William Golding's Lord of the Flies Vocabulary chapters 1-3

Michael F.
Words from the first three chapters of Lord of the Flies
35 words 72 learners

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Full list of words from this list:

words only definitions & notes
  1. piggy
    a young pig
    “They used to call me Piggy.”
  2. conch
    an edible tropical marine mollusk or its large spiral shell
    A conch he called it.
  3. fledge
    grow feathers
    The shore was fledged with palm trees.
  4. lagoon
    a body of water cut off from a larger body by a reef
    1 The Sound of the Shell
    The boy with fair hair lowered himself down the last few feet of rock and began to pick his way toward the lagoon.
  5. rock plant
    plant that grows on or among rocks or is suitable for a rock garden
    This was filled with a blue flower, a rock plant of some sort, and the overflow hung down the vent and spilled lavishly among the canopy of the forest.
  6. undergrowth
    the brush beneath taller trees in a wood or forest
    The undergrowth at the side of the scar was shaken and a multitude of raindrops fell pattering.
  7. trunk
    the main stem of a tree
    He was clambering heavily among the creepers and broken trunks when a bird, a vision of red and yellow, flashed upwards with a witch-like cry; and this cry was echoed by another.
  8. piglet
    a young pig
    They found a piglet caught in a curtain of creepers,
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    throwing itself at the elastic traces in all the madness of extreme terror.
  9. tangle
    twist together or entwine into a confusing mass
    “Them fruit,” he said, “I expect—” He put on his glasses, waded away from Ralph, and crouched down
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    among the tangled foliage.
  10. gesticulate
    show, express, or direct through movement
    He gesticulated widely.
  11. cupping
    a treatment in which evacuated cups are applied to the skin to draw blood through the surface
    Ralph made a cupping gesture.
  12. woodlouse
    any of various small terrestrial isopods having a flat elliptical segmented body; found in damp habitats
    Most of the wood was so rotten that when they pulled, it broke up into a shower of fragments and woodlice and decay; but some trunks came out in one piece.
  13. scar
    a mark left by the healing of injured tissue
    All round him the long scar smashed into the jungle was a bath of heat.
  14. closed circuit
    a complete electrical circuit around which current flows or a signal circulates
    For the
    moment the boys were a closed circuit of sympathy with Piggy outside: he went very pink, bowed his head and cleaned his glasses again.
  15. sapling
    young tree
    The ground beneath them was a bank covered with coarse grass, torn everywhere by the upheavals of fallen trees, scattered with decaying coconuts and palm saplings.
  16. cliff rose
    tufted thrift of seacoasts and mountains of north temperate zone; occasionally grown as a ground cover
    Where the pink cliffs rose out of the ground there were often narrow tracks winding upwards.
  17. asthma
    respiratory disorder characterized by wheezing
    “My auntie told me not to run,” he explained, “on account of my asthma.”
  18. tractive
    exerting traction and serving to pull
    But there was a stillness
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    about Ralph as he sat that marked him out: there was his size, and at- tractive appearance; and most obscurely, yet most powerfully, there was the conch.
  19. swathe
    wrap in or as if in strips of cloth
    Ralph was already clambering over the first smashed swathes of the
    scar.
  20. giggle
    laugh nervously
    “So long as you don’t tell the others—” Ralph giggled into the sand.
  21. immure
    lock up or confine, in or as in a jail
    Immured in these tangles, at perhaps their most difficult moment, Ralph turned with shining eyes to the others.
  22. fatty
    containing or composed of fat
    “Shut up, Fatty.”
  23. shelter
    covering that provides protection from the weather
    The first thing we ought to have
    made was shelters down there by the beach.
  24. freckle
    a small brownish spot on the skin
    His face was crumpled and freckled, and ugly without silliness.
  25. pile
    a collection of objects laid on top of each other
    He turned neatly on to his feet, jumped down to the beach, knelt and swept a double armful of sand into a pile against his chest.
  26. palm tree
    any plant of the family Palmae having an unbranched trunk crowned by large pinnate or palmate leaves
    The shore was fledged with palm trees.
  27. pause
    stop an action temporarily
    He didn’t blow the white stones, of course,
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    an’ he said—” Piggy paused for breath and stroked the glistening thing that lay in
    Ralph’s hands.
  28. zipper
    a fastener for locking together two toothed edges
    He laid a hand on the end of a zipper that extended down his chest.
  29. coconut
    large hard-shelled oval nut with a fibrous husk containing thick white meat surrounding a central cavity filled (when fresh) with fluid or milk
    The ground beneath them was a bank covered with coarse grass, torn everywhere by the upheavals of fallen trees, scattered with decaying coconuts and palm saplings.
  30. underlip
    the lower lip
    Jack nodded and pulled at his underlip.
  31. birthmark
    a blemish on the skin that is formed before birth
    He was a shrimp of a boy, about six years old, and one side of his face was blotted out by a mulberry-colored birthmark.
  32. breathlessness
    a dyspneic condition
    The conch was silent, a gleaming tusk; Ralph’s face was dark with breathlessness and the air over the island was full of bird-clamor and echoes ringing.
  33. flame
    combustion of materials producing heat and light and smoke
    There were flames coming out of it.”
  34. offhand
    with little or no preparation or forethought
    He tried to be offhand and not too obviously uninterested, but the fat boy hurried after him.
  35. mirage
    optical illusion in which hot air distorts distant objects
    Then the creature stepped from mirage on to clear sand, and they saw that the darkness was not all shadow but mostly clothing.
Created on Fri Feb 05 05:54:51 EST 2010 (updated Fri Feb 05 14:17:15 EST 2010)

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