Barron's 1100 Words You Need to Know » Week 19 - Day 5

Ruritania is a mythical kingdom, impossible to find on a map and difficult to find in a dictionary. The words that you are about to review, however, are all legitimate, acceptable dictionary words.

Match the twenty words with their meanings. *Reminder: Record answers on a sheet of paper.

Review Words

DEFINITIONS

  1. a. revolution, overthrow
  2. b. unrest, discord
  3. c. take apart, disassemble
  4. d. lavish
  5. e. to free from guilt
  6. f. agree to finance
  7. g. false, lying
  8. h. an exile
  9. i. abnormal desire for power
  10. j. plain spoken
  11. k. harsh, confining
  12. l. to refuse to move
  13. m. wasteful
  14. n. an official order, a decree
  15. o. widespread
  16. p. large number
  17. q. financial
  18. r. a general pardon
  19. s. miserly
  20. t. yearning for the past
  21. u. someone profits from another’s misfortune
  22. v. be fully acquainted with procedures
  23. w. in trouble
  24. x. try to fool someone

REVIEW WORDS

  1. amnesty __________
  2. balk __________
  3. blunt __________
  4. coup __________
  5. dismantle __________
  6. exonerate __________
  7. expatriate __________
  8. fiat __________
  9. legion __________
  10. mendacious __________
  11. megalomania __________
  12. nostalgia __________
  13. parsimonious __________
  14. pecuniary __________
  15. profligate __________
  16. restrictive __________
  17. rife __________
  18. strife __________
  19. sumptuous __________
  20. underwrite __________

Idioms

IDIOMS

  1. to play possum __________
  2. an ill wind __________
  3. know the ropes __________
  4. behind the eight ball __________

Make a record of those words you missed.

WORDSEARCH 19

Using the clues listed below, record separately using one of the new words you learned this week for each blank in the following story.

Clues
  1. 1st Day
  2. 3rd Day
  3. 4th Day
  4. 4th Day
  5. 4th Day

Ogopogo

Accounts of supersized creatures such as the Loch Ness Monster and the Abominable Snowman are (1)__________ . Despite the lack of hard evidence, some people continue to believe that the depths of our lakes and isolated mountain caves remain the dwelling places of fantasy figures.

Now, a new star for the credulous has surfaced. Japanese television was asked to (2)__________ a search for Ogopogo, a long-necked reptilian creature said to inhabit Lake Okanagan in the mountains of south-central British Columbia. Ogopogo stories are (3)__________ in that area as people produce photos of rippling water and shadows resembling an enormous serpent with flippers, gliding slowly in large circles.

Those who (4)__________ at what they regard as nonsense and pagan superstition are quite (5)__________ in belittling Ogopogo fans. Nevertheless, the legends, which have a life of their own, happily, have brought thousands of tourists and business to the Okanagan Valley.

Recognition of the creature now exists in British Columbia’s environmental law which provides protection for Ogopogo. The official description reads, “An animal in Okanagan Lake, other than a sturgeon, that is more than three meters in length, and the mates or offspring of that animal.”

Been wondering about the creature’s name? Ogopogo comes from an English music hall song: “His mother was an earwig; his father was a whale; a little bit of head and hardly any tail—and Ogopogo was his name.”

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