Tag Archives: diction/grammar/style/usage

It’s not a high-frequency word in English, so I suspect that I wrote this context clues worksheet on the adjective turgid because it turned up as a Word of the Day at Merriam-Webster. The context clues themselves, which I stipulate aren’t as strong as they could be, are composed to yield the definition “excessively embellished in style or language,” “bombastic,” and “pompous.” This is one of those words whose definition brings back more words students may not know. I suppose what I mean to say here is that this document may be of limited utility without some judicious editing or even rewriting.

And that only if one thinks students need to know this word before graduating high school, which they probably do not.

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.

Here is a context clues worksheet on the noun umbrage. I understand that this is not a word that is in high demand in most discourse. But what an interesting pedigree it carries. Before I bloviate on that, however, l’ll mention that the context clues in this document are keyed to the most commonly used definition of this in English, i.e. “a feeling of pique or resentment at some often fancied slight or insult.” I don’t know if I’ve ever heard it use without the transitive verb take, as in “Daffy Duck took umbrage when Elmer Fudd shot him in the face.”

Did you know that one of the meanings of this word, by Merriam-Webster’s reckoning, is “shady branches.” Umbrage originates from the Latin umbraticus, which means “pertaining to shade.” Unsurprisingly, the word penumbra also grows from the root of this Latin adjective. Penumbra, interestingly, is also a word used in jurisprudence, as when Supreme Court Justice William O. Douglas wrote the majority opinion in Griswold v. Connecticut.

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.