Inevitable Diverse Elusive Resilient Stagnant Eccentric Zeal Meticulous Belligerent
Read the following sentences. Write the part of speech next to each sentence (noun, adj, verb)
The end of the year is inevitable. You cannot just ask like it won’t happen. (_____________)
The diverse options for breakfast include Crispy Rice, Coco Roos, and Crunch Berrys. (_____)
After years of searching for the gold city, it still remained elusive. (___________)
The resilient tree in my back yard survived many storms and tornados (_________).
The water in my backyard became stagnant and began to smell. (_______________).
The eccentric man wore pink pants and a bright yellow hat. (______________)
After a meticulous cleaning of my room, I found my lost wallet(______________).
The belligerent man punched me in my face. (________________).
Based on the context of each word, write the appropriate word in the box with its synonyms:
Word_________________________
-aggressive -argumentative -angry
Word_________________________
-predictable -expected -certain
Word_________________________
-unusual -strange -weird
Word_________________________
-idle -still -rotten
Word_________________________
-careful -thorough -painstaking
Word_________________________
-mysterious -lost -missing
Word_________________________
-tough -durable -strong
Word_________________________
-varied -assorted -different
Inevitable Diverse Elusive Resilient Stagnate Eccentric Meticulous Belligerent
Now, match each word with the correct definition: ______________________________"difficult to catch, find, understand, or remember," _______________________________" “hostile, ready to start a fight, or ready to go to war” ________________________________ “consisting of different things: made up of many differing parts” _______________________________ “impossible to avoid or to prevent from happening” ________________________________”unconventional, weird in appearance” ________________________________ “extremely careful and precise” ________________________________”able to recover quickly from setback, elastic: able to spring back quickly into shape after being bent, stretched, or squashed” _______________________________”to fail to develop, progress, or make necessary changes / to become stale or impure through not flowing or moving”
fabricate --make up something artificial or untrue This is a work of nonfiction. No names have been changed, no characters invented, no events fabricated.
clarity--the quality of being coherent and easily understood Anything written in the first person in Deborah Lacks’s voice is a quote of her speaking, edited for length and occasionally clarity.
verbatim-in precisely the same words used by a writer or speaker Since Henrietta Lacks died decades before I began writing this book, I relied on interviews, legal documents, and her medical records to re-create scenes from her life. In those scenes, dialogue is either deduced from the written record or quoted verbatim as it was recounted to me in an interview. Because she'd spent years with Henrietta Lacks's family--getting to know them, recording them, and quoting their dialogues verbatim--the reporter/writer Skloot is able to deduce ("conclude by reasoning") and recreate dialogues that are suggested by the written evidence in front of her.
disparate-fundamentally different or distinct in quality or kind The extract from Henrietta’s medical record in chapter I is a summary of many disparate notations.
oblivious-lacking conscious awareness of It’s the late 1940s and she hasn’t yet reached the age of thirty. Her light brown skin is smooth, her eyes still young and playful, oblivious to the tumor growing inside her—a tumor that would leave her five children motherless and change the future of medicine.
inconceivable-totally unlikely One scientist estimates that if you could pile all HeLa cells ever grown onto a scale, they’d weigh more than 50 million metric tons—an inconceivable number, given that an individual cell weighs almost nothing. The piling of all the HeLa cells would be totally unlikely, but 50 million metric tons only seems like an "inconceivable" ("incapable of being understood or grasped fully") number in contrast to the actual weight of an individual cell.
replenish-fill something that had previously been emptied Defier paced the front of the classroom telling us how mitosis—the process of cell division—makes it possible for embryos to grow into babies, and for our bodies to create new cells for healing wounds orreplenishing blood we’ve lost.
immortal-not subject to death Scientists had been trying to keep human cells alive in culture for decades, but they all eventually died. Henrietta’s were different: they reproduced an entire generation every twenty-four hours, and they never stopped. They became the first immortal human cells ever grown in a laboratory. This scientific definition of cell immortality is not the same as the immortality associated with gods and supernatural beings. Since the cells are reproducing, they are actually creating new cells rather than simply living forever. "Immortal" also means "a person of enduring fame" and this can now apply to Henrietta Lacks, since Skloot's book has positively connected her to the immortal HeLa cells.
parenthetical-qualifying or explaining After class, I ran home and threw myself onto my bed with my biology textbook. I looked up “cell culture” in the index, and there she was, a small parenthetical: Skloot uses the adjective "parenthetical" as a noun here to emphasize how Henrietta Lacks had been reduced to a small, seemingly less important, note in a biology textbook.
omnipresent-existing everywhere at once As I graduated from high school and worked my way through college toward a biology degree, HeLa cells were omnipresent.
snippet-a small piece of anything When I got my first computer in the mid-nineties and started using the Internet, I searched for information about her, but found only confusedsnippets: most sites said her name was Helen Lane; some said she died in the thirties; others said the forties, fifties, or even sixties. Some said ovarian cancer killed her, others said breast or cervical cancer.
