Vocabulary Week 5

Alexandra Versluijs (s3711463)

1. Bewildered
Definition: confused and uncertain
Original sentence: And we’re engaging texts, some of which, at least, because of
their density, because of unfamiliar language, syntax, and cultural context—and
because of that “undecidable reference” that Perloff refers to—may leave students
feeling like bewildered outsiders, no matter now carefully we avoid the Bletchley Park
approach.
3 new sentences:
He sat up in bed, bewildered, unsure of where he was.
Buying a car can be a bit bewildering.
Parents expressed bewilderment and anger at the meeting.

2. Coercive
Definition: using force to persuade people to do things that they are unwilling to do
Original sentence: We use the coercive force of grading to support a pedagogy that,
most typically, approaches the poem as a problem to be solved—a sort of
brainteaser.
3 new sentences:
The president relied on the coercive powers of the military.
He took coercive measures.
She had a coercive political purpose.

3. Complacent
Definition: feeling so satisfied with your own abilities or situation that you feel you do
not need to try any harder
Original sentence: If, however, along with these laudable goals, we are concerned
with the role that poetry will continue to play in their lives, then it becomes very hard
to be complacent about what we’re accomplishing.
3 new sentences:
We can't afford to become complacent about any of our products.
He admitted that he may have got too complacent.
I am far from complacent on this issue.

4. Constitute
Definition: to be or be considered as something
Original sentence: What I would like to propose here are some broad principles that,
taken together, constitute a way of understanding poetry and its teaching—principles
 that I think would improve poetry teaching at the introductory level and that may not
be entirely irrelevant to upper division and even graduate classes in poetry.
3 new sentences:
Women constitute about ten percent of Parliament.
The president said that these policies constitute a threat to the United States.
Asians constitute seven percent of the population in this county.

5. Constrain
Definition: to control and limit something
Original sentence: Sound patterning can feed into meaning, and meaning can focus
and constrain our response to sound.
3 new sentences:
In order to stop him, they had to constrain him.
The police constrained the man after he was arrested.
Laws may be constrained by surveillance.

6. Constricting
Definition: to limit an action or behaviour
Original sentence: Don’t we also have to recognize (productive and energizing as this
movement may have been) the constricting effect of successive waves of modernism
on the audience for poetry?
3 new sentences:
Too many rules had constricted her lifestyle.
The new law constricted many people.
Her actions were constricted by her mother.

7. Criterion
Definition: a standard by which you judge, decide about, or deal with something
Original sentence: What I want to argue is that the failure of poetry teaching as
measured by such a criterion is not due to a problem that’s inherent in the nature of
poetry itself, or to some inability on the part of our students.
3 new sentences:
The main criterion is ultimately the interests of the patient.
The new criterion should apply to all.
Linguistic expertise could never be an additional election criterion.

8. Crude
Definition: very simple, without much detail, and perhaps not very accurate
Original sentence: Recognizing this interaction will leave us with a useful, but still
fairly crude, understanding of what goes on in poetry.
3 new sentences:
Our initial crude calculations show that we made a profit this month.
 He made a crude table out of an old crate.
They constructed a crude shelter from branches.
9. Derives
Definition: toto get something from something else complain or express sadness
about something
Original sentence: To understand more fully how the physical medium—whether it be
oil paint or wood or language or human bodies in motion—functions in art, we need to
understand the kind of response that I have termed “aesthetic resonance,” in which a
color, for example, or a musical phrase, or a poetic image can evoke a shifting,
complex blend of experiential quality that derives from past experience but that is
not, as it deepens our response in the present, linked to any particular memory or
concept, and that, in poetry, is likely to be evoked and shaped by both material and
semiotic elements (Farber 1994).
3 new sentences:
The institute derives all its money from foreign investments
She derives great pleasure from playing the violin.
The charity derives its income entirely from donations.

10. Dismal
Definition: sad and without hope, bad
Original sentence: Nor can I say that I find these dismal figures surprising in relation
to my own experience teaching literature for many years, first at one large state
university, then at another, and currently at a smaller private university
3 new sentences:
What dismal weather
The trip was a dismal failure.
Nevertheless, the overall picture he paints is a little too dismal.

11. Dismayed
Definition: feeling unhappy and disappointed
Original sentence: An article by Mary-Jo Powell that appeared in English Journal in
1966 proclaims a “War on Poetry-phobia.” Some years earlier, Walker Gibson,
reviewing poetry textbooks for College English, found himself dismayed by the
“appalling questions and exercises that students of literature are forced by their
textbooks to confront.
3 new sentences:
Many scientists were dismayed by some of the main elements of the movie.
I felt dismayed to think that this gifted man was giving up his art.
I was dismayed to discover that he'd lied.
 12. Disparate
Definition: different in every way
Original sentence: What I have in mind are poems that present very vivid and
specific imagery and yet seem applicable to a wide, even somewhat disparate array
of human experience.
3 new sentences:
The two cultures were so utterly disparate that she found it hard to adapt from one to
the other.
The party was attended by people from desperate backgrounds.
He owned a desperate collection of short stories.

13. Dispelling
Definition: to remove fears, doubts, and false ideas, usually by proving them wrong or
unnecessary
Original sentence: Still, there may be something to be gained from directly
addressing the identity of poetry, if only as a way of dispelling misleading notions.
3 new sentences:
She stared by dispelling a few rumours that had been spreading recently.
We need to dispel the myths and establish real facts.
What can we do to dispel these concerns?

14. Elusive
Definition: difficult to describe, find, achieve, or remember
Original sentence: I think it’s important for students to realize that no one, including
the poet, has exclusive interpretive ownership of a poem; that they don’t have to read
it your way or anyone else’s way; that the experience of a poem legitimately—in fact,
necessarily—differs from one person to another (and that the depth of this difference
is one of poetry’s—and literature’s—greatest strengths); that the poem is, and should
remain, a bird in flight; and that its elusiveness and irreducibility may be an important
part of what we appreciate most about it.
3 new sentences:
Success remained elusive for her.
The answers to these questions remain as elusive as ever.
The meaning of this document is rather elusive.

15. Exasperated
Definition: annoyed, especially because you can do nothing to solve a problem
Original sentence: Complaints about student attitudes toward poetry and about the
way it is taught are nothing new (nor, for that matter, are pronouncements on the
decline of poetry itself—to the point that Donald Hall, in 1989, was led to issue his
exasperated call in Harper’s Magazine for a “Death to the Death of Poetry”).
 3 new sentences:
He's becoming increasingly exasperated with the situation
Her exasperation became clear after I asked the question again.
He made an exasperated speech in order to convince his peers.

16. Foreclose
Definition: to prevent something from being considered as a possibility in the future
Original sentence: To establish a foundation for poetry teaching, all that needs to be
added, really, is that language, whatever its degree of transparency, is used in
literature as an aesthetic medium and that, therefore, we have to find ways of
teaching poetry that are not counter-aesthetic, that don’t foreclose the possibility of
an aesthetic engagement with the poem (in this connection, see Farber 2005).
3 new sentences:
The leader's aggressive stance seems to have foreclosed any chance of diplomatic
compromise
We have foreclosed the cultic function of the theatre.
If he agrees, the case will be foreclosed.

17. Proclaims
Definition: to announce something publicly or officially, especially something positive
Original sentence: An article by Mary-Jo Powell that appeared in English Journal in
1966 proclaims a “War on Poetry-phobia.”
3 new sentences:
All the countries have proclaimed their loyalty to the alliance.
It was the famous speech in which he proclaimed that socialism was dead.
The president has proclaimed a state of emergency.

18. Resonance
Definition: a feeling, thought, memory, etc. that a piece of writing or music makes you
have, or the quality in a piece of writing, etc. that makes this happen
Original sentence: To understand more fully how the physical medium—whether it be
oil paint or wood or language or human bodies in motion—functions in art, we need to
understand the kind of response that I have termed “aesthetic resonance,” in which a
color, for example, or a musical phrase, or a poetic image can evoke a shifting,
complex blend of experiential quality that derives from past experience but that is not,
as it deepens our response in the present, linked to any particular memory or
concept, and that, in poetry, is likely to be evoked and shaped by both material and
semiotic elements (Farber 1994).
3 new sentences:
This poem has many resonances for me.
Telling historical resonances crowd this scene.
She examined the resonances between their lyrics and musical techniques.
19. Transparency
Definition: the characteristic of being easy to see through, without secrets
Original sentence: By trying to turn the material medium of poetry into mere
transparency.
3 new sentences:
The old-fashioned type of plastic lacked transparency.
We want more transparency in government.
This plastic has the transparency of glass.

20. Utterly
Definition: completely or extremely
Original sentence: And yet we all know that what aesthetic appreciation sometimes
wants to do, when it’s utterly unconstrained, is to seize on this part or that part—this
line, that stanza—almost as a work of art in itself
3 new sentences:
She was utterly devastated when her husband died.
The whole situation was utterly ridiculous.
The two boys walked into the room looking utterly miserable.