WORD OF THE DAY
Like built-in GPS, seat warmers and four-wheel drive, an amenity is a feature that contributes to comfort or value. Or in another sense, it's the overall pleasantness that results from all those cool features.
Declared the American novelist Edith Wharton, “I despair of the Republic! Such dreariness, such whining sallow women, such utter absence of the amenities, such crass food, crass manners, crass landscape! What a horror it is for a whole nation to be developing without the sense of beauty, and eating bananas for breakfast.” As you can see, people throughout time have gotten cranky when they’ve felt their amenities to be lacking.
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Vocabulary lists containing amenity
Born to Indian immigrants and legally named after a Russian writer, but familiarly called Nikhil, Gogol Ganguli grows up in Massachusetts struggling with his parents' choices and expectations.
Teenagers Penelope and Xander navigate first love and family matters while working at Penelope's father's restaurant.
Learn these words derived from the roots ami, amor, meaning "love."
Drawing on real-life interviews, journals, and transcripts, this play reflects on the life and murder of college student Matthew Shepard.
The beatings in the title "Royal Beatings" by Alice Munro are actual physical attacks, but the story also addresses a family's emotional violence. Here are links to our lists for Munro's short stories: Free Radicals, Royal Beatings
