Vocabulary Test for Feb. 29
Easily Confused Words
fewer: smaller in number
“I have fewer baseball cards than you.”
less: not as much
“These shoes cost less than the boots.”
lay: to place or put down
“The chicken lay an egg. I picked it up and lay it on the table.”
lie: to be in a reclined position.
“I was tired so I lie down to rest.”
lain: past participle form of lie
“I had lain in bed for ten hours.”
envelop: to surround
“If we go further up the mountain, the fog will envelop us.”
envelope: the cover of a letter
“I put my Valentine card in a pink envelope.”
Morocco: A country on the Northwest coast of Africa opposite Spain
Monaco: A city/kingdom on the south coast of France next to Italy
dingy: dark, dull, dirty, shabby
“The crook lived in a dingy apartment.”
blab: to talk or chatter thoughtlessly
“Don’t tell her about the party. She’ll blab it to everyone.”
finance: concerned with money
“We need to finance our trip to Yosemite.” “I studied personal finance in college.”
sullen: showing your irritation by gloomy silence
“The teacher had a hard time helping the new sullen student.”
hover: to hang suspended in the air. To remain in one place.
“The dog kept hovering around us hoping for a bone.”
kindle: to start a fire; a litter of kittens
“The campers only had flint and steel to kindle a fire.”
massacre: to kill a number of defenseless people
“The Boston Massacre was one incident that started the American Revolution.”
mania: to go crazy over something
“In the great tulip mania of the 1600’s people would spend over $100 for a single tulip bulb.”
enzyme: a chemical that speeds up a chemical reaction in a living organism
Sicily: An island state of Italy in the Mediterranean Sea
“We plan to take a ship to Sicily when we visit Italy.”
assault: to attack a person or army
“The army started its assault on the enemy stronghold.”
czar: a Russian king, or emperor. (Also spelled tsar)
“Nicholas II was the last czar of Russia.”
gneiss: a metamorphic rock (pronounced “nice”)
“We found an outcrop of gneiss along the side of the road.”