October 21, 2005
What Does 'Vocabulary' Mean?
My student's question caught me off guard: "What's 'pessimistic'?" She smiled meekly and added, "I'm sorry, but I don't know what it means."
She was puzzling over a multiple-choice question about Abraham Lincoln's philosophy of life, and "pessimistic" was one of the choices. I said: "Well, you know the expression about the glass of water being half-full or half-empty? A pessimistic person sees it as half-empty. An optimist sees it as half-full."
She nodded, thanked me, and
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