Tag Archives: vocabulary

You think you know Sixth Grade Vocabulary? Try these onerous examples.

Post #163 from Dr. Crankenfuss, The World’s Awesomest Raving and Rapping middle school blogger–

Yo, peeps, I just wanted to put this out there. Thought you might be interested in trying the vocabulary test I had last week. Hey, it’s only sixth grade stuff. Certainly you can handle that, can’t you? You can add them in to your conversations with your family at dinner time or… well, just let me give you an example of how smart you can sound if you increase your vocabulary. “Hey, Mom, I got an A on my ERUCTATION test in Health Class,” you say. Wouldn’t a typical mom praise her young brainchild for this performance? Not if she found out that ERUCATION means BELCHING! (Actually that word WASN’T on our test. I just like it.)

Anyway here are 8 words from our test. You think you can outdo me? I doubt it. But then again, we had the words to study ahead of time.  But no matter what, your vocabulary is going get a real boost today!

Oh, yeah! That ONEROUS in the title means TROUBLESOME.

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DR. CRANKENFUSS’S SIXTH GRADE VOCABULARY TEST

1. “When it comes to homework, I’m lackadaisical.”
A. not dazed
B. very efficient
C. kind of lazy
D. someone who doesn’t have any daisies

2. “Am I going to win this boxing match? I don’t know but I sure am  feckless.”
A. incompetent
B. showing no fear
C. having not even one feck
D. skilled at fighting

3. “I got into a fight today at school. Afterwards I was unabashed.”
A. not able to stand up
B. not in good shape
C. not beat up
D. not embarrassed

4. “I’m not sure how I’m going to do on this test. I do have collywobbles.”
A. the answers to the questions
B. stomach cramps
C. a strong feeling of confidence
D. difficulty walking

5. “I want to eat more, but I can’t finish this food. It’s too piquant.”
A. spicy
B. bad-tasting
C. delicious
D. salty

6. “Hey, buddy, how about sticking this piece of pie in your piehole.”
A. a pie pan
B. mouth
C. a nasty word that basically means “ where the sun don’t shine”
D. pocket

7. “I have to admit that my best friend is a knave.”
A. a very smart person
B. a coward
C. a rascal or trickster
D. someone who tries to pick up girls

8. “At a British soccer match, you’ll usually find hooligans.”
A. soccer players
B. a kind of sausage sold at stadiums
C. fans of sports
D. thugs

 

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ANSWERS


1. C – lackadaisical = kind of lazy
2. A – feckless = incompetent, ineffective
3. D – unabashed = not embarrassed
4. B – collywobbles = stomach cramps (or fear)
5. A – piquant = spicy
6. B – piehole = mouth
7. C – knave = a rascal or trickster
8. D – hooligans = thugs

So how’d you do? If you got five or more right, that’s pretty good actually. These are pretty tricky and you didn’t get to study them ahead of time.

Well, that’s all I got for today. Have a great Christmas vacation.

From Your Dude with the ‘Tude,
Dr. Crankenfuss

Finally let’s get this straight/ These expressions are out-of-date

“Humor” Post #129 from Dr. Crankenfuss, The World’s Awesomest Raving and Rapping Middle School blogger –

You’re reading this so you probably know I like to write. Usually I try to be funny. But today’s post is about a few expressions I hear pretty often and I can’t figure out why they’re still used. I’m not going to do my usual thing and call them stupid. Let’s just call them “out-of-date” and say they should be retired. So here they are:

1. DIAL A NUMBER:  I don’t think anyone’s dialed a number in what — 10 or 20 years? I know I never have. A lot of kids don’t even know what a phone with a dial looks like (unless they watch old movies). But what word should replace it? Should we “press a number,” “punch a number,” “hit a number”? You got me. I know in Spanish it’s something like “oprime” because the computerized voice on a phone says, “Oprime dos.” But I don’t think “oprime” will be a big hit with most people.

2. To TAPE something or “LET’S LOOK AT THE TAPE.”:  I just heard Dr. Phil say that second expression on his show the other day. Or people will talk about “taping a conversation.” But there isn’t any tape involved anymore, is there? That was when people actually had “tape recorders,” not “digital voice recorders” or DVD players. So what’s the new term going to be? Obviously Dr. Phil can say, “Let’s look at the video.” Maybe I’ll have to get in touch with him about that. I’m sure he’d take my call. (Joke.)

