Unit 2: Part 3 Vocabulary

The flaw in my character which she had already spotted was lack of “gumption.”

Before taking a crucial step, he said, he wanted to advise me that working for the Curtis Publishing Company placed enormous responsibility on a young man.

When I objected that I didn’t feel any aptitude for salesmanship, she asked how I’d like to lend her my leather belt so she could whack some sense into me.

While some psychologists still argue that people perform better when they do something because they want to—rather than for some kind of reward, such as money—Steven Reiss suggests we shouldn’t even make that distinction.

Many sports psychology books, and books advising how to motivate students and business people, tout the value of intrinsic motivation and warn that extrinsic rewards can undermine people’s performance.

Grades, they argue, are an extrinsic reward that fosters competition and makes learning less pleasurable.

The Northern Lights have seen queer sights,
But the queerest they ever did see
Was that night on the marge of Lake Lebarge
I cremated Sam McGee.

It wasn’t much fun, but the only one
to whimper was Sam McGee.

O God! how I loathed the thing.

He had only his eyes and his microscope, and no way to share his enjoyment of the delicate hexagons other than to draw them.

Then, holding his breath, he would observe the crystal and hurry to draw what he saw before it evaporated into thin air.

In the 1880s, few people owned a camera, so Bentley had no one to ask for help. Time after frustrating time, his negatives appeared blank.

The spider replied: “Ah, I have had a dispute with my wife. She says you are shorter and weaker than this bamboo pole. I say you are longer and stronger.”

My opinion wasn't as good as my wife's.

Whenever a man tells a story, he must acknowledge that it is Anansi’s tale.