Monthly Archives: November 2023

During the pandemic, I acquired (and fortunately discarded relatively quickly) the unfortunate habit of writing down the Word of the Day from Merriam-Webster (it appeared on my phone as a notification until I had the good sense to put a stop to it) for future development into context clues worksheets. I have finally finished developing these materials and will begin now to post them on this blog.

This worksheet on the noun verdigris is one of the fruits of this dubious enterprise. The word means “a green or bluish deposit especially of copper carbonates formed on copper, brass, or bronze surfaces.” You know–like on the Statue of Liberty. I doubt very much that this is a word–despite its charms–that high school students need to know. On the other hand, after my maternal grandfather taught me the word one evening while we stood before the verdigris-covered statue of a seated Abraham Lincoln on Bascom Hill at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, I have been pleased to be able to use the word to understand the phenomenon.

If you find typos in this document, I would appreciate a notification. And, as always, if you find this material useful in your practice, I would be grateful to hear what you think of it. I seek your peer review.