The Tell-Tale Start is full of great words. Below is a list of some of the words from the book that may be unfamiliar to you, along with the page number on which each word appears in the story. Be sure to follow the steps below for other words in the book that are new to you.
- uncanny (1)
- gothic (1)
- unison (4)
- grotesque (6)
- guff (7)
- proficiency (9)
- etymology (9)
- incredulous (13)
- sarcasm (16)
- ominous (16)
- encrypted (23)
- harbinger (33)
- optimistic (39)
- subatomic (45)
- particle (45)
- terminate (47)
- repertoire (49)
- cravat (64)
- formidable (112)
- infiltrated (122)
- ruse (122)
- simian (124)
- incongruous (129)
- egotistical (153)
- demoted (176)
Before you look these words up in a dictionary—or ask someone what they mean—try working through the following steps:
- Generate a list of other words that share one or more of the same word parts. What do the words on the list have in common? Are there any clues from those commonalities that you can use to help figure out the meaning of the unknown word? Hint: Some word parts—as they appear in English words—have multiple meanings as we look back at the Latin and Greek, in part because of changes that have occurred in the words over the years. For example, does the “ped-” in “pedestrian” mean the same thing as the “ped” in “pediatrician”? Where there is possible confusion, context clues (see step 2) are extremely important.
- Go back and reread the word in its context. This context includes the sentence in which you find the word, but you should also read one or two sentences both before and after the appearance of the word. What context clues do you find that might unlock the meaning of the word for you?
- Make your best guess at the meaning of the word.
- Look up the definition in a dictionary. Be sure to also look for information about the word’s origin. This information will often contain the Latin or Greek word from which the word is derived.
- How close was your guess?