1-page Vocabulary Printables

The psychologist's diagnosis word: children who 'feel persecuted by parents constantly' names the story's inverted family dynamic, and the term carries emotional weight seventh-graders will meet often.

A precise, transferable word caught at the story's first real fracture — parents 'stood appalled at the other's reaction' — where laughter and tears expose how far apart George and Lydia already are.

'Another roar from the lions, which subsided quickly' pins the word to a vivid, self-contained image; common enough to matter, concrete enough to infer.

Figurative and thematic: 'the room's in a rut' compresses the whole premise — the nursery locked on one obsession — into a single idiom worth owning.

'Eating with great relish whatever it was they had caught' teaches the noun through an unsettling image; the appetite sense lands cleanly and menacingly here.

The children's tantrum — 'they screamed and pranced and threw things' — makes a lively verb concrete at the story's power-reversal, where their defiance turns overt.

'Padding through the dry straw' gives the soft-footed sense at the fatal climax; the quiet verb set against the roaring lions is exactly the tension the excerpt teaches.

A high-utility adjective anchored in the story's signature sensory passage — 'an exquisite French tapestry' of lion-yellows — where beauty and dread are deliberately fused.

'Contemplating our mechanical, electronic navels' turns a fancy verb into George's self-aware indictment of the family's passivity; memorable phrasing, clear inferable meaning.

Promoted to represent the parents' failed bid to reassert control: 'you have been conjuring up Africa' catches George accusing the children mid-argument, a beat the rest of the top ten skips.

seeping: A strong sensory verb ('their strong odor seeping as far away as his study door'), but it doubles the lions-sensed-from-the-study beat already held by 'subsided,' so it yields to a word covering fresh ground.

contraptions: A fun, useful word for gadgets, but its excerpt sits inside the same study-scene stretch already well represented, so it settles just below the line.

conceived: Solid and transferable ('the mechanical genius who had conceived this room'), yet the sense is common and the excerpt expository rather than pivotal.

parlor: 'Africa in your parlor' is evocative, but the word is dated and largely inferable, keeping it in the close-call tier.

engrossed: A good word, but its late-story excerpt nearly duplicates the ending imagery carried more strongly by 'padding.'

rapping: Clear and concrete ('walked in on the children without rapping'), though the meaning is easily guessed and the moment minor.

Scrooge: A rich allusion (Santa vs. Scrooge) capturing the parents-as-disciplinarians turn, but it leans on outside knowledge of Dickens, tempering its quiz fit.

intersperse: A useful academic verb, but its excerpt is a bargaining aside within the argument and less central than the words above it.

clinical: 'Their clinical accuracy' teaches a transferable sense, yet the word sits in early exposition already represented by stronger neighbors.

telepathic: Vivid in context ('caught the telepathic emanations of the children's minds'), but the meaning is transparent and the excerpt largely explanatory.