Thursday, December 9, 2010

Vocabulary- Robert Hsieh

L= lines in the novel; D= definition; S= new sentence


1. Assuaged

L: When it healed, and Jem’s fears of never being able to play football were assuaged, he was seldom self-conscious about his injury.

D: To make milder or less severe; relieve; ease; mitigate: to assuage one's grief; to assuage one's pain.

S: Jem can now play football since his fear of playing football were assuaged.


2. Apothecary

L: All we had was Simon Finch, a fur-trapping apothecary from Cornwall whose piety was exceeded only by his stinginess.

D: A druggist; a pharmacist.

S: The father’s father of Scout is called Simon Finch, a fur-trapping apothecary.


3. Mindful

L: Mindful of John Wesley’s strictures on the use of many words in buying and selling …

D: Attentive, aware, or careful (usually fol. by of): mindful of one's responsibilities.

S: George is mindful of his duties.


4. Dictum

L: So Simon, having forgotten his teacher’s dictum on the possession of human chattels, bought three slaves …

D: An authoritative pronouncement; judicial assertion.

S: One of my friend likes to apply dictums in his daily conversation.


5. Taciturn

L: She married a taciturn man who spent most of his time lying in a hammock.

D: Inclined to silence; reserved in speech; reluctant to join in conversation.

S: I have a taciturn friend who is always unwilling to talk even when he’s on a meeting.


6. Spittoon

L: Atticus’s office in the courthouse contained little more than a hat rack, a spittoon, a checkerboard and an unsullied Code of Alabama.

D: a receptacle for spit, usually in a public place

S: Mary is fond of collecting many different types of spittoons from all over the world.


7. Synonymous

L: … Atticus had urged them to accept the state’s generosity in allowing them to plead Guilty to second-degree murder and escape with their lives, but they were Haverfords, in Maycomb County a name synonymous with jackass.

D: Having the character of synonyms or a synonym; equivalent in meaning; expressing or implying the same idea.

S: Poverty is not synonymous with degradation.


8. Mare

L: The Haverfords had dispatched Maycomb’s leading blacksmith in a misunderstanding arising from the alleged wrongful detention of a mare, were imprudent enough to do it in the presence of three witnesses, and insisted that the-son-of-a-bitch-had-it-coming-to-him was a good enough defense for anybody.

D: A fully mature female horse or other equine animal.

S: The owner of that farm kept twenty mares for breeding.


9. Derived

L: But after getting Uncle Jack started, Atticus derived a reasonable income from the law.

D: To receive or obtain from a source or origin (usually fol. by from).

S: Many of the English words are derived from Greek.


10. Slop

L: In rainy weather the streets turned to red slop.

D: To spill or splash (liquid).

S: In rainy days, I have to slop through the road to get to school.


11. Talcum

L: Ladies bathed before noon, after their three-o’clock naps, and by nightfall were like soft teacakes with frostings of sweat and sweet talcum.

D: a green-to-gray, soft mineral, hydrous magnesium silicate, Mg 3 (Si 4 O 10 )(OH) 2 , unctuous to the touch, and occurring usually in foliated or compact masses, used in making lubricants, talcum powder, electrical insulation, etc.

S: The baby giggles when his mother spreads talcum over its body after a hot comfortable bath.


12. Tyrannical

L: She had been with us ever since Jem was born, and I had felt her tyrannical presence as long as I could remember.

D: Of or characteristic of a tyrant.

S: Jack is a tyrannical boss, so all his subordinates hate him.


13. Entity

L: The Radley Place was inhabited by an unknown entity the mere description of whom was enough to make us behave for days on end.

D: Something that has a real existence

S: The virus exits the cell as a single entity.


14. Jutted

L: The Radely Place jutted into a sharp curve beyond our house.

D: To extend beyond the main body or line; project.

S: The balcony of the museum jutted out over the beautiful garden.


15. Shingle

L: Rain-rotted shingles drooped over the eaves of the veranda.

D: A thin piece of wood, slate, metal, asbestos, or the like, usually oblong, laid in overlapping rows to cover the roofs and walls of buildings.

S: The roofs of the palaces in Beijing are covered with beautiful golden shingles.

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