Chapter 5

Vocabulary

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Then suddenly, her toes find the water. Below the low thrum of a high-up airplane she hears it: a faint lapping against her ankles, soft as the sound of her own tongue in her mouth.

lap: the act or sound of lapping (n); when water laps against the shore or the side of a boat, it touches it gently and makes a soft sound (v).

仿句：He can hear nothing but the lapping of the waves.

这个词非常有趣，最初对它的认识只停留在名词’大腿‘和’跑道的一圈‘，精读时才发现作为动词也非常形象，lap作为动词可以表示‘波浪或水轻拍’和‘动物舔食’。在文中突然看到lapping，第一反应是lap的动词ing形式，仔细分析了句子之后，这些提示词‘hear, faint, as the sound'表明lapping在这里指的是一种微弱的声响。顺便重新学习了faint这个词除了最常见的’头晕‘之意，还可以表示‘微弱’和‘勉强’。

When he came out of the bathroom, a faint scratching noise led him to the bottom of the stairs, where Marilyn was instaling the chain on the front door.

faint: a faint sound, color, mark, feeling, or quality has very little strength or intensity; a faint attempt at something is one that is made without proper effort and with little enthusiasm.

仿句：Through panes of dusk, he saw the shadow of women passing in the glow of faint candle light.

Five faces swivel toward Nath, and his cheeks go hot, 'Me?'

swivel: if something swivels or you swivel it, it turns around a central point so that it is facing in a different direction.

仿句：He likes to reply to emails in his comfortable swivel chair.

Sentence

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He suddenly felt grimy, as if he were caked with mud. He turned the shower on hot, so hot he couldn't stand still beneath it and had to keep turning, like something on a spit, offering the steaming spray a new patch of flesh again and again. 

女儿葬礼的第二天，James回想起当天夜里的所作所为，觉得自己肮脏无比。他想用滚烫的水洗掉自己的耻辱，羞愧，也许还有沮丧，无力和绝望。类似的画面多次出现在电影镜头里，不过人物通常是女性。James这一举动暴露出了他内心深处的软弱，一种虽长在美国却在中式家庭严厉教育下形成的低自尊，一种游离于双重文化之间却得不到任何一方认可的自我否定。