Animal Farm Vocab.

A little way down the pasture there was a knoll that commanded a view of most of the farm.

The cows lowed it, the dogs whined it, the sheep bleated it, the horses whinnied it, the ducks quacked it.

Now that the small field beyond the orchard had been set aside for barley, it was rumoured that a corner of the large pasture was to be fenced off and turned into a grazing-ground for superannuated animals.

None of you has ever seen a dead donkey," and the others had to be content with this cryptic answer.

By late summer a sufficient store of stone had accumulated, and then the building began, under the superintendence of the pigs.

The young pigs were piebald, and as Napoleon was the only boar on the farm, it was possible to guess at their parentage.

And so within five minutes of their invasion they were in ignominious retreat by the same way as they had come, with a flock of geese hissing after them and pecking at their calves all the way.

The skull of old Major, now clean of flesh, had been disinterred from the orchard and set up on a stump at the foot of the flagstaff, beside the gun.

(How these were to be procured, Snowball did not say.)

Gradually the plans grew into a complicated mass of cranks and cog-wheels, covering more than half the floor, which the other animals found completely unintelligible but very impressive.

Here it became apparent that Mr. Pilkington was about to spring some carefully prepared witticism on the company, but for a moment he was too overcome by amusement to be able to utter it.

Clover treated the hoof with poultices of herbs which she prepared by chewing them, and both she and Benjamin urged Boxer to work less hard.

The animals lashed ropes round these, and then all together, cows, horses, sheep, any animal that could lay hold of the rope--even the pigs sometimes joined in at critical moments--they dragged them with desperate slowness up the slope to the top of the q

Others asked such questions as "Why should we care what happens after we are dead?" or "If this Rebellion is to happen anyway, what difference does it make whether we work for it or not?", and the pigs had great difficulty in making them see that this was.

He walked heavily round the shed, looked closely at every detail of the plans and snuffed at them once or twice, then stood for a little while contemplating them out of the corner of his eye; then suddenly he lifted his leg, urinated over the plans.

Only old Benjamin was much the same as ever, except for being a little greyer about the muzzle, and, since Boxer's death, more morose and taciturn than ever.

They had all the more reason for doing so because the news of their defeat had spread across the countryside and made the animals on the neighbouring farms more restive than ever.

Snowball was known to be still skulking on Pinchfield Farm.

For a long time there had been rumours--circulated, he had reason to think, by some malignant enemy--that there was something subversive and even revolutionary in the outlook of himself and his colleagues.

Snowball was a more vivacious pig than Napoleon, quicker in speech and more inventive, but was not considered to have the same depth of character.

An impromptu celebration of the victory was held immediately.

One day in early summer Squealer ordered the sheep to follow him, and led them out to a piece of waste ground at the other end of the farm, which had become overgrown with birch saplings.

And Boxer put out his nose to sniff at the bank-notes, and the flimsy white things stirred and rustled in his breath.

He took them up into a loft which could only be reached by a ladder from the harness-room, and there kept them in such seclusion that the rest of the farm soon forgot their existence.