1. Improving Vocabulary Skills
Unit 2 Chapter 11

2. Something that damages
blight
Something that damages

3. The rats in the street are a real blight on the neighborhood.
The open sewers in the slum blight the area.

4. Expressing spiteful delight
Gloat
Expressing spiteful delight

5. Don’t gloat when you win. It isn’t nice.
Little Tommy gloats when he wins in chess. Hopefully he’ll learn to be a gallant winner before he grows up.

6. Obvious in an offensive manner
blatant
Obvious in an offensive manner

7. Tommy stole the opponent’s queen in his last chess match.
Blatant cheating like that cost him the game.

8. gaunt
Bony; very skinny

9. Michael Jordon was a gaunt basketball player,
But he was still unbeatable even though he was really thin.

10. immaculate
Super clean

11. My mother will only eat at immaculate restaurants.
Very few restaurants are as clean as her kitchen, so we rarely eat out.

12. qualm
doubt

13. President Bush had no qualms about using waterboarding to get information from captives.
Most people have qualms about using any kind of torture to get information.

14. Stealing someone else’s ideas
plagiarism
Stealing someone else’s ideas

15. If you commit plagiarism, you could be expelled from school.
Plagiarism is a serious offense, akin to stealing.

16. Plan cleverly; think up
contrive
Plan cleverly; think up

17. Fatou contrived a clever excuse as to why she didn’t complete her homework: the computer froze.
The teacher soon contrived of a way to double check the excuses her students gave for being late: she checked the date of the document.

18. garble
Jumble; mix up

19. The computer sent a garbled error message, which only made the problem more difficult to solve.
Since she didn’t hold the microphone close to her mouth, what she said was just a garbled mess.

20. retaliate
Pay back; get revenge

21. Their team beat us last time, so we hope to retaliate and win this time.
When Mohamed hit Hannatou with a snowball, Hannatou retaliated by throwing a snowball back at him.