Vocabulary: Lesson Two Name: ______________________________________ Period: ______

Vocabulary Words
1. amalgamate: (v) to combine
2. demented: (adj) mentally ill; insane
3. hone: (v) to sharpen
4. beleaguer: (v) to besiege/attack by encircling (as with an army)
5. gorge: (v) to eat or swallow greedily
6. antiquated: (adj) no longer used or useful; very old
7. opiate: (n) a narcotic used to cause sleep or bring relief from pain
8. caricature: (n) an exaggerated portrayal of one’s features
9. dally: (v) to waste time; to dawdle
10. felonious: (adj) pertaining to or constituting a major crime

Exercise 1: Words in Context

antiquated gorge caricature felonious opiate dally beleaguer

1. Alex crouched behind a palm tree and shook her head; she had escaped from her cell, but she was still woozy
from the _________________________ that her captors used to drug her. She didn’t _________________________, because the
guards would be searching for her in a matter of minutes. Knowing that it might be days before she would eat
again, Alex _________________________ herself on a bag lunch that one of the guards had left unattended near her cell.
Seconds later, she began looking for the _________________________truck that the guards had used to transport her to
the compound. She knew that the outmoded vehicle wouldn’t set any speed records, but it was her only option
for getting back to civilization. The odds were against Alex, but she had to make it out of the jungle before she
could expose the drug kingpin’s _________________________operation to the public.

dally caricature beleaguer hone amalgamate felonious demented

2. Doctor Rearick, a famous chemist, mused at the _________________________of himself in the editorial cartoon. The
artist had depicted the aging chemist as a(n) _________________________scientist, like Victor Frankenstein or Doctor
Moreau, at a lab table trying to _________________________two mysterious liquids by pouring them both into a
steaming test tube. Reports _________________________him with phone calls for days after he announced the
discovery of a remarkable new alloy, and Rearick knew that he would need to _________________________ his public
speaking skills before he explained the full significance of the discovery in front of the television news cameras.

Exercise 2: Sentence Completion

Complete the sentence in a way that shows you understand the meaning of the italicized vocabulary word.
1. The doctor administered an opiate to the patient to ______________________________________________________________

2. If you dally in finishing your report, you might ____________________________________________________________________

3. People think that she’s demented just because she ________________________________________________________________

4. The political cartoonist’s caricature depicted the president as _____________________________________________

5. The seagulls beleaguered the people on the beach until ____________________________________________________

6. You should first hone your skills if you plan to ____________________________________________________________________

 7. The teacher told us not to amalgamate those chemicals because ________________________________________________

8. Bert gorged himself at the buffet because he _______________________________________________________________________

9. Andy’s felonious behavior finally caught up to him when __________________________________________________________

10. Paul replaced his antiquated computer because it ________________________________________________________________

Exercise 3: Roots, Prefixes, and Suffixes

The prefix sub means “under” or “below.”
The suffix ize means “to make.”
The root urb means “city.”

1. Using literal translations as guidance, define the following words without using a dictionary.
a. Suburb: _____________________________________________________________________________
b. Urbanize: _________________________________________________________________________________________
c. Substandard: ________________________________________________________________________________________________
d. Standardize: _________________________________________________________________________________________________
e. Subhuman: __________________________________________________________________________________________________
f. Humanize: _______________________________________________________________________
2. A(n) ________________________ is a vessel that travels underwater, and a subway train travels _______________________ the
ground.
3. List as many words as you can think of that contain the prefix sub or the suffix ize.
SUB- -IZE
subtract, subject… nationalize, realize...

Exercise 4: Inferences
Complete the sentences by inferring information about the italicized word from its context.
1. If Kevin needs a large bowl to amalgamate the ingredients, he is probably going to ___mix all the ingredients

together.

2. If an angry mob beleaguered the driver of the car, then the driver was probably _____afraid he was going to be

attacked.___ ________________________________________________

3. Nolan went to the library to hone his understanding of chemistry by _________________________________________________

________________________________________________.