Vocabulary Strategies

Apply any and all of the following strategies to assist with your acquisition of any vocabulary word.

Utilize my dictionaries and thesauruses while you’re in class. At home, go to www.dictionary.com or www.ldoceonline.com to utilize online data about words.

pandemonium

Definition (Well yeah we should start there!) – pandemonium means a wild uproar or unrestrained disorder; tumult or chaos, a place or scene of riotous uproar or utter chaos. Try to put the definition in your own words (paraphrase it) and if the dictionary gives you a word for a definition that you don’t understand (like bedlam), then you need to look that word up until you obtain a definition you can make sense of.

Part of speech (So that you know how the writer/speaker uses the word and how it relates to other words, such noun, verb, adverb, adjective, et) – noun.

Synonyms (So that you can relate the word to other words you already know) – turmoil, commotion, maelstrom, riot, madhouse, bedlam, craziness

AndAntonyms (So that you can think of the word in

opposition to words that you already know) – peace, quiet, calm, tranquility

Note: For Juniors – you must copy down at least 2 synonyms or 2 antonyms or 1 of each to get full credit for this strategy.

Identify someone you know or a celebrity as having this trait (adjective), or a someone/something that does this or how they do it (verb/adverb), or a comparative place that is like this (noun). The riots that occurred in Los Angeles in 1992 created a scene of pandemonium.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bkn0P6oLoj4

Look at how a writer uses a word by copying down the sentence it appears in from a text. In “The Secret Life of Walter Mitty” by James Thurber, in the midst of a wild courtroom scene that Mitty imagines, the narrator states, “Pandemonium broke loose in the courtroom. A woman’s scream rose above the bedlam and suddenly a lovely, dark-haired girl was in Walter Mitty’s arms.”

Make up your own sentence using the word – “After the teacher left the students alone in the classroom, an atmosphere of pandemonium ensued.”

Pan is the Greek prefix meaning “all.” The suffix “ium” is placed on nouns to denote the

associated meaning of the rest of the word The root of the word, “demon” means an evil

spirit. http

://www.ricoholmes.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/04/GI_DemonHead1.jpg

So the word means a place where all demons reside, which would be a wild, lawless, chaotic realm.

Pandemonium from Paradise Lost

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/3/38/Pandemonium.jpg

Translate It

pandemonio

Pop Culture/Media

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XvrkV7J_tyw

Illustrate It