3. My grandfather still uses the expression “BOOB TUBE” for the TV. That means it’s for dumb people. Okay, that’s fine, but TVs haven’t had any tubes in them for a bunch of years. Yes, I know if you have an ancient computer screen that weighs maybe forty pounds or a giant TV that weighs over 100 pounds, those probably have picture tubes in them. But any flat screen doesn’t work by tubes, does it? But “BOOB LED” doesn’t have the same ring to it, does it? So let’s say Adios to “boob tube.”

4. LIKE A BROKEN RECORD:  That means something keeps getting repeated the way an old scratched record would get stuck on the same note. But almost no one has records anymore. (And yes, I know Justin Timberlake has a vinyl version of his latest CD.) But why hasn’t that expression been replaced by “like a scratched CD”? I’ve heard CDs repeat a note over and over till it drives you nuts. Just the other day, I had one stick on the word “what.” It went “wha-wha-wha-wha-wha” for about 20 seconds till I could take out the CD and clean it. Luckily that worked or I might have gone batty. I’m just saying that old expression should go the way of the dinosaurs: extinct.

Here’s something I just thought of. I wonder how long it’ll be before CDs disappear. Oh, I know they won’t totally disappear, but already nobody carries around CDs anymore, do they? They’ll become like records. And record stores.

5. Speaking of music, why do they still call new releases “ALBUMS”? There haven’t been any albums for like 70 years or more. It took me forever to find a decent picture of one. Finally I got this photo at www.popscreen.com of a 4-record-album by Eddy Duchin, who made music in the 1930s. See all the records in there. (I had to look him up at Wikipedia ’cause I’d never heard of him.)

A real record album
This is what a real record album looks like.

Back then, they could only fit about 5 or 10 minutes of music on each side of a record. So they had to have albums that looked like photo albums to hold all the records you needed for something that fits on a CD or a thumb drive now.

Anyway, that’s all I got for today. I guess it’s not any kind of humor post, but I hope it got you thinking.

From Your Dude with the ‘Tude
(who must not be in the happiest mood),
Dr. Crankenfuss

-DIS makes no sense! So I’m gonna dis it.

Humor Post #65 from the world’s Crankiest Curmudgeon’s Middle School Blog (and probably the awesomest YA blog too) –

Question: Why do so many people have trouble reading?
Answer: Because English is messed up, that’s why. If it made more sense, people wouldn’t get so mixed up.

Here’s a total screw-up I figured out all on my own. Just by thinking, you know. And I’m just a kid. So there must be gajillions of other things I haven’t even noticed yet.

We’re working on prefixes in English class and there’s a bunch of them that mean “no” or “opposite of.” Like -un, -im, -in, -non, and -dis. I think you know pretty much what I’m talking about. Our teacher says knowing these prefixes will help us on those standardized tests they give us all the time. But I had to ask about -dis in class last week and my teacher couldn’t really answer me. So I’ll ask you.

-DIS — Like disrespect is the opposite of respect, like dislike means to not like, like dishonest means not honest. Easy, huh?

But I thought of a couple that make NO SENSE! Now how are we supposed to do gooder in school if English is such a wreck. (And yes, that was supposed to be funny. Epic fail, huh? So what’s new?)

Here they are:
The wind is gusting.
The wind is disgusting.
Huh? I don’t think the second sentence means the opposite of the first.

Or how about this?
She’s stressed.
She’s distressed.
Huh? again. This time both sentences mean the same thing. Here –dis is a prefix that means absolutely nothing. Must be there for decoration, I guess.

Like I said, I asked about these in class, but my teacher didn’t have a good answer for me. At least she seemed interested and said she’d look it up. I’m not sure anyone else noticed because most people weren’t paying much attention. That’s because prefixes aren’t the most exciting thing for most people. More people listened to me at the beginning of the lesson when I tried to be my usual brilliant self. The teacher asked someone to give a sentence that used disperse. So I raised my hand and said, “Dis purse is made of leather so it costs a lot.” At least I got a few groans and the teacher gave one of her “Oh, please” looks so I guess that counts as a success.

So anyway, getting back to the “disgusting” and “distressing” examples from above, it takes Dr. Crankenfuss once again to point out why American kids have such a hard time in school. It’s not our fault. It’s English’s fault. Why don’t they fix it? One of these days, they’ll hire you-know-who to fix the world and everyone’ll have it a lot easier.

But till then, keep checking her for beautiful pearls of wisdom from Dr. Crankenfuss,
The Dude with the ‘Tude