English II Vocabulary List #3: Revenge and Justice Unit
Quiz:Monday, October 5
Name______period____
Directions: For each vocabulary word, you have been given an example sentence from the text. Write your own original sentence using the vocabulary word. Your sentence must relate to any of the stories or the unit theme of REVENGE and JUSTICE.
- Propagate (v): to spread or broadcast
“The Cultural Revolution was over already, and recently the Party had been propagating the idea that all citizens were equal before the law” (Jin 498).
- Harangue (v/n): lecture; tirade
“He got carried away with his harangue, which was by no means trivial and had worked to his advantage on numerous occasions” (Jin 499).
- Efficacy (n): effectiveness; power
“…She had seen natives with no sight in their eyes because of the spitting of a snake, she began to look for the return of her cook, remembering what she heard of the efficacy of native herbs” (Lessing 327).
- Perfunctory (adj): unenthusiastic; cursory
“He was perhaps a trifle perfunctory: It was not the first time he had come salting the tail of a fabulous bush secret” (Lessing 329).
- Eminent (adj): distinguished; high-ranking
“Throwing the flowers casually into the back of his car, the eminent visitor departed on his way back to his laboratory” (Lessing 331).
- Desolate (adj): deserted; joyless
“When his soul left his body, it might have been surprised at the oddness of the next world, a world beyond space, gray and infinitely desolate—but it wasn’t” (Capek 205).
- Inveterate (adj): habitual; confirmed
“Kugler, Ferdinand was a thief before his tenth year and an inveterate liar” (Capek 207).
- Usury (n): lending money at a high rate of interest
“That’s where they stored the money they got from usury and penny-pinching” (Capek 208).
- Pensively (adv), Pensive (adj): thoughtfully, musingly
“’But really, why don’t You….why don’t You Yourself do the judging?’ Kugler asked pensively” (Capek 209).
- Despicable (adj): deserving to be despised; contemptible
“They are mixed here with that despicable corps of angels who were neither God nor Satan, but only for themselves” (Alighieri 667).
- Reprimand (v/n): chastise; blame
“And I cast down my eyes, sensing a reprimand in what he said, and so walked at his side in silence and ashamed until we came through the dead cavern to that sunless tide” (Alighieri 668).
- Lamentation (n): weeping; wailing
“Master, what gnaws at them so hideously their lamentation stuns the very air?” (Alighieri 667).
- Anguish (n): great suffering; agony
“Now the choir of anguish, like a wound, strikes through the tortured air” (Alighieri 677).
- Perilous (adj): dangerous
“But tell me: in the time of your sweet sighs by what appearances found love the way to lure you to his perilous paradise?” (Alighieri 681).
- Awe (n): feelings of reverence, fear, and wonder
“With what a sense of awe I saw his head towering above me! For it had three faces…” (Alighieri 685).
Works Cited
Alighieri, Dante. “Inferno.” Prentice Hall Literature: World Masterpieces. Boston: Pearson, 2007. 658-690.
Capek, Karel. “The Last Judgment.” Reading the World. Ed. Julie A. Schumacher. Logan, Iowa: Perfection Learning, 2003. 205-210.
Jin, Ha. “Sabateur.” Reading the World. Ed. Julie A. Schumacher. Logan, Iowa: Perfection Learning, 2003. 495-507.
Lessing, Doris. “No Witchcraft for Sale.” Reading the World. Ed. Julie A. Schumacher. Logan, Iowa: Perfection Learning, 2003. 324-332.
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