ethical-adhering to moral principles While trying to make sense of the history of cell culture and the complicated ethical debate surrounding the use of human tissues in research, I’d be accused of conspiracy and slammed into a wall both physically and metaphorically
resilient-recovering readily from adversity, depression, or the like I did eventually meet Deborah, who would turn out to be one of the strongest and most resilient women I’d ever known. We’d form a deep personal bond, and slowly, without realizing it, I’d become a character in her story, and she in mine.
agnostic-a person who claims the existence of God is unknowable Deborah and I came from very different cultures: I grew up white and agnostic in the Pacific Northwest, my roots half New York Jew and half Midwestern Protestant; Deborah was a deeply religious black Christian from the South.
predominantly-much greater in number or influence She grew up in a black neighborhood that was one of the poorest and most dangerous in the country; I grew up in a safe, quiet middle-class neighborhood in a predominantly white city and went to high school with a total of two black students.
litany-any long and tedious address or recital Before examining her, he flipped through her chart—a quick sketch of her life, and a litany of untreated conditions:
palpate-examine (a body part) by tactual exploration “She says that she knew there was something wrong with the neck of her womb,” he wrote later. “When asked why she knew it, she said that she felt as if there were a lump there. I do not quite know what she means by this, unless she actually palpated this area.”
horde-a vast multitude They tended a garden filled with corn, peanuts, and greens, then headed to the tobacco fields with their cousins Cliff, Fred, Sadie, Margaret, and a horde of others.
taunt-harass with persistent criticism or carping During the school year, after taking care of the garden and livestock each morning, she’d walk two miles—past the white school where children threw rocks and taunted her—to the colored school, a three-room wooden farmhouse hidden under tall shade trees, with a yard out front where Mrs. Coleman made the boys and girls play on separate sides.
nestle-move or arrange oneself in a comfortable and cozy position Before leaving home, Tommy would call for the young cousins, who’dnestle into the flat wagon on a bed of tobacco leaves, then fight sleep as long as they could before giving in to the rhythm of the horses. "Nestle" also means "a close and affectionate (and often prolonged) embrace"--although this definition is for a noun, and the word is being used as a verb in the example sentence, it could hint at the nature of the relationships between the Lacks cousins. One cousin shared a bedroom with Henrietta, got her pregnant when she was thirteen, and married her seven years later. Other cousins donated blood and took care of her family when she died.
idyllic-charmingly simple and serene When most Lackses talked about Henrietta and Day and their early life in Clover, it sounded as idyllic as a fairy tale.
flourish-grow vigorously But as large farms flourished, the small ones struggled.
dapper-marked by up-to-dateness in dress and manners TeLinde, one of the top cervical cancer experts in the country, was adapper and serious fifty-six-year-old surgeon who walked with an extreme limp from an ice-skating accident more than a decade earlier.
dilate-become wider He peered inside Henrietta, dilated her cervix, and prepared to treat her tumor.
tedious-so lacking in interest as to cause mental weariness Gey still got excited at moments like this, but everyone else in his lab saw Henrietta’s sample as something tedious—the latest of what felt like countless samples that scientists and lab technicians had been trying and failing to grow for years.
meticulous-marked by extreme care in treatment of details But she was tired of cell culture, tired of meticulously cutting away dead tissue like gristle from a steak, tired of having cells die after hours of work. "Gristle" is "tough elastic tissue"--cutting gristle from a steak would not be as meticulous a task as slicing tissue into one-millimeter squares, and it would not seem as tiresome because a tastier steak is a reward, but Skloot uses the analogy to emphasize how useless the cut pieces seem to be.
dexterity-adroitness in using the hands Mary didn’t realize until months later that he’d been studying her hands, checking their dexterity and strength to see how they’d stand up to hours of delicate cutting, scraping, tweezing, and pipetting.
sterile-free of pathological microorganisms Margaret taught George everything he knew about keeping culturessterile, and she did the same with every technician, grad student, and scientist who came to work or study in the lab. "Sterile" also means "incapable of reproducing"--that would be the opposite of how Margaret and George want their cell cultures to be. Ironically, the cells that became the first to reproduce in a sterile laboratory came from a woman who had become sterile through treatments for cancer.
wrath-intense anger, usually on an epic scale Mary followed Margaret’s sterilizing rules meticulously to avoid herwrath.
morale-a state of individual psychological well-being “Patient feels quite well tonight. Morale is good and she is ready to go home.”
accumulate-collect or gather They kept growing like nothing anyone had seen, doubling their numbers every twenty-four hours, stacking hundreds on top of hundreds, accumulating by the millions.
relentless--never-ceasing Though radium often causes relentless nausea, vomiting, weakness, and anemia, there’s no record of Henrietta having any side effects, and no one remembers her complaining of feeling sick.
