Vocabulary ladder
Frankenstein
Letter 2
1,312 words. Everyday vocabulary (band A) covers 51% of the text; the hard 4% is 53 entries — all of them below.
A 50.6% (280 types) B 10.5% (116 types) C 5.4% (66 entries) D 2.4% (29 entries) E 0.5% (7 entries) N 1.4% (17 entries)
Band B — common reading vocabulary
A sample of 24 of 116 — you will meet these often; they are explained only at the fullest help level.
- sufficiently
- advancement
- confessing
- refined
- wholly
- disclose
- mistress ×2
- regulate
- attachment
- fourteen
- immense
- midst
- voyage · voyages ×2
- sensation · sensations ×2
- unemployed
- feminine
- glowing
- necessity
- affection ×2
- painters
- sustain
- execute
- frost
- fortunate
Band C — recognition checklist
All 66 upper-intermediate words in this chapter. Tick the ones you know; the rest are explained at the fullest help level.
- peculiarly
- dreadfully
- gentleness
- tenderly
- waver
- carelessness
- characteristically
- unexplored
- distaste
- painstaking
- workman
- daydream
- mariner
- madly
- groundwork
- intertwine
- seaman
- schoolboy
- amass
- uneducated
- encompass
- trembling
- ardent
- bitterly
- reassure
- deem
- perseverance
- affectionate
- decidedly
- illiterate
- inclination
- bestow
- conceive
- marvellous
- traverse
- solitude
- endeavour
- imaginative
- alarmed
- disposition
- despise
- obedience
- acquainted
- derive
- endowment
- consolation
- amend
- impatient
- fearful
- courageous
- brutality
- cultivate
- rugged
- cultivation
- circumstance
- astonishing
- depart
- mist
- undertaking
- conception
- pathway
- remarkably
- render
- sailor
- destine
- prejudice
Band D — advanced (29 entries)
- considerateness
- thoughtful care
- self-educated
- taught by oneself
- unallied
- unallied: unconnected
- unsoftened
- unsoftened: not made gentle
- twenty-eight
- twenty-eight
- fosterage
- the nurturing of a child
- prize-money ×2
- prize-money: a share of the value of a captured ship
- well-known
- explained by the text itself
- unvisited
- never visited
- mildness
- gentle mildness
- rashly
- without thinking of the danger
- dearer
- more dear
- assailed
- to attack
- desirous ×2
- wishing
- inexorable
- never to be turned aside
- dauntless ×2
- fearless
- woeful
- full of woe
- sympathise
- sympathised: felt with another
- industrious
- hard-working
- exclaim
- to cry out
- albatross
- a great white sea-bird
- confide
- to trust with a secret
- allusion
- an indirect reference
- detracts
- detracts: takes away
- toils
- dress; ladies' finery
- bosoms
- the breast
- solicited
- a lawyer of family business
- prudence
- careful good sense
- pleasurable
- giving pleasure
Band E — rare & archaic (7 entries)
- suppliant
- one who begs humbly
- kindliness
- gentle kindness
- dejection
- low spirits
- capacious
- roomy; holding much
- entreated
- to beg earnestly
- dross
- the waste in metal; the base part
- embarkation
- going aboard ship
False friends — common words wearing old senses (1)
- interest
- the spectacle that draws a crowd — the old sense here
Names (2)
- saville
- Mrs Margaret Saville, Walton's sister in England, to whom he writes
- Ancient Mariner
- Coleridge's poem of a cursed sailor