, I'll pray for you,' in a way that made it clear that he was glad I was having a hard time because it gave him the opportunity to pray for me and feel good about himself. I am interested in this phenomenon but also the much more general (probably universal) phenomenon of human beings finding justification for things they want to do, often by lying to themselves about the utility of the behavior to other people. The best single word I can think of for this is contrived, but it is not close to precise. Similarly, dissembling, insincere, and so on don't really cut it. I also looked at this list of cognitive biases but was unable to find one that expressed this idea. Is there a single word for this? If not, a short phrase?.

Answer: I am not sure if you are stuck to the notion of altruism, but in the context of making a show of being nice to others to make themselves feel good, you could use sanctimonious. Sanctimonious is a twist on the words sanctity and sacred, which mean holy or religious. A sanctimonious person might think he's holy, but their attitude comes across more like 'holier-than-thou.' Though sanctimonious people might try to act like saints, their actions are far from pure or holy, which just makes them sound like hypocrites. Vocabulary.com


Question: Possible Duplicate: Is it correct to use 'punctuation outside of the quotations', or 'inside?' I've heard that you should always place ending punctuation inside of quotes, no matter what. Are there any cases where it is appropriate for a sentence to end with '.?.

Answer: Yes. See the Economist style guide: If the quotation does not include any punctuation, the closing inverted commas should precede any punctuation marks that the sentence requires. More at the Guardian style guide.


Question: So basically, I know the name for both sides of a coin, yet not the coin itself. In other words, when you refer to a coin, you don't want to say 'this object with one side heads, and the other tails', you would want to say 'this coin'. What I want is a general term to refer to two ideas, that are the absolute opposite to each other. I can't really use the word 'concept', or 'idea', because such words are already assigned to the very concepts/ideas themselves.

Answer:
polar opposites: polar opposite (plural polar opposites): The complete opposite, opposite in every way. 'Polar opposites' might also refer to the scientific or technical definition of two things having exactly opposing or inverted polarity, sign, orientation, or some other property.