Understanding vocabulary through context clues and examples

¶ … Wild -- Vocabulary Exercise

Context Clue Passage -- Gaunt

The patient looked much sicker than he had the week before. He was so gaunt that his shoulder blades poked through his pajama top like two sharp mounds sticking out of his back. His cheeks were equally gaunt leaving a sharp outline showing his entire jaw line that made him look like a living skeleton. We were concerned that he could not possibly live much longer in that condition.

Personification Passage -- Peril

Charles once had a very routine situation suddenly turn potentially deadly. Luckily, he did not panic and he took the best possible course of action under the circumstances. Nevertheless, a look at his face during the event would have left no doubt how much danger his friends and he were in. From his perspective, Charles was so scared that he had something like tunnel vision about not making a mistake; at the same time, he consciously tried to communicate calmly without panicking everybody else, especially the one girl whose help he needed.

Basically, Charles had accidentally rolled backwards at the edge of a parking area outside a fraternity at another college. His open-topped Jeep slid a few feet backwards down a steep wooded hill in the black of night and came to rest on loose rocks and soil at a very steep upward angle. The hill was so steep that it would have been impossible to release the brake to engage the clutch without sliding backwards down a rocky mountainous hill. In fact, the hill was too steep for the emergency brake to hold the vehicle in place alone. It took a few second for Charles to get the attention of three friends in the backseat, but he managed to tell them they had to get out of the Jeep calmly and only from the sides and not the back. Then he told the girl in the passenger seat that he needed her to be his third leg. He explained how she had to use her left leg to take over the brake so that he could use his left foot on the clutch. He said, "Don't do anything until I say 'Let it go'." Like Charles, she was scared just enough to be very focused about what to do. He engaged the clutch, gave it some gas, and then said "Let it go"; she released the brake and they drove back up the hill.

Illustrated Meaning -- Lacerated

One look at the results of Clint Malarchuk's lacerated jugular vein by a skate blade was enough to convince him that he no longer wanted to play that position at all. Luckily, Malarchuk was saved by excellent emergency care.

http://www.thehockeyblog.com/thehockeyblog/wp-content/files/Clint%20Malarchuk.jpg