Look at the following words.
headmistress | Long awaited | Homework |
notebook | Stiff-backed | Outbursts |
These words are compound words. They are made up of two or more words.
Compound words can be:
•Nouns (a word that identifies a person, a place, an animal or a thing): headmistress, homework, notebook, outbursts
•Adjectives (a word that gives the description of a noun or a pronoun): long-awaited, stiff-backed
•Verbs( Verbs can be described as words that describe actions): sleep-walk, baby-sit
(Compound word)
Match the compound words under ‘A’ with their meanings under ‘B’. Use each in a sentence.
A | B |
1.Heartbreaking | Obeying and respecting the law |
2.Homesick | Think about pleasant things, forgetting about the present |
3.Blockhead | Something produced by a person, machine or an organization |
4. Law-abiding | Producing great success |
5. Overdo | An occasion when vehicles/machines stop working |
6. Daydream | An informal word which means a very stupid person |
7. Break down | Missing home and family very much |
8. Output | Do something to an excessive degree |
Phrasal verbs
A phrasal verb is a verb followed by a preposition or an adverb. Its meaning is often different from the meaning of its parts.
Compare the meanings of the verbs gets on and run away in (a) and (b) below. You can easily guess their meanings in (a) but in (b) they have special meanings.
(a) She got on at Agra when the bus stopped for breakfast.
Dev Anand ran away from home when he was a teenager.
In (a) i.e. the first sentence, she got on refers to the movement of a person
Whereas
In the second sentence, it says that Dev Anand ran away i.e. left his house
(b) She’s eager to get on in life. (Succeed)
The visitors ran away with the match. (Won easily)
In (b) i.e. the first sentence, it refers to climbing the ladder of success
Whereas
In the second sentence, it refers to winning the match (ran away with the match)
Some phrasal verbs have three parts: a verb followed by an adverb and a preposition. For Example:
(c) Our car ran out of petrol just outside the city limits.
(d) The government wants to reach out to the people with this new campaign.
B. Now find the sentences in the lesson that have the phrasal verbs given below. Match them with their meanings. (you have already found out the meanings of some of them.) Are their meanings the same as that of their parts? (Note that two parts of the phrasal verb may occur separated in the text.)
(i) plunge in | Speak or write without focus |
(ii) kept back | Stay indoors |
(iii) move up | Make (them) remain quite |
(iv) ramble on | Have a good relationship with |
(v) get along with | Give an assignment (homework) to a person in authority (the teacher) |
(vi) calm down | Compensate |
(vii) stay in | Go straight to the topic |
(viii) make up for | Go to the next grade |
(ix) hand in | Not promoted |
Here is an extract adapted from a one-act play. In this extract, angry neighbors who think Joe the Inventor’s new spinning machine will make them lose their jobs come to destroy Joe’s model of the machine.
You’ve just seen how contracted forms can make a written text sound like actual speech. Try to make this extract sound more like a real conversation by changing some of the verbs back into the contracted forms. Then speak out the lines.
[The door is flung open, and several men tramp in. They carry sticks, and one of them, HOB, has a hammer.]
HOB | Now, where is your husband, mistress? |
MARY | In his bed. He is sick and weary. You would not harm him! |
HOB | We are going to smash his evil work to pieces. Where is the machine? |
SECOND MAN | On the table yonder. |
HOB | Then here is the end of it! [HOB smashes the model. Mary screams.] |
HOB | And now your husband! |
MARY | Neighbours, he is a sick man and almost a cripple. You would not hurt him! |
HOB | He is planning to take away our daily bread….we will show him what we think of him and his ways! |
MARY | You have broken his machine…. You have done enough…. |