I am reading this classic book aloud to my four 9th grade history students, and we are mapping Phileas Fogg's journey as he goes along. It is a real pleasure to read! It's funny and interesting and has great words in it. Recently, I've had the kids look up these words from the book: phlegmatic, chary, fellah, equanimity, and alacrity. Nothing like a well-written classic to broaden ones geographic and verbal horizons.
3 comments:
Agreed! I love a writer with a good vocabulary (and I can't resist sharing with the kids)! I first heard "widdershins" from Diana Gabaldon; it turned out to be a vocabulary word on Julie's SAT test in 2005.
^Holy crap! *looks up widdershins* "In a contrary or counterclockwise direction." Wow, really?! I can use this word in my trig class! "When an angle with positive measure is in the standard position on the x-y coordinate plane, we start with its initial ray on the positive x-axis and then proceed widdershins to the terminal ray." I'm sure my students would appreciate that. LOL
I read that word in Diana Wynne Jones books! I love it! Seems to be a fairly British term, as they don't seem to find it as odd as we do.
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