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VOCABULARY - Cry The Beloved Country Chapters 11-14
Part I: Using Prior Knowledge and Contextual Clues
Below are the sentences in which the vocabulary words appear in the text. Read the sentence. Use any clues you can find in the sentence combined with your prior knowledge, and write what you think the underlined words mean in the space provided.
1. It would seem that a native, probably with two accomplices, entered by the kitchen, thinking no doubt that there would be no one in the house.
2. What lovers can lie sweetly under the stars, when menace grows with the measure of their seclusion?
3-4. So long as we vacillate, so long will we pay dearly for the dubious pleasure of not having to make up our minds.
5. Both European and non-European speakers to present a symposium.
6. Why have so many others had gone astray before him?
7. And what did vagabonds do?
8. To cleave down between the seeing eyes.
9. And how fools listen to him, silent, enrapt, sighing when he is done, feeding their empty bellies on his empty words.
10. The white warder makes no sign.
Vocabulary Cry The Beloved Country Chapters 11-14 Page 2
Part II: Determining the Meaning
Match the vocabulary words to their dictionary definitions. If there are words for which you cannot figure out the definition by contextual clues and by process of elimination, look them up in a dictionary.
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1. accomplices
2. menace
3. vacillate
4. dubious
5. symposium
6. Astray
7. vagabonds
8. cleave
9. enrapt
10. warder
A. To fill with rapture or delight.
B. Guard.
C. A meeting or conference for discussion of a topic.
D. To split with a sharp instrument.
E. People without a permanent home who move from place to place
F. A possible danger; a threat.
G. Away from the correct path or direction.
H. Those who aid a lawbreaker in a criminal act. I. Doubtful.
I. To swing indecisively from one course of action or opinion to another.