Vocabulary ladder
A Tale of Two Cities
Book The First--Recalled to Life, I
1,010 words. Everyday vocabulary (band A) covers 58% of the text; the hard 9% is 73 entries — all of them below.
A 58.0% (244 types) B 9.0% (75 types) C 3.9% (39 entries) D 3.3% (27 entries) E 1.2% (12 entries) N 4.5% (34 entries)
Band B — common reading vocabulary
A sample of 24 of 75 — you will meet these often; they are explained only at the fullest help level.
- despair
- murderer
- entertain · entertained ×2
- thieves
- midst
- ammunition
- sack
- exceeding
- monks
- sixty
- heralded
- revelations
- stir
- theirs
- cautioned
- robberies
- suspicion
- carts
- jaw · jaws ×3
- mob ×2
- magnificent
- majesty
- insisted
- consequence
Band C — recognition checklist
All 39 upper-intermediate words in this chapter. Tick the ones you know; the rest are explained at the fullest help level.
- turnkey
- tradesman
- outhouse
- hangman
- sixpence
- smoothness
- sufferer
- tiller
- foolishness
- contraband
- kneel
- brood
- trident
- boasting
- illustrious
- earthly
- pamphlet
- deficient
- scarcely
- originality
- swallowing
- rustic
- wretched
- robber
- miscellaneous
- burglary
- sublime
- loaf
- myriad
- tread
- poultry
- procession
- silently
- attain
- humane
- concede
- noisy
- chronicle
- occurrence
Band D — advanced (27 entries)
- drawing-rooms
- rooms for receiving company
- five-and-twentieth
- explained by the text itself
- seventy-five ×3
- explained by the text itself
- housebreaker
- one who breaks into houses
- potentate
- a ruler with great power
- unceasingly
- without stopping
- supernaturally
- beyond nature's course
- waylaid
- waylaid: lay in wait for
- unheeded
- unnoticed
- highwayman ×2
- a mounted robber of the roads
- incredulity
- refusal to believe
- trod
- worn down by treading
- retinue
- a great person's train of followers
- traitorous
- false to one's country
- requisition
- a demand
- mire
- deep sinking bog
- superlative
- of the highest degree
- gaols
- prison
- snipped
- a small cut with scissors
- musketeers ×3
- a foot soldier armed with a musket
- roosted
- roosted: perched
- muffled
- wrapped so as to dull sound
- atrocious
- terrible
- movable
- able to be moved
- snuffed
- powdered tobacco for the nose
- epoch ×2
- a turning point; a new age
- prophetic
- foretelling what will come
Band E — rare & archaic (12 entries)
- atheistical
- holding that there is no god
- bespattered
- splashed with mud
- fellow-tradesman
- another man of the same trade
- tumbrils
- an open cart that carried the condemned to the blade
- pilferer
- one who steals small things
- despoiled
- to plunder; rob
- upholsterers
- a man who covers furniture with padding and cloth
- blunderbusses
- a short gun with a wide mouth
- environed
- the surrounding country
- forasmuch
- seeing that
- gallantly
- bravely and handsomely
- pincers
- pincers: a gripping tool
False friends — common words wearing old senses (1)
- state
- ceremony; pomp — the old sense here
Names (5)
- cock-lane ×2
- a London street where a ghost was said to knock
- southcott
- a woman who claimed to prophesy in Dickens's day
- turnham
- Turnham Green, a place west of London
- newgate
- the chief prison of London
- giles
- an English man's name