Vocabulary ladder
The War of the Worlds
Book ONE, I
2,224 words. Everyday vocabulary (band A) covers 60% of the text; the hard 4% is 76 entries — all of them below.
A 59.8% (397 types) B 8.6% (141 types) C 5.9% (110 entries) D 1.9% (41 entries) E 0.6% (13 entries) N 1.9% (22 entries)
Band B — common reading vocabulary
A sample of 24 of 141 — you will meet these often; they are explained only at the fullest help level.
- twentieth
- assurance
- glimpses
- inferior ×3
- interpret
- melody
- drifting
- missionary
- creeping · creeps ×2
- steadily
- dismiss
- obscured
- utter
- abundance
- mortal
- hypothesis
- inclined
- glow
- necessity
- observers ×2
- outline
- tenth
- velocity
- descent
Band C — recognition checklist
All 110 upper-intermediate words in this chapter. Tick the ones you know; the rest are explained at the fullest help level.
- unsympathetic
- singularly
- shadowed
- siphon
- silvery
- faintly
- streamer
- keenly
- blackness
- starlight
- stardust
- clockwork
- frosty
- meteorite
- wag
- eloquent
- equatorial
- feeble
- calamity
- envious
- squirt
- vigil
- brighten
- bison
- harshly
- lowly
- serene
- transverse
- unexplained
- improbable
- overtake
- earthly
- fro
- perish
- inhabit
- molten
- scarcely
- temperate
- vibrate
- likeness
- flatten
- soften
- civilisation
- colossal
- midday
- transient
- nearer
- reddish
- revolve
- populous
- chiefly
- rumble
- swarm
- audible
- ticking
- apostle
- slit
- terrestrial
- astronomical
- exhaustion
- intellect
- illuminated
- microscope
- multiply
- infinitely
- twelfth
- eruption
- harden
- distinctly
- vulgar
- swiftly
- cloudy
- puff
- superficial
- brightness
- immensely
- periodically
- crimson
- evidently
- disturbance
- lantern
- enlarge
- violently
- narrowly
- ruthless
- vacancy
- peculiar
- blaze
- inconvenience
- neighbour
- observatory
- volcanic
- presently
- vanish
- shrink
- scrutiny
- thirsty
- vain
- vanity
- accelerate
- telescope
- nineteenth
- stripe
- volcano
- vegetation
- depart
- faint
- fertility
- probable
- projection
Band D — advanced (41 entries)
- by-the-bye
- by the way
- navy-crowded
- crowded with warships
- nineteenth-century
- of the eighteen hundreds
- present-day
- of the present time
- profounder
- deeper
- snowcaps
- snowcaps: caps of snow at a planet's poles
- manlike
- like a man
- earthward
- toward the earth
- twenty-four
- twenty-four
- sunward ×2
- toward the sun
- well-known
- explained by the text itself
- remoter
- more distant
- inundate
- to flood
- unsuspected
- not suspected
- clearness
- clarity
- unerring
- without missing; surely
- unanimity
- agreement of all
- lemurs
- lemurs: monkey-like creatures of Madagascar
- clumsily
- awkwardly
- jubilant
- full of triumphant joy
- recede
- to draw back
- attenuated
- made thin
- scoffed
- scoffed: mocked
- telescopic
- seen only by telescope
- disillusionment
- loss of pleasant belief
- shunting
- shunting: moving railway cars between tracks
- quivered
- to tremble finely
- dodo
- the extinct flightless bird
- unfathomable
- too deep to fathom
- oblong
- longer than wide
- gleam
- a soft flash of light
- fluctuating ×2
- to keep changing back and forth
- incandescent
- glowing white-hot
- incessant
- never stopping
- complacency
- smug satisfaction
- exclaimed
- to cry out
- subtlety
- fine, delicate thinking
- extermination
- wiping out entirely
- periodical
- happening at regular intervals; a magazine
- tranquil
- calm and untroubled
- astronomer
- one who studies the stars
Band E — rare & archaic (13 entries)
- well-nigh
- nearly
- zenithward
- toward the top of the sky
- seriocomic
- half serious, half comic
- excursionists
- excursionists: holiday trippers
- infusoria
- the tiniest creatures of a water drop
- nebular
- of the cloud theory of the world's birth
- spectroscope
- the instrument that splits light to read its makeup
- palpitating
- palpitating: quivering rapidly
- profundity
- deepness of thought
- scrutinise · scrutinised ×2
- to examine closely
- immensity
- vast, endless size
- chronometer
- an exact timekeeper
- wisps
- thin twists of straw or hair
False friends — common words wearing old senses (4)
- condition
- social rank — the old sense here
- mortal
- human — the old sense here
- peculiar
- its own; particular — the old sense here
- use
- habit; custom — the old sense here
Names (6)
- perrotin
- an astronomer at Nice
- schiaparelli
- the Italian astronomer who mapped Mars
- lavelle
- the observer of Java who saw the first outbreak on Mars
- martians ×5
- the invaders from the planet Mars
- ogilvy ×5
- the astronomer of Ottershaw, first at the pit
- markham
- a friend of the narrator, keen on a news photograph