0427 Flashcards
wits
She’d give me little bursts, rando details, stories of having to keep her wits about her to avoid getting raped by strange men in the village.
wits
[plural] your ability to think quickly and make the right decisions
Alone and penniless, I was forced to live on my wits.
keep/have your wits about you (=be ready to think quickly and do what is necessary in a difficult situation)
deprivation
The deprivations of her youth, the betrayals of her parents, she never complained about any of it.
the lack of something that you need in order to be healthy, comfortable, or happy
Sleep deprivation can result in mental disorders.
binge
He’ll go off on a drinking binge, and then pop back out of nowhere a week later.
informal a short period when you do too much of something, such as eating or drinking
a drinking binge
a week-long binge of shopping
behold
My mother wanted her child beholden to no fate.
to see or to look at something – sometimes used humorously
be a sight/joy/pleasure etc to behold
The beauty of the garden was a pleasure to behold.
feel/be beholden to somebody
to feel that you have a duty to someone because they have done something for you
pore
It was fifteen years old and way out of date, but I would sit and pore through those.
pore over something phrasal verb
to read or look at something very carefully for a long time
Psalms
She was big into Psalms.
The Book of Psalms, commonly referred to simply as Psalms, the Psalter or “the Psalms”, is the first book of the Ketuvim, the third section of the Tanakh, and a book of the Christian Old Testament.
furtively
There came a point, in the months before Mandela’s release, when we could live less furtively.
behaving as if you want to keep something secret SYN secretive
flashback
I remember moving out there in flashback s, snippets, driving to a place I’d never seen, seeing people I’d never seen.
1 [countable, uncountable] a scene in a film, play, book etc that shows something that happened before that point in the story
The events of the hero’s childhood are shown as a series of flashbacks.
2 [countable] a sudden very clear memory of something that happened to you in the past
Eaton still has flashbacks of the crash.
3 [countable] an occasion when someone has the same bad feeling that they had when they took an illegal drug in the past
Many users of this drug experience flashbacks.
4 [countable] technical a burning gas or liquid that moves back into a tube or container
snippets
a small piece of news, information, or conversation SYN bit
suburbia
It was flat, not many trees, the same dusty red-clay dirt and grass as Soweto but with proper houses and paved road and a sense of suburbia to it.
suburbs in general, and the behaviour, opinions, and ways of living that are typical of people who live there – often used to show disapproval
