Contextual Redefinition Chart
Use the steps below when filling out your chart:
- In addition to the 15 words listed below, choose 10 additional words from sections 3 and 4 of the textthat seem important (critical to understanding) but are unknown to you.
- Copy and paste the sentence(s) where you found the word. This is the context.
- From the use of the word in the sentence (in context) what does the meaning seem to be? (Ask yourself the four questions from earlier!)
- Check your answers by looking up the word in the dictionary.
| Identify unknown word: | What is the context? | Meaning seems to be… | Dictionary definition is… |
| treachery | “After the siege and the assault has ceased at Troy, the city had been destroyed and burned to brands and ashes, the warrior who wrought there the trains of treason was tried for his treachery…” | ||
| mirth | “The King lay royally at Camelot at Christmas tide with many fine lords, the best of men, all the rich brethren of the Round Table, with right rich revel and careless mirth.” | ||
| comelier | “Truly no man could say that he ever beheld a comelier lady than she, with her dancing gray eyes.” | ||
| trifles | “Thus the great King stands waiting before the high table, talking of trifles full courteously.” | ||
| vesture | “And all his vesture verily was clean verdure, both the bars of his belt and the other beauteous stones that were set in fine array about himself and his saddle, worked on silk.” | ||
| dais | “This hero turns him in and enters the hall, riding straight to the high dais, fearless of mischief.” | ||
| wight | “If any warrior be wight enough to try what I propose, let him leap lightly to me and take this weapon…” | ||
| recreant | “And so come, or so it behooves thee to be called recreant.” | ||
| boon | “Give me now this gisarm, for God’s sake, and I will grant thy boon that thou has bidden.” | ||
| villainy | “Gawain was known for good and as refined gold, devoid of every villainy, adorned with virtues.” | ||
| warred | “Sometimes he warred with serpents, and with wolves also, sometimes with savages that dwelt in the cliffs” | ||
| penance | “Do this penance now, and soon things will be better!” | ||
| arduous | “There was meat, there was mirth, there was much joy, that it were arduous for me to tell thereof, though to note it I took pains belike.” | ||
| behooves | “Then laughing quoth the Lord, “Now it behooves thee to stay; for I shall direct you to that spot by the time’s end-“ | ||
| sustenance | “Since ye have traveled from afar,” quoth the warrior, “and then have sat late with me, ye are not well nourished, I know, either with sustenance or with sleep.” |
