"The Very Proper Gander"

A humorist who portrayed his ideas in both stories and pictures, James Thurber developed a pun into a short fable whose actual moral is about the danger of spreading rumors.

Here are all the word lists to support the reading of Grade 11 Unit 2's texts from SpringBoard's Common Core ELA series: The Crucible, Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God, The New England Primer, The Trial of Martha Carrier, The Lessons of Salem, The Very Proper Gander, Declaration of Conscience, Why I Wrote The Crucible, Lincoln's Second Inaugural Address, Speech to the Virginia Convention, The Gettysburg Address, FDR's First Inaugural Address , JFK's Inaugural Address
15 words 7 learners

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Full list of words from this list:

words only definitions & notes
  1. gander
    mature male goose
    Not so very long ago there was a very fine gander.
  2. smooth
    having a surface free from roughness or irregularities
    He was strong and smooth and beautiful and he spent most of his time singing to his wife and children.
  3. proper
    marked by suitability or rightness or appropriateness
    One day somebody who saw him strutting up and down in his yard and singing remarked, "There is a very proper gander."
  4. roost
    a place where birds or bats take shelter and rest
    An old hen overheard this and told her husband about it that night in the roost.
  5. propaganda
    information that is spread to promote some cause
    "They said something about propaganda," she said.
  6. suspect
    believe to be guilty
    "I have always suspected that," said the rooster
  7. fine
    characterized by elegance, excellence, or accomplishment
    and he went around the barnyard next day telling everybody that the very fine gander was a dangerous bird
  8. likely
    probably but not definitely going to be or become true
    more than likely a hawk in gander's clothing
  9. distance
    the property created by the space between two objects
    A small brown hen remembered a time when at a great distance she had seen the gander talking with some hawks in the forest.
  10. recall
    bring to mind
    A guinea hen recalled that she had once seen somebody who looked very much like the gander throw something that looked a great deal like a bomb.
  11. snatch
    grasp hastily or eagerly
    Finally everybody snatched up sticks and stones
  12. descend
    come as if by falling
    and descended on the gander's house
  13. strut
    walk in a proud, confident way
    He was strutting in his front yard, singing to his children and his wife.
  14. hawk
    an advocate of an aggressive policy on foreign relations
    "There he is!" everybody cried. "Hawk-lover! Unbeliever! Flag-hater! Bomb-thrower!"
  15. overthrow
    cause the downfall of
    Moral: Anybody who you or your wife thinks is going to overthrow the government by violence must be driven out of the country.
Created on Tue Nov 11 14:41:32 EST 2014 (updated Wed Nov 12 10:26:26 EST 2014)

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