Vocabulary Units I-III (Drawn from E.L. Doctorow S Ragtime)

Vocabulary Units I-III (drawn from E.L. Doctorow’s Ragtime) Step One: Look at context of word to see if you can glean its meaning Step Two: Insert dictionary definition (Let’s use dictionary.com for the moment) Step Three: Type in your own sentence or example, changing the part f speech if you wish; underline the word being used. Step Four: Print your chart for use in class and study purposes. Unit One CH # Word in context (page #) Definition Your sentence-example 1 1. Thaw, “eccentric scion of a coke and railroad fortune” (4) 1 2. Houdini, stood “beside the inviolate container that was supposed to have contained him” (7) 1 3. Houdini, spoke to Mother “of his profession with diffidence” (9) 1 4. Houdini “became voluble” speaking of his travels (10) 1 5. Houdini “thought the boy comely, fair like his mother” (10) 2 6. Father, “normally resolute, suddenly foundered” (13) 3 7. Immigrants consigned to return voyage if they “looked insolent” (14) 4 8. Thaw “had once consumed an entire bottle of laudanum” (22) 4 9. Thaw “was imperious, possessive and insanely jealous” 4 10. Mother-in-law of Evelyn Nesbit described as august (26); also Pierpont Morgan (82) 5 11. “The Warden demurred” (against Houdini’s request) (28) 5 12. Houdini had high inchoate ambition (31) 5 13. Mrs. Fish’s nemesis was Mrs. William Astor (33) 5 14. “There were remonstrations. Houdini stormed out” (34) 5 15. Freud’s “immediate reception in America was not auspicious” (35) 6 16. Freud “had seen in our commingling of great wealth and great poverty the chaos of an entropic European civilization” (39) 6 17. Freud “had seen in our commingling of great wealth and great poverty the chaos of an entropic European civilization” (39) 7 18. “They defile them and then in shame the female gives her life to vagrancy” (43) 7 19. Evelyn’s arrival “caused a storm of consternation in the old artist [Tateh]” (47) 8 20. Emma Goldman to Evelyn: “Like all whores you value propriety” (57)