Below is the Words to Know section from the first Town Magician book. These are words used in the story and gathered in one place to help teachers and parents see them easily. Feel free to use this list with your kids and look for them in Embracing the Magic.
Throughout the story, there may be some words that you haven’t seen before. I have tried to define these words below. Please, look these up in a dictionary to get the official definition. I’ve also provided the sentence where the word appears for context.
For a complete study guide, visit sa-schneider.com.
Squalid – yucky, shabby and worn, dirty
His booming voice stopped, his brow creased as he leaned toward the fallen man. “What is this squalid little town’s name?”
Hitherto – means until now, until this point
I must attend other towns, but I will return in one week to honor you with a spectacle unlike any you have hitherto witnessed.
Carnage – everything’s destroyed
As the shards pelted the closest onlookers, they shrieked and pushed to get away from the carnage.
Plonked – a great word, like if an acorn bounced off your head – I imagine it would sound like ‘Plonk’
Rory found a log and plonked down on it.
Huzzah – an older word meaning to cheer. Today we’d probably say ‘Hooray’
Coins clinked as they landed on the wooden performance stage accompanied by shouts of “Huzzah” and “Another”.
Duped – isn’t this a great word? It means to fool someone.
Rory might mess up and the rest of the village would realize he duped them.
Traversal – this is just moving to some place. Samual traversed the garden with care so he wouldn’t trample any plants.
While the crowd oohed and aahed, especially the pretty girls, Samual finished his traversal out of the crowd.
Poofed – Poof is an exclamation, like something you might see when a wizard makes something disappear in a comic book. If you have a verb, like clap, you can add -ed to the end and make it a past participle. That just means it’s an action in the past. Poof isn’t usually used this way, but I like it and it could be used like this. This makes poof treated as a verb and it happened in the past.
Both apparitions poofed and changed into swarms of butterflies.
Rambunctious – loud and energetic. Often used to describe active children, maybe you’ve been called rambunctious.
He thrust a fist in the air and the crowd, as usual, burst into cheers and applause, but it certainly wasn’t as rambunctious as at a show.
Scarfed – This doesn’t mean he tied something around his neck. Used in this way it means to eat something quickly. You may have heard someone say “he wolfed down the food” which is similar.
Samual nodded and scarfed down the food as he hurried to catch up to the already walking Rory.
Dunderhead – This is an old English insult that means a stupid person.
Whatever you may think, you little dunderhead, I am going.
