Vocab

I am currently on page 72 of Number the Stars by Lois Lowry. While reading this book, I found there are many words I am unfamiliar with. Two of these words stood out to me. The first word was obstinate. "Stand still, Kirsti, Annemarie ordered silently, praying that somehow the obstinate five-year-old would receive the message." (Lowry 4). Using context clues, I can infer that obstinate means stubborn or fidgety. When i looked up obstinate on dictionary.com, I found out that obstinate actually means firm or stubborn. Based on my inference, I was pretty close to the actual definition. The second word that stood out to me was impassive. "She glanced through the window, down to the street corner where the soldiers stood, their faces impassive beneath the metal helmets." (Lowry 55). From the text, you can infer that impassive means cold, or blank. According to dictionary.com, impassive actually means without emotion, or unmoved. I was surprised at how close my inference was to the actual definition. Looking at the text around a new word can help you guess the definition.