五百基礎詞匯的使用和練習（32）

"Out, idle words, servants to shallow fools!
Unprofitable sounds, weak arbitrators!"
Shakespeare, The Rape ofLucrece


Words to Learn This Week

refer
distress
diminish
maximum
flee
vulnerable
signify
mythology
colleague
torment
provide
loyalty


Read the following story to see how the new words are used in it.

How Our Language Grows

Many popular expressions in our language have interesting backgrounds. When we refer to a person's weak spot as his Achilles heel, we are recalling the story of the mighty Greek hero of the Trojan War, Achilles, a warrior of unusual strength and valor. The mother of Achilles, in whose veins flowed the blood of the gods, was warned at his birth that her son would die in battle. In great distress, she sought to save her son. In order to diminish his chances of being hurt and to give him maximum protection in combat, she dipped the infant in the river Styx. The magic waters touched every part of the child's body except the heel that she held in her hand. Thus it happened many years later that as Achilles started to flee from an attack, a poisoned arrow struck him in the heel, the only spot where he was vulnerable.

Today, the meaning of Achilles heel is not confined to a weak spot in the body but it also signifies a weakness in the character of an individual, or in the defenses of a nation, or in the structure of a system.

American politics, rather than mythology, provides the explanation for the word bunk. This word came into the language in 1820 when Felix Walker, the representative from Buncombe County, North Carolina, formed the habit of making long, unnecessary speeches in Congress. When his colleagues asked him why he was tormenting them so, he apologized by saying it was his patriotic duty to put those speeches in the record out of loyalty to his supporters at home. The word "Buncombe" was shortened to "bunk" and came to mean any thought that has little or no worth.


Place one of the new words in each of the blanks below.

1.The uneventful flow of news was interrupted by a report of a ship in _________ .

2.Our temperature for the day dropped from a _________ of 85 degrees to a minimum of 70 degrees.

3.The dishonest employee planned to ____________ with several thousand dollars of the company's money.

4.It was easy to see that the club members resented Phil's _________ them with silly questions.

5.Colonel Bishop's deep sense of _________ to his men signifies an honest and honorable nature.

6.Elizabeth was finally persuaded to ___________for her remark and to pledge to be more careful in the future.

7.What I admire in Marty is that he never abandoned his _________ in their time of need.

8.Mr. Harris' manipulation of the bank funds _________ his greed.

9.Debra had a tendency to ____________ all her questions to the librarian instead of looking them up herself.

10.The registration for this course has _________ to the point where we must consider eliminating it from the curriculum.

11. The names of the days of the week are based on the names of the gods and goddesses of Norse ______.

12. The distressing fact is that we are all ________ to natural disasters.

所有跟帖： 

• Hooray! know all words in this sesson :-) Thanks YuGong! -同學小薇- ♀ (1422 bytes) () 05/07/2012 postreply 11:45:45

• Great! Have a nice new week. -EnLearner- ♂ (131 bytes) () 05/07/2012 postreply 20:40:48