Tuesday, October 27, 2009

Podcast #7: MAL and BENE

Listen to Marissa discuss the connections between MAL and BENE roots as antonyms.

Podcast #6: The root DIC

Listen to Dennise explain the Greek root DIC/DICT.

Wednesday, October 14, 2009

Witch on the Hill

So far, I have learned many vocabulary words that I did not know before. The class I am in has taught me so many facts about words, such as the roots and just the meaning of them. I have enjoyed learning and putting together these vocabulary words, so I would like to share a story I have written including some of the words I have learned. I hope you get a laugh out of it as well as learn some new vocabulary words!
Up on a hill there lived a little witch. She wore pointed shoes and had green skin. She wore a big purple gown that went to her toes. Her proliferation of zits scares every kid. She had witch ingredients such as eyeballs and worms. In the middle of her house stood a six foot cauldron. It had purple liquid that bubbled into thin air. Some would think she was vacuous, not having a brain. She doesn’t act very smart, but what witch does? Hurting all ears nearby with her discordant voice, she uses maledictions to hurt all the little children. If you can’t tell by now, he witch hates all kids. She is usually malevolent when they go Trick-or-Treating. She lives far away from the city, so she enjoys the brevity of her visitors.
The children that come by get scared, even though they act pompous. They go around her house, trying to spy on her. They get curious and want to see one of her spells in action. They think she doesn’t see them, but she does. Since the witch doesn’t like them, the children don’t like her back. She will play tricks on the children every now and then. Sometimes, turning them into a frog for the day, or even giving them lice. She is not very nice. The malice of the kids makes them want to do damage to her. They’re kids, so they can’t do much harm. Even though they are provocative towards the witch with their evil schemes, the children still want to indict her for being a witch. The days go on, and the evil witch still lives at her house. Only coming out on Halloween.
So, now you see how those different vocabulary words can be put together. Remember try to include detail of the word you’re using, into your sentence. That will always help the reader to understand the word more. I hope this helps you on your way to learning bigger vocabulary.

Thursday, October 8, 2009

Podcast #5:The Root VAC

Listen to JJ's podcast explaining the root word VAC



Podcast #4: The root word MAL

Listen to Cameron, Sean, and Jesse's podcast on the root MAL and words that work with this root.




Festive Seasonal Vocabulary

This is the magical festive blog of All Hallows Eve. We are Jeffery and Brittney. We will go over the festive vocabulary used during these seasonal times. There are many magical festive words that are used during this season that not everyone understands fully.
First we will start with a little Halloween background information. Halloween originated with the Celts. It was the last day of summer and beginning of winter, which was often linked to death. The Celts believe the line between life and death was blurry on this day, and they celebrated Samhain, the day when ghosts returned to earth. They would light sacred bonfires and dress up in animal skins.
Now we shall start off with the festive vocabulary. The next few words are some creatures associated with this season. There is a definition and sentence for each.
Arachnid: any wingless, carnivorous arthropod of the class Arachnida such as spiders and scorpions. An example of arachnid in a sentence would be “An arachnid with eight long hairy legs was nibbling on my toes whilst I slept.”
Ghoul: an evil demon, originally of Oriental legend, supposed to feed on human beings, and especially to rob graves, prey on corpses, etc. Now that you know what ghouls like to do and their origin, you can use them in a profusion of sentences! An example might be, “I really hope the ghouls stay away from my grave when I die, because I’m going to be buried with some of my positions.”
Poltergeist: a ghost or spirit supposed to manifest its presence by noises, knockings, etc. “Peeves is a poltergeist at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry where he wreaks havoc by throwing things about.”
Zombie: the body of a dead person given the semblance of life, but mute and will-less, by a supernatural force, usually for some evil purpose. “The undead zombies attacked Marvin and devoured his succulent brain through a straw that was purple and twisty.”
Apparition: a supernatural appearance of a person or thing, esp. a ghost; a specter or phantom. “The children were scared out of their wits when they discovered an apparition appeared and devoured their shoes.”
Inferi: Originated from Harry Potter and usually is not used outside of the Harry Potter world. They are corpses animated and controlled by a magical spell. “Harry forgot that the Inferi fear fire, and nearly died a horrible, slimy death.
Warlock: a man who practices the black arts; a male witch; sorcerer; demon. “I wish I was a warlock because I would like to turn my sister into a slimy little toad.”
Now that we have gone over some ghastly creatures, we shall discuss a few other terms relating to this festive magical season.
Eerie: Inspiring a feeling of fear; strange and frightening. “As Skye ran away from Inferi through the eerie, foggy swamp, he tripped over a root from a weeping willow tree and died a mucky death.
Tombstone: a stone marker, usually inscribed on a tomb or grave. “I have always been afraid of tombstones because I dreamed that one grew legs, left its grave, and chased me down the street.”
Well that’s all for the festive Halloween blog. I hope you enjoyed it and will use these words more properly this year and perhaps learned some new festive words. Have a fun and safe festive magical season!

Tuesday, October 6, 2009

DIC/DICT Latin Root Words

Today we will be blogging about the Latin root words DIC/ DICT. These Latin roots deal with many words we use everyday. . All of these words deal with words in one way or another. Some of the common DIC/DICT words are indict, indicative, diction, dictionary, dictator, and benediction The first DIC/DICT word that we will be talking about is indict.
The word indict means to charge with a fault or offense: criticize, accuse, to charge with a crime. An example sentence with the word indict could be, “The criminal will be indicted for felony gun possession in front of a federal grand jury.” This word is mostly used when talking about the legal system. When you are being indicted it is usually refers to it in a negative manner.
Another DIC/DICT word that can be used that has these roots is indicative. The word indicative means showing, signifying, or pointing out: expressive or suggestive. An example sentence is, “My instructor’s terrible mood was indicative of my bad driving skills on the road.” .The next word we will tell you about is dictionary. It is a standard book that gives a definition and origin of words. We use this when we are talking about words or a tool to understand words. An example sentences for this word is, “My teacher wanted me to grab a dictionary and look up the meaning of the word and present it to the class.”
Another word is dictator; it means a person who exercises absolute power. You will see this word used when politics are the center of discussion. An example sentence for this word might be, “Yesterday in class my teacher was acting like a dictator because she wanted absolute control over all aspects of the class.”
This next DICT word is a very important one to the DICT/DIC word family. The word diction usually refers to choice of words especially with regard to correctness, clearness, or effectiveness. An example sentence for this word is, “At the National Football League press conference the commissioner had very good diction when he spoke carefully and clearly about the performance enhancing drug problem in the league.”
The next DIC/DICT word that we use is benediction. The word benediction means giving a blessing or wishing goodness. An example of the way we would use benediction in a sentence would be, “When we went to the wedding for my cousin Charity, the priest gave his benediction then the wedding was over and they were finally married”. Benediction also has another root word bene. Bene means good and DIC means words, Benediction makes the connection with good words and benediction means giving a blessing.
So the DIC/DICT Latin root words are very important to the world of words. We use these words in our everyday life. It is the word we use to deal with w

Mikael, Ashli, and Micheal Y.

Vac-

Have you ever thought about how Greek and Latin root words influence your life? Whenever you use a vacuum cleaner or are on vacation, you’re using words influenced by people that lived thousands of years ago.
Vac is the Greek root for “empty”. Words beginning with vac, such as vacant express emptiness. A hotel with vacancy isn’t full and has room for more people to stay. Vacuous can be used to express emptiness also, someone who is a vacuous thinker is empty minded. When you go on vacation your house is empty, for the most part anyway. A vacuum is a space without air or matter and a vacuum cleaner uses a vacuum to pick up dirt and an empty bag to hold everything it picks up. The root “vac” is used in many words in the English language. Many people don’t realize how much of an influence it has on our day to day lives.

We've prepared some poems using "vac" and other latin and greek roots.

Garden of Bugs

My garden was all full,
Of creepy, crawly bugs.
Eating holes through my vines,
My tomatoes full of slugs.
Cucumbers crawling with ants,
My carrots covered in worms.
It’s no longer a garden of plants,
More like a home for bugs.
My garden is now vacant,
In regards to bug sprays.
My plants are now dead,
I indict the bugs.

Snowy Day

The temperature lowers as the winds blow.
Vacuous roads are now covered in snow.
Families inside, rather warm and snug
Except for one man, out of a snowdrift he dug.
With no blankets or warmth, provoking illness
A little boy watching from his window pane.
The little boy walks out with a warm cup of Joe.
Toward the odd man, skeptical and slow.
Once near the man though it took a while
Gave him the warm cup, with a friendly smile.

Alone

All alone, with no one around,
Just you and yourself and no other sound.
With nothing but emptiness and vacuous space.
The proliferation of your thoughts lying in hand,
Relieving discordant thoughts you could no longer contain.
You find intriguing, relaxing and sane.
Things begin to lose their fog relatively fast
Defining who you are and moving on from the past.
How much longer will all this continue?
Until all you problems begin to renew.

We were given a list of vocabulary words that we decided to use in poems. This made the poems harder to write, but yet it expanded our knowledge on poetry. This helped expand our vocabulary use and our understanding of the words. We feel like we used our words to the best of our ability to make our poems meaningful.

by Caleb and Kelsey