The Prisoner of Zenda (33 page)

crooked sixpence
PHRASE
it was considered unlucky to have a bent sixpence
You've got the beauty, you see, and I've got the luck, so you must keep me by you for your crooked sixpence
(
Silas Marner
by George Eliot)

croquet
NOUN
croquet is a traditional English summer game in which players try to hit wooden balls through hoops
and once she remembered trying to box her own ears for having cheated herself in a game of croquet
(
Alice's Adventures in Wonderland
by Lewis Carroll)

cross
PREP
across
The two great streets, which run cross and divide it into four quarters (
Gulliver's Travels
by Jonathan Swift)

culpable
ADJ
if you are culpable for something it means you are to blame
deep are the sorrows that spring from false ideas for which no man is culpable.
(
Silas Marner
by George Eliot)

cultured
ADJ
cultivated
Nor less when spring had warmed the cultured Vale
(
The Prelude
by William Wordsworth)

cupidity
NOUN
cupidity is greed
These people hated me with the hatred of cupidity and
disappointment.
(
Great Expectations
by Charles Dickens)

curricle
NOUN
an open two-wheeled carriage with one seat for the driver and space for a single passenger
and they saw a lady and a gentleman in a curricle
(
Pride and Prejudice
by Jane Austen)

cynosure
NOUN
a cynosure is something that strongly attracts attention or admiration
Then
I thought of Eliza and Georgiana;
I beheld one the cynosure of a
ballroom, the other the inmate of a convent cell
(
Jane Eyre
by Charlotte Brontë)

dalliance
NOUN
someone's dalliance with something is a brief involvement with it
nor sporting in the dalliance of love
(
Doctor Faustus Chorus
by Christopher Marlowe)

darkling
ADV
darkling is an archaic way of saying in the dark
Darkling I listen
(
Ode on a Nightingale
by John Keats)

delf-case
NOUN
a sideboard for holding dishes and crockery
at the pewter dishes and delf-case
(
Wuthering Heights
by Emily Brontë)

determined
VERB
here determined means ended
and be out of vogue when that was determined
(
Gulliver's Travels
by Jonathan Swift)
VERB
determined can mean to have been learned or found especially by investigation or experience
All the sensitive feelings it wounded so cruelly, all the shame and misery it kept alive within my breast, became more poignant as I thought of this; and I determined that the life was
unendurable
(
David Copperfield
by Charles Dickens)