Learning Together
Words from the essay
Learn the careful, unusual words that Helen Keller uses in her essay.
'Three Days to See' uses careful, unusual words, and your book explains them in the margin. Most are words you'll meet again!
Words about seeing:
| Word | Meaning |
|---|---|
| behold | see (an older, grander word) |
| panorama | a scene, usually a wide one |
| glimpse | a brief look |
| pageant | a display, like a shop window showing dresses or shoes. The pageant of man's progress = history put on show |
Words about things:
| Word | Meaning |
|---|---|
| symmetry | evenness: both halves of a leaf matching |
| birch | a slender tree with thin, peeling bark |
| shaggy | hairy, like pine bark |
| quiver | shiver, like a singing bird under her hand |
Words about the museum:
| Word | Meaning |
|---|---|
| condensed | brief: a short history |
| carcasses | remains: bodies of dead animals |
| mastodons | big animals like elephants, but with fur, from before humans |
| stature | physique, build: humans have small stature but a powerful brain |
Words about people: haunts are regular meeting places: where people are usually found (offices, parks, cafés). It has nothing to do with ghosts or haunted houses! Merely means just: "merely looking at people".
Words about the senses:
| Word | Meaning |
|---|---|
| strains | tunes: the mighty strains of an orchestra |
| tactile sense | the sense of touch |
| morsel | a small piece of food: taste each morsel |
| facets | aspects: different sides of a thing |
Notice that many are grander than the everyday word: behold for see, merely for just, morsel for bite. She's writing about something precious, so the words rise to match.
Practise this lesson
Questions that get harder as you improve, a Tutor that helps without giving the answer away, and progress you can see. Free for every learner.
No account, no email address. Opens the real product.