Tag Archives: diction/grammar/style/usage

Here is a context clues worksheet on the verb stun. It’s used only transitively, so don’t forget you direct object: the subject of the sentence must stun someone or something.

The verb means, variously, “to make senseless, groggy, or dizzy by or as if by a blow,” “daze,”  “to shock with noise,” and “to overcome especially with paralyzing astonishment or disbelief.” In other words, this is a nice solid verb with a wide but coherent range of meanings that students, by the time they graduate high school, I submit, should know and be able to use proficiently.

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 verb stipulate and another on the noun stipulation. This has always seemed to me a word students should know before they leave high school. If nothing else, it gives teachers the opportunity to say to students, “If anyone is looking down the road at law school, here are a couple of words useful to know.

For the record, stipulate is used both intransitively and transitively. Intransitively, it means “to make an agreement or covenant to do or forbear something,” “contract,” and “to demand an express term in an agreement — used with for.” Transitively, it means “to specify as a condition or requirement (as of an agreement or offer)” and “to give a guarantee of.” The noun stipulation means “an act of stipulating” and “something stipulated; especially a condition, requirement, or item specified in a legal instrument.”

If you find typos in these documents, 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.