indolence

Twelve-year-old Jonas lives in a regimented community that is free from pain and suffering — but also free from joy, independence, and even color. When he is appointed the community's Receiver of Memory, Jonas begins to question everything he has been taught.

All the words below have the prefix "in-" meaning "not," as their first element. The problem is that even though many of the words have negative senses in Modern English, their positive counterparts have fallen out of use, or existed only in Latin. These words may have been part of a pair, once upon a time, but their partners are no more. Through the illustrative sentences and the linguistic tidbits below, we have tried to make the history of these negative words with "in-" clearer and hopefully easier to remember.

When a violent storm sinks the ship carrying his family from India to North America, Pi is trapped alone in a lifeboat with an orangutan, a hyena, a zebra, and a man-eating tiger named Richard Parker.