Focus on Reading To Kill a Mockingbird.pdf - ymerleksi - home

STUDENT NAME ___________________________________________________ DATE__________________
IV. Chapters 17–21
During Reading
Build Your Vocabulary
Read the sentences below. On the line, write your definition of the word in bold type. Then, on
another sheet of paper, use that word in a new sentence of your own.
1. “We could tell, however, when debate became more acrimonious than professional, but this
was from watching lawyers other than our father.”
acrimonious: ____________________________________________________________
2. “Judge Taylor stirred. He turned slowly in his swivel chair and looked benignly at the witness.”
benignly: ________________________________________________________________
3. “Mr. Ewell wrote on the back of the envelope and looked up complacently to see Judge Taylor
staring at him as if he were some fragrant gardenia in full bloom on the witness stand....”
complacently: ____________________________________________________________
4. “Suddenly Mayella became articulate. ‘I got somethin’ to say,’ she said.”
articulate: ________________________________________________________________
5. “He seemed to be a respectable Negro, and a respectable Negro would never go up into
somebody’s yard of his own volition.”
volition: ________________________________________________________________
6. “Below us, the spectators drew a collective breath and leaned forward. Behind us, the Negroes
did the same.”
collective: ________________________________________________________________
7. “Until my father explained it to me later, I did not understand the subtlety of Tom’s
predicament: he would not have dared strike a white woman under any circumstances and
expect to live long....”
predicament: ____________________________________________________________
8. “I had never encountered a being who deliberately perpetrated fraud against himself.”
perpetrated: ______________________________________________________________
9. “‘. . . absence of any corroborative evidence, this man was indicted on a capital charge and is
now on trial for his life....’”
corroborative: ____________________________________________________________
10. “‘And so a quiet, respectable, humble Negro who had the unmitigated temerity to “feel sorry”
for a white woman has had to put his word against two white people’s.’”
temerity: ________________________________________________________________
© 2006 Saddleback Educational Publishing 22 <strong>Focus</strong> on Reading: To Kill a Mockingbird