The Rag and Bone Shop – Vocabulary Set I – Chapters 1-4 (pp3-29)

Part I – Read the sentence containing an underlined vocabulary word. Look at your context clues, use your prior knowledge and break the vocabulary word into parts to determine its meaning. Write what you think the word means on the lines below each sentence. Even if you aren’t sure, make a guess.

  1. The fact that you confessed indicates a degree of sorrow.

______

  1. Acting was only another facet of interrogating subjects.

______

  1. Anyway, the day loomed ahead, free, no classes, no demands, not even any household chores that he know about, and he lay there feasting on the thought of the long summer days ahead.

______

  1. The body of seven-year-old Alicia Bartlett was found between the trunks of two overlapping maple trees in dense woods only five hundred yards from her home.

______

  1. The medical examiner listed the preliminary cause of death as head trauma from an irregularly shaped blunt instrument.

______

  1. She had either wandered off or been lured away a few minutes before her mother arrived home from a shopping trip at 4:10 p.m.

______

  1. Still, it was feared that Alicia might have stumbled and fallen into the stream, struck her head on a rock, lost consciousness and drowned.

______

  1. Mr. Hobart, the principal, called him into his office and made a speech about how unprovoked violence was the worst kind of all.

______

  1. “I can’t tell you that. I’m not a priest.”

“But I confessed to you.”

“Yes, but I can’t give you absolution.”

______

  1. The relentless questions and answers, the evasions and rationalizations, the eventual admission (not the same as a confession), and finally the confession itself.

______

Part II – Match the word to its definition.

  1. confessed ______a. awareness
  2. interrogate ______b. without reason
  3. loomed ______c. thick
  4. dense______d. to attract, to draw something toward you
  5. blunt______e. forgiveness
  6. lured______f. to avoid something or someone
  7. consciousness______g. having an edge or point that is not sharp
  8. unprovoked ______h. to admit to doing something wrong
  9. absolution ______i. to question
  10. evade______j. to appear great or impressive