The Thirty-Nine Steps (38 page)

kenned
VERB
kenned means knew
though little kenned the lamplighter that he had any company but Christmas!
(
A Christmas Carol
by Charles Dickens)

kennel
NOUN
kennel means gutter, which is the edge of a road next to the pavement, where rain
water collects and flows away
being jostled himself into the kennel
(
Gulliver’s Travels
by Jonathan Swift)

knock-knee
ADJ
knock-knee means slanted, at an angle.
LOT 1 was marked in whitewashed knock-knee letters on the brewhouse
(
Great Expectations
by Charles Dickens)

ladylike
ADJ
to be ladylike is to behave in a polite, dignified and graceful way
No, winking isn’t ladylike
(
Little Women
by Louisa May Alcott)

lapse
NOUN
flow
Stealing with silent lapse to join the brook
(
The Prelude
by William Wordsworth)

larry
NOUN
larry is an old word which means commotion or noisy celebration
That was all a part of the larry!
(
Tess of the D’Urbervilles
by Thomas Hardy)

laths
NOUN
laths are strips of wood
The panels shrunk, the windows cracked; fragments of plaster fell out of the ceiling,
and the naked laths were shown instead
(
A Christmas Carol
by Charles Dickens)

leer
NOUN
a leer is an unpleasant smile
with a kind of leer
(
Treasure Island
by Robert Louis Stevenson)

lenitives
NOUN
these are different kinds of drugs or medicines: lenitives and palliatives were pain
relievers; aperitives were laxatives; abstersives caused vomiting; corrosives destroