Vocabulary Builder #8: Ambrose Bierce"s Words
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The words used in this vocabulary quiz have been drawn from the following essays by Ambrose Bierce:
- The Art of Controversy
- Christmas and the New Year
- The Clothing of Ghosts
- Disintroductions
- For Brevity and Clarity
- The Gift o' Gab
Instructions:
For each of the sentences below, select the letter of the one item that most accurately defines the word in bold. When you're done, compare your responses with the answers on page two.
- In point of fact, we know that such peculiarities of character and disposition as a young child has are not brought from a former life across a gulf whose brinks are death and birth, but are endowments from the lives of others here.
(The Art of Controversy)
a) large sums of money
b) gifts, special abilities
c) something borrowed on the condition that it will be paid back
d) disabilities, defects - They are like an enraged mob engaged in hostilities without having taken the trouble to know something of the art of war. Happily for them, if they are defeated they do not know it: they have not even the sense to ascribe their sufferings to their wounds.
(The Art of Controversy)
a) describe, give a report on
b) pardon, excuse, exonerate
c) ease, soothe, relieve
d) associate, attribute, explain - In our manner of observing Christmas there is much, no doubt, that is absurd. Christmas is to some extent a day of meaningless ceremonies, false sentiment and hollow compliments endlessly iterated and misapplied.
(Christmas and the New Year)
a) cheered, acclaimed, praised
b) said or done again and again, repeated
c) ignored, rejected, forgotten
d) confused, disarranged, lacking in order
- If one elect to live with barbarians, one must endure the barbarous noises of their barbarous superstitions, but the disagreeable simpleton who sits up till midnight to ring a bell or fire a gun because the earth has arrived at a given point in its orbit should nevertheless be deprecated as an enemy to his race. He is a sore trial to the feelings, an affliction almost too sharp for endurance.
(Christmas and the New Year)
a) despised, detested, deplored
b) regarded with great respect, honored
c) identified, recognized
d) disregarded, ignored - Who ever heard of a naked ghost? The apparition is always said to present himself (as he certainly should) properly clothed, either "in his habit as he lived" or in the apparel of the grave. Herein the witness must be at fault: whatever power of apparition after dissolution may inhere in mortal flesh and blood, we can hardly be expected to believe that cotton, silk, wool and linen have the same mysterious gift.
(The Clothing of Ghosts)
a) something hard to understand or explain
b) something fanciful, foolish, or nonsensical
c) a spirit or a supernatural appearance of a person or thing
d) an invention, creation, or fantasy - In brief, the conditions under which the ghost must appear in order to command the faith of an enlightened world are so onerous that he may prefer to remain away--to the unspeakable impoverishment of letters and art.
(The Clothing of Ghosts)
a) special, distinctive, unlike any other
b) gratifying, providing satisfaction
c) ridiculous, absurd, nonsensical
d) severe, burdensome, hard to endure - Democracies are naturally and necessarily gregarious. Even the French of today are becoming so, and the time is apparently not distant when they will lose that fine distinctive social sense that has made them the most punctilious, because the most considerate, of all nations excepting the Spanish and the Japanese.
(Disintroductions)
a) detached, unsociable, introverted
b) independent, self-reliant, strong
c) sociable, outgoing, talkative
d) private, secretive, silent - While reforming the language I crave leave to introduce an improvement in punctuation--the snigger point, or note of cachinnation. It is written thus \_/ and represents, as nearly as may be, a smiling mouth. It is to be appended, with the full stop, to every jocular or ironical sentence; or, without the stop, to every jocular or ironical clause of a sentence otherwise serious . . .."
(For Brevity and Clarity)
a) serious, somber, humorless
b) kind, pleasant, friendly
c) humorous, clever, facetious
d) incomplete, defective, imperfect - So far as I know it, forensic eloquence is the art of saying things in such a way as to make them pass for more than they are worth. Employed in matters of importance (and for other employment it were hardly worth acquiring) it is mischievous because dishonest and misleading.
(The Gift o' Gab)
a) trouble-making, dangerously playful
b) amusing, enjoyable, entertaining
c) serious, sincere, solemn
d) unacceptable, illegal - In the public service Truth toils best when not clad in cloth-of-gold and bedaubed with fine lace. If eloquence does not beget action it is valueless; but action which results from the passions, sentiments and emotions is less likely to be wise than that which comes of a persuaded judgment.
(The Gift o' Gab)
a) defy, oppose, counteract
b) recall, remember, bring to mind
c) copy, imitate, repeat
d) produce, bring about, result in