Fahrenheit 451 Vocabulary: Part 2: The Sieve and the Sand
In the following sentences, underline the context clues that help you determine the meaning of the word.
“He stared at the parlour that was dead and grey as the waters of an ocean that
teem
might teem with life if they switched on the electronic sun.”
“In the hall Mildred’s face was suffused with excitement. “Well, the ladies are
suffused
coming over!”
gorged
“’Shut up, shut up, shut up!’ It was a plea, a cry so terrible that Montag found
himself on his feet, the shocked inhabitants of the loud car staring, moving back
from this man with the insane, gorged face, the gibbering, dry mouth, the
flapping book in his fist.”
“Behind him, the door to a bedroom stood open, and in that room a litter of
strewn
machinery and steel tools was strewn upon a desk-top.”
“Of course you couldn’t know this, of course you still can’t understand what I
intuitively
mean when I say all this. You are intuitively right, that’s what counts.”
“This book has pores. It has features. This book can go under the microscope.
profusion
You’d find life under the glass, streaming past an infinite profusion.”
“’It’s an insidious plan, if I do say so myself.” Faber glanced nervously at his
insidious
bedroom door. “To see the firehouses burn across the land, destroyed as hotbeds
of treason.”
“’My cowardice is of such a passion, complementing the revolutionary spirit
complementing that lives in its shadow, I was forced to design this.’
He picked up a small green-metal object no larger than a .22 bullet.”
YOUR OWN
WORD
ACTIVITY: Antonyms are words with opposite, or nearly opposite, meanings. Draw a line from each word in
column A to its antonym in column B. Then use the words in column A to fill in the blanks in the sentences
below.
A
B
1. teem
a. detracting
2. suffused
b. calculated
3. gorged
c. lacking
4. strewn
d. scarcity
5. intuitively
e. clash
6. profusion
f. starved
7. insidious
g. gathered
8. complementing
h. harmless
9. By the end of vacation, my room was _________________________ with clothes and souvenirs all
over the bed and floor.
10. The day before grades were due a _______________________ of extra credit assignments were
turned in.
11. As soon as I grab the leash, my dog’s whole body becomes ________________________ with
excitement.
12. This weekend I ________________________ on a whole box of Girl Scout Thin Mints.
13. Between classes, the hallways _______________________ with students going in all different
directions.
14. My ___________________________ sense is that she’s not telling the truth, but I don’t have any
proof.
15. Cancer is a(n) _____________________________ disease; it appears out of nowhere and often
spreads quickly and silently.
16. When I sliced my finger instead of the zucchini, there was a _______________________ of blood
all over the cutting board.
Fahrenheit 451 Vocabulary: Part 2: The Sieve and the Sand
Use the context to determine the meaning of the underlined word in each of the following sentences.
Circle its meaning from the choices listed below each sentence.
1. “I’m with you, remember that. I understand how it happened. I must admit that your blind raging
invigorated me. God, how young I felt!”
a. energized
b. weakened
c. depressed
d. angered
2. “They beat me with sticks. By the time I was forty my blunt instrument had been honed to a fine
cutting point for me. If you hid your ignorance, no one will hit you and you’ll never learn.”
a. blunted
b. sharpened
c. destroyed
d. specialized
3. “Shall I talk some more? I like your look of panic. Swahili, Indian, English Lit., I speak them all. A kind of
excellent dumb discourse, Willie!”
a. silence
b. idea
c. discussion
d. regurgitation
4. “They leaped into the air and clutched the brass pole as if it were the last vantage point above a tidal
wave passing below, and then the brass pole, to their dismay slid them down in to darkness, into the
blast and cough and suction of the gaseous dragon roaring to life!”
a. stop sign
b. view
c. weakness
d. misfortune
SUPER DUPER BONUS CHALLENGE: Define the underlined words by writing a synonym or phrase that makes
sense in the sentence above the word so that the sentence makes sense.
“The folly of mistaking a metaphor for a proof, a torrent of verbiage for a
spring of capital truths, and oneself as an oracle, is inborn in us, Mr.
Valery once said.”
Fahrenheit 451 Vocabulary: Part 3: Burning Bright
Find a synonym, a word or phrase, that could replace the underlined word and keep the sentence’s meaning.
1.
"What is there about fire that's so lovely? No matter what age we are, what draws us to it?" Beatty blew
out the flame and lit it again. "It's perpetual motion; the thing man wanted to invent but never did. Or
almost perpetual motion. If you let it go on, it'd burn our lifetimes out
2.
“Its real beauty is that it destroys responsibility and consequences. A problem gets too burdensome, then
into the furnace with it. Now, Montag, you're a burden. And fire will lift you off my shoulders, clean, quick,
sure; nothing to rot later. Antibiotic, aesthetic, practical."
3.
“Two dozen of them flurried, wavering, indecisive, three miles off, like butterflies puzzled by autumn, and
then they were plummeting down to land, one by one, here, there, softly kneading the streets where,
turned back to beetles, they shrieked along the boulevards or, as suddenly, leapt back into the sir,
continuing their search.”
4.
". . . Mechanical Hound never fails. Never since its first use in tracking quarry has this incredible invention
made a mistake.”
5.
“Hound had turned, clenching him in its metal-plier jaws, and trotted off in darkness, while the camera
remained stationary, watching the creature dwindle in the distance--a splendid fade-out!”
6.
“Behind him now twenty million silently baying Hounds ricocheted across parlours, three-cushion shooting
from right wall to centre wall to left wall, gone, right wall, centre wall, left wall, gone!”
7.
“He watched the dark steaming mixture pour into a collapsible tin cup, which was handed him straight off.
He sipped it gingerly and felt them looking at him with curiosity. His lips were scalded, but that was good.”
8.
"The chase continues north in the city! Police helicopters are converging on Avenue 87 and Elm Grove
Park!"
9.
“The camera fell upon the victim, even as did the Hound. Both reached him simultaneously.”
10.
We are model citizens, in our own special way; we walk the old tracks, we lie in the hills at night, and
the city people let us be. We're stopped and searched occasionally, but there's nothing on our persons to
incriminate us.