<p>Today’s homework: make a story (very short paragraph) including the words:</p>
<p>“wainscoting”
“passerine”
“brilliantine”
“hymenopterous”</p>
<p>Brillantine? Wassat? No one uses the stuff anymore!
I know what wainscoting is and could write a story about it (read decorating magazines). I can guess at 'hymenopterous" using the remnants of my Greek, but passerine, although French sounding, does not ring a bell.</p>
<p>Who concocts these word lists?</p>
<p>The hymenopterous insect landed on his head and the brilliantine on his hair coated it’s wings so when it flew away it fell and stuck to the wainscoting. Then a passerine flew in through the open door, ate the trapped insect, and choked to death on the brilliantine.</p>
<p>Hint: it is better if you don’t know what the words mean, and don’t bother to find out.</p>
<p>Well I knew what 2 of them meant already. Hmm.</p>
<p>Wainscoting to a hymenopterous Ivy league college after passerine his SAT with brilliantine scores.</p>
<p>Swimcatsmom: Paragraph 1: Brilliant. Just drop the extraneous apostrophe and the paragraph is ready to go! Sentence 2: the one I suspect a lot of students would want to write. ROTFL!</p>
<p>Can’t believe I put that apostrophe there!</p>
<p>So what is this homework from?</p>
<p>So lovely is the passerine with the lavender wainscoting, the bells all chime brilliantine and hymenopterous when she passes.</p>
<p>Have no idea what passerine and hymenopterous mean. Could you tell?</p>
<p>'Twas brilliantine,
and the slithy passerine
did gyre and gimble
in the wainscoting…</p>
<p>“Beware the Hymenopterous, my son!”</p>
<p>My 2nd grader’s vocab words one week included sultan, gorgeous and zodiac. I just about had a coronary when she had to look up the definitions and use them in sentences. I was so tempted to “help” her write a sentence about the zodiac killer but then I’d have to explain who this person was.</p>
<p>“wainscoting”
“passerine”
“brilliantine”
“hymenopterous”</p>
<p>His scarlet crown shining like brilliantine, the passerine fluffed his fine feathers and swooped down on the hymenopterous creature invading his territory on the porch wainscoting. Lunch!</p>
<p>The brilliantine stain on the wainscoting did not faze the passerine. As the bee flew by, it perched there and ate the hymenopterous insect, so fast the passing wolverine could not see if the bird was stung.</p>
<p>(Do I get extra credit for the “wolverine”?)</p>
<p>Only if you went to Michigan.</p>
<p>Her hymenopterous wings shone like brilliantine on the moonlight flooded wainscoting, as she danced to the passerine song of the nightingale.</p>
<p>OK! Sorry, to clarify, this was not a real homework assignment! It is against CC policy to solicit homework help.</p>
<p>My friend from high school (of several decades ago) concocted the list as a spoof on what we had to do in those days. </p>
<p>My attempt at an answer?</p>
<p>“He was dark. The night was stormy. He adjusted his wainscoting, appreciating again the value of fine tailoring. He pushed through the milling crowd, ignoring their noise, their sharp elbows and umbrellas. Brilliantine were the thoughts passerine through his mind. Lyrics of a powerful new song, an ode to the late Pontiff Jean Paul Deux, took shape in his mind. Suddenly a balloon, stretched hymenopterously overhead, burst, showering him with cold air and bringing him abruptly back to earth.”</p>
<p>I’ll passerine on this one.</p>
<p>Which reminds me of a story my DH has told many times. Back in his high school days, they had lists of vocab to use in a sentence. In attempting to prove that the teacher didn’t actually read the sentences, his friend wrote the following-“The duck made a charlatan.”</p>
<p>He got the paper back with a check mark next to each sentence. ;)</p>