Caesar’s English Lesson 12

Word Definition vulgar common traverse to cross undulate to wave vivid bright pallor paleness

Vulgar - common Our adjective vulgar is what survives of the ancient Latin word vulgus, mob. When we say something is vulgar, we are saying it is common, lacking in good taste or refinement. In Kenneth Grahame’s The Wind in the Willows there are vulgar songs. In Mark Twain’s Tom Sawyer someone “called Tom a bad, vicious, vulgar child.”

Traverse – to cross The English verb traverse comes from the Latin transversus, meaning to turn across. Sylvia Plath wrote a beautiful, haunting sentence about how “Every so often a beam of light appeared out of thin air, traversed the wall like a ghostly, exploratory finger, and slid off into nothing again.” Sir Walter Scott used traverse in Ivanhoe to describe a vivid sound: “The heavy yet hasty step of the men-at-arms traversed the battlements.”

Undulate – to wave To the Romans, an undula was a small wave. Two thousand years later, we still say that something that waves undulates. Undulate (verb) and its noun form, undulation, can describe anything that moves in a wave-form, but it can also describe something that intensifies and that abates

Vivid- bright Our adjective vivid is a distant echo of the Latin vivere, to live. Something that is vivid is bright, colorful, lifelike. Vivid things make strong impressions on us. In H.G. Wells’s The War of the Worlds, about a Martian invasion of the Earth, there is “a vivid red glare.” Wells used the word repeatedly, describing a “vivid sense of danger,” “puffs of vivid green vapor.” “a vivid account of the Heat-Ray,” and “a vivid blood-red tint.”

Pallor- paleness The English noun pallor comes from the Latin pallere, to be pale. Pallor is a noun; its adjective form is pallid. The most frequent use of pallor is to describe the gray face of someone who is sick, weak, or afraid. Joseph Conrad wrote of “the even olive pallor of her complexion.” In Jane Eyre, Charlotte Bronte wrote the “Mr Rochester’s extreme pallor had disappeared.”