Words, Words, Words . . .

I know this is tiresome, but I'm documenting these incidents for future generations (and there is some research about the Flynn Effect recently stalling or reversing, so this might be important anecdotal data) so here are some words and concepts that came up this week that the vast majority of my seventy-five College Writing students did not know, could not define, or could not decipher:

--quarrel

--chaste (or chastity . . . and then I had to explain the medieval "chastity belt," which actually might have been a myth)

--The Protestant Reformation

--The Puritans

-- purgatory

-- apparel

--vulgar

--neither a borrower nor a lender be.