| Pernicious | Who is speaking: PrinceDefinition: having a harmful effect, especially in a gradual or subtle way. (Adjective)Context: Will they not hear? – What ho, you men, you beats! That quench the fire of your pernicious rage. With purple fountains issuing from your veins. (pg. 7)Sentence: Technology is quite pernicious to the younger generation. |
| Portentous | Who is speaking: Montague Definition: ominous, foreboding (Adjective) Context: Black and portentous must this humour prove, Unless good counsel may the cause remove. (pg. 9)Sentence: In “The Odyssey” when the eagles flew over the suitors left shoulders it was a portentous sign |
| Posterity | Who is speaking: Romeo Definition: the descendants of a person, future generations (Noun) Context: She hath, and in that sparing makes huge waste; For beauty starv’d with her severity. Cuts beauty off from all posterity. (pg. 12)Sentence: We bury time capsules for ourselves and for our posterity. |
| Visage | Who is speaking: MercutioDefinition: a person’s face or facial expression (Noun) Context: Give me a case to put my visage in, A visor for a visor! (pg. 22)Sentence: Compared to the smiling visage of the lady, the man looked very angry. |
| Disparagement | Who is speaking: CapuletDefinition: the act of speaking about someone in a negative or belittling way (Verb)Context: I would not for all the wealth in this town. Here is my house do him disparagement. (pg. 28)Sentence: The man quit his job because he was fed up with the disparagement that his both dished out to him on a daily basis. |
| Profane | Who is speaking: Romeo Definition: treat (something sacred) with irreverence or disrespect. (Verb)Context: If I profane with my unworthiest hand This holy shrine, the gentle sin is this My lips, two blushing pilgrims, ready stand To smooth that fought touch with a tender kiss. (pg. 28)Sentence: Ms. Wilson gets very angry, when we talk and act profanely in the chapel. |
| Prodigious | Who is speaking: Juliet Definition: immense, huge (Adjective)Context: Prodigious birth of love it is to me. That I must love a loathed enemy. (pg. 30) Sentence: People who go to art school tend to have prodigious artistic talent. |
| Perjuries | Who is speaking: JulietDefinition: broken vowsContext: And I will take thy word; yet if thou swear’st. Thou mayst prove false: at lovers’ perjuries. (pg. 37)Sentence: The man committed perjury when he lied under oath about his wife’s whereabouts the night of a murder. |
| Enmity | Who is speaking: Romeo Definition: the state or feeling of being actively opposed or hostile to someone or something. (Noun)Context: Alack, there lies more peril in thine eyes. Than twenty of their swords. Look thou but sweet. And I am proof against their enmity. (pg. 37)Sentence: There is lots of enmity between various groups in the middle east as to who Jerusalem belongs to. |
| Perverse | Who is speaking: Juliet Definition: Someone who is deliberately difficult (Adjective) Context: Or if thou think’st I am too quickly won. I’ll frown and be perverse, and say thee nay. (pg. 37)Sentence: Most toddlers act perverse because they don’t know any better. When they get frustrated and don’t get their way, they become deliberately difficult. |
| Rancour | Who is speaking: Friar Lawrence Definition: bitterness or resentfulness, especially when long-standing. (Noun) Context: For this alliance may so happy prove. To turn your households’ rancour to pure love. (pg. 44)Sentence: Since my uncle is an avid Yankees fan he harbors rancor for any Mets fan. |
| Consort | Who is speaking: Merucutio and TybaltDefinition: habitually associate with someone, typically with the disapproval of others. (Verb)Context: Mercutio, thou consortest with Romeo. (pg. 60)Sentence: Maria was sentenced to death for consorting with the enemy. |
| Sojourn | Who is speaking: Friar LawrenceDefinition: a temporary stay. (Verb) Context: Or by the day break disguised from hence. Sojourn in Mantua. I’ll find out your man. (pg. 77)Sentence: I enjoyed my sojourn in France last summer. |
| Abhors | Who is speaking: JulietDefinition: regard with disgust and hatred. (Verb)Context: Oh how my heart abhors. To hear his nam’d and cannot come to him. (pg. 84)Sentence: Since she is a vegetarian, she abhors meat. |
| Inundation | Who is speaking: ParisDefinition: floodingContext: To stop the inundation of her tears. (pg. 89)Sentence: The ancient Egyptians heavily relied on the annual inundation of the Nile River. |
| Shroud | Who is speaking: JulietDefinition: a length of cloth or an enveloping garment in which a dead person is wrapped for burial. (Noun)Context: Or bid me go into a new-made grave. And hide me with a sea man in his shroud. (pg. 92)Sentence: The old man asked to be buried in a pure silk shroud. |
| Surcease | Who is speaking: Friar LawrenceDefinition: stop (Noun) Context: A cold and drowsy humour; for no pulse. Shall keep his native progress, but surcease. (pg. 92) Sentence: The sick patient found surcease from his pan, with the new drugs that were provided to him. |
| Kindred | Who is speaking: Friar Lawrence Definition: one’s family and relations. Similar in kind (Noun)Context: Thou shall be borne to that same ancient vault. Where all the kindred of the Capulets lie. Sentence: My best friend and I are kindred spirits, we are similar in almost every way. |
| Warrant | Who is speaking: CapuletDefinition: to give one’s word for; vouch for, to promise or guarantee (Verb)Context: Tush, I will stir about. And all things shall be well, I warrant thee wife. (pg. 95)Sentence: Bianca warranted that she didn’t take my pencil case. |
| Presage | Who is speaking: RomeoDefinition: foretell (Noun)Context: My dreams presage some joyful news at hand. (pg. 105)Sentence: The sight of the first robin is a presage of Spring. |
| Penury | Who is speaking: Romeo Definition: extreme poverty (Noun)Context: Noting this penury, to myself I said, “And if a man did need a poison now, whose sale is present death in Mantua, where lives a caitiff wretch would sell it him.” (pg. 106)Sentence: During the Great Depression, many people lived in a state of penury. |
| Pestilence | Who is speaking: Friar John Definition: a fatal epidemic disease, especially bubonic plague. (Noun)Context: Suspecting that we both were in a house, where the infectious pestilence did reign, seal’d up the doors, and would not let us forth. (pg. 108)Sentence: The pestilence of texting and driving has taken many lives. |
| Inexorable | Who is speaking: RomeoDefinition: impossible to stop or prevent. (Adjective) Context: The time and my intents are savage-wild. More fierce and more inexorable far than empty tigers or the roaring sea. (pg. 111)Sentence: The earthquake was a horrible and inexorable event that shook the city’s resident’s to their core. |
| Inauspicious | Who is speaking: RomeoDefinition: unpromising, unfavorable fortune Context: Will I set up my everlasting rest, and shake the yoke of inauspicious star from this world – wearied flesh. (pg. 113)Sentence: After a bad first day of school, the year was off to an inauspicious start. |
| Scourge | Who is speaking: PrinceDefinition: cause great suffering to. (Verb)Context: Where be these enemies? Capulet, Montague? See what a scourge is laid upon your hate, that heaven finds means to kill your joys with love! (pg. 120)Sentence: Cutting down trees in the forest afflicts scourge to environmental activists and woodland creatures alike. War is a scourge across the land. |
Romeo and Juliet Vocab
September 21, 2019