Unit 3: Vocabulary from Readings 1

This list covers "The Work You Do, the Person You Are," "Drowning in Dishes, but Finding a Home," "What to Do with the Kids This Summer? Put 'Em to Work," "The Decline of the American Teenager's Summer Job," and "Teenagers Have Stopped Getting Summer Jobs—Why?"
17 words 22 learners

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Full list of words from this list:

words only definitions & notes
  1. profound
    showing intellectual penetration or emotional depth
    The pleasure of being necessary to my parents was profound.
  2. fraught
    marked by distress
    My younger sister, younger brother and I went through a series of stepfathers. My relationship with those men was almost always fraught, and I was always looking for reasons to be away from home.
  3. mettle
    the courage to carry on
    All new employees started by washing dishes and busing tables. If they proved their mettle, they learned to make pizzas, cut and serve them on wooden paddles and take orders.
  4. disperse
    move away from each other
    The family had dispersed, and I felt free to shift my mind-set to college and the future.
  5. idle
    silly or trivial
    What do our kids do today? It’s not an idle question.
  6. priggish
    exaggeratedly or self-righteously proper
    He was still “Dutch”, to use his childhood nickname: a slim, bespectacled youth, serious to the point of priggishness.
  7. litigious
    inclined or showing an inclination to dispute or disagree
    Lexington decided to head to Dixon to ask why. This being an anxious and litigious age, Reagan’s river beach is closed now.
  8. beam
    express with a happy face or smile
    Mr Gorman easily found six teenagers to volunteer as museum guides: “Good kids migrate to good kids,” he beams.
  9. affluent
    having an abundant supply of money or possessions of value
    Nationwide, affluent white teenagers have historically been much more likely to take summer jobs than lower-income, non-white youths.
  10. hypothesis
    a message expressing an opinion based on incomplete evidence
    Why did American teens stop trying to get summer jobs? One typical answer is: They’re just kids, and kids are getting lazier. One can rule out that hypothesis pretty quickly.
  11. indolence
    inactivity resulting from a dislike of work
    A better answer is that teenagers aren’t spending more time on the couch, but rather spending more time in the classroom. Education is to blame, rather than indolence.
  12. sector
    a group that forms part of society or the economy
    Together, these policies have reduced the number of temporary paid jobs for teenagers in the public and private sector.
  13. cachet
    an indication of approved or superior status
    Since the mid-1990s, the share of teenagers who say they wish they were working has fallen by about 50 percent, according to the BLS. That suggests—although it cannot prove—that summer jobs have lost cultural cachet, as the norm has shifted away from working.
  14. vector
    any agent that carries and transmits a disease
    Altogether, summer jobs may be yet another vector through which privilege becomes inherited from one generation to the next.
  15. resurgence
    bringing again into activity and prominence
    It will be interesting to see if the summer job has a resurgence in the new low -unemployment economy.
  16. parable
    a short moral story
    The mysterious disappearance of the summer job for teenagers turns out to be a perfect parable for the flexibility of the workforce.
  17. fallow
    undeveloped but potentially useful
    Many of the jobs that teenagers used to do no longer exist; they’ve gone to older Americans and new immigrants. But rather than use the fallow months to quintuple their video game time, teenagers are taking the time to invest in their educational future.
Created on Fri Nov 19 14:55:36 EST 2021 (updated Mon Jan 03 10:23:41 EST 2022)

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