Our Town Vocabulary

Ms. Bogard (United States of America)
These are words that were taken from Thornton Wilder's play, Our Town. While most of the characters are plain-spoken, Wilder used more challenging words in his stage directions. There are also quite a few words that have become antiquidated since the play was first produced in 1938. Hopefully, familiarity with this list will help your students comprehend the play!
24 words 175 learners

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Full list of words from this list:

words only definitions & notes
  1. alacrity
    liveliness and eagerness
  2. anthropology
    science of the origins and social relationships of humans
  3. barren
    completely wanting or lacking
  4. belligerent
    characteristic of an enemy or one eager to fight
  5. brisk
    quick and energetic
  6. burgle
    enter and rob a dwelling
  7. contrive
    make or work out a plan for; devise
  8. crestfallen
    brought low in spirit
  9. diligent
    quietly and steadily persevering in detail or exactness
  10. gingham
    a woven cotton fabric, typically with a checked pattern
  11. heliotrope
    green chalcedony with red spots that resemble blood
  12. highboy
    a tall chest of drawers divided into two sections and supported on four legs
  13. legacy
    a gift of personal property by will
  14. lugubriousness
    the quality of excessive mournfulness and uncheerfulness
  15. meditatively
    in a meditative manner
  16. omniscient
    knowing, seeing, or understanding everything
  17. radiant
    emanating or as if emanating light
  18. savant
    a learned person
  19. sentimentality
    the quality of being falsely emotional in a maudlin way
  20. spectacles
    eyeglasses
  21. torrent
    an overwhelming number or amount
  22. traipse
    walk or tramp about
  23. trellis
    latticework used to support climbing plants
  24. unobtrusively
    in an unobtrusive manner
Created on Thu Mar 23 14:35:20 EDT 2017

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