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Lecture 4

A

ll parents, as much as they love their children, know that there are

times when family members get annoyed with one another. Parents

of teenagers, in particular, can relate to this quote from Mark Twain:

“When I was a boy of 14, my father was so ignorant I could hardly stand

to have the old man around. But when I got to be 21, I was astonished at

how much the old man had learned in seven years.” Amazingly, the same

qualities in a person that annoy us at one time don’t seem so bad later. In this

lecture, we’ll explore words related to three personality types that we’ve all

encountered: the annoying, the offensive, and the sickly sweet.

*DGÀ\QRXQ

1. A persistently annoying person who questions, critiques, and pesters.


2. An insect that annoys livestock by biting and sucking their blood.

z *DGÀ\ is a wonderfully useful word for all of the irritating critics

in our lives—the people who constantly pester, provoke, and

annoy the rest of us with their criticisms, demands, requests, ideas,

and schemes.

z It’s easy to remember JDGÀ\ if you know that it also refers to an

actual insect that annoys livestock animals by biting and sucking

their blood.

z 7KH SUH¿[gad- comes from an Old Norse word that means

“spike or nail”—something like a stinger. To remember JDGÀ\,

picture an annoying person buzzing around and trying to sting

you with needling critiques and bothersome questions. If it helps,

sketch a quick picture of an insect with a large stinger in your

vocabulary notebook.