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