scamper-to move about or proceed hurriedly Once they got outside, they’d wiggle their hips and squeal,scampering down the street to the dance floors at Adams Bar and Twin Pines.
revival-an evangelistic meeting to reawaken interest in religion Henrietta made Day drive her and Elsie to revival meetings so preachers in tents could lay hands on Elsie to heal her, but it never worked. "Revival" also means "bringing again into activity and prominence"--while Henrietta's pushing of Day to bring Elsie to revival meetings did not work, Deborah's pushing of Skloot to help her find out what happened to Elsie did result in reviving the memory of her dead sister. Even finding out that, to doctors, Elsie was just another "Negro Insane" whom they could perform medical research on, helped Deborah to feel closer to a sister she never knew.
ample-more than enough in size or scope or capacity It is well to present the facts to such an individual and give her ampletime to digest them.
superimpose-place on top of “But at any rate, this patient now has . . . acute Gonorrheasuperimposed on radiation reaction.”
stipend-a sum of money allotted on a regular basis They were poor and uneducated, and the researchers offered incentives: free physical exams, hot meals, and rides into town on clinic days, plus fifty-dollar burial stipends for their families when the men died. A stipend is usually a regular salary/allowance that's spent by the worker/recipient. Here, the stipend is given to families to pay for the burial of relatives who had died during their participation in a study on syphilis. So rather than sounding generous, the stipend seems like the researchers' cold-hearted payment for the life of an African-American man, whom they chose to watch die, even after discovering they could easily have saved him with penicillin.
manic-affected with or marked by frenzy uncontrolled by reason Deborah crammed a lifetime of information into a manic and confusing forty-five minutes that jumped without warning, and in no particular order, from the 1920s to the 1990s, from stories of her father to her grandfather, cousins, mother, and total strangers.
curt-brief and to the point She was sharp, curt, like I do not have time for this.
recipient-a person who is sent something When shipments were ready to go, Gey would warn recipients that the cells were about to “metastasize” to their cities, so they could stand ready to fetch the shipment and rush back to their labs.
conflate-mix together different elements The prize had nothing to do with the chicken heart, but articles about his award conflated the immortal chicken-heart cells with his transplantation work, and suddenly it sounded like he’d found the fountain of youth.
avert-prevent the occurrence of; prevent from happening CARREL’S NEW MIRACLE POINTS WAY TO AVERT OLD AGE!
inevitable-incapable of being avoided or prevented DEATH PERHAPS NOT INEVITABLE
elixir-a substance believed to cure all ills Magazines called his culture medium “an elixir of youth” and claimed that bathing in it might make a person live forever.
frenzy-state of violent mental agitation Carrel’s eccentricities fed into the media frenzy about his work.
capacity-the amount that can be contained Thousands showed up for Carrel’s talks, sometimes requiring police in riot gear to keep order as buildings filled to capacity and fans had to be turned away.
mundane-belonging to this earth or world The Literary Digest reported that the cells could have already “covered the earth,” and a British tabloid said they could “form a rooster . . . big enough today to cross the Atlantic in a single stride, [a bird] so monstrous that when perched on this mundane sphere, the world, it would look like a weathercock.” "Mundane" also means "found in the ordinary course of events"--this definition could fit the description of the world, when it is contrasted with a tabloid's vision of a monstrous, unreal rooster made up of HeLa cells.
replicate-make or do or perform again No one had ever been able to replicate Carrel’s work, and the cells seemed to defy a basic rule of biology: that normal cells can only divide a finite number of times before dying.
defer-yield to another's wish or opinion There’s no indication that Henrietta questioned him; like most patients in the 1950s, she deferred to anything her doctors said.
benevolent-intending or showing kindness This was a time when “ benevolent deception” was a common practice—doctors often withheld even the most fundamental information from their patients, sometimes not giving them any diagnosis at all.
kin-related by blood I told him why I was there, and he pointed up and down the road. “Everybody in Lacks Town kin to Henrietta, but she been gone so long, even her memory pretty much dead now,” he said.
deficit-an excess of liabilities over assets She got so much blood that one doctor wrote a note in her record stopping all transfusions “until her deficit with the blood bank was made up.”
callus-a skin area that is thick or hard from continual pressure They were working men, with steel and asbestos in their lungs and years’ worth of hard labor under their calluses and cracked fingernails. They’d all slept on Henrietta’s floor and eaten her spaghetti when they first came to Baltimore from the country, and anytime money ran low.
analgesic-a medicine used to relieve pain Soon after Emmett and his friends visited, at four o’clock on the afternoon of September 24, 1951, a doctor injected Henrietta with a heavy dose of morphine and wrote in her chart, “Discontinue all medications and treatments except analgesics.”
disoriented-having lost your bearings Two days later, Henrietta awoke terrified, disoriented, wanting to know where she was and what the doctors had been doing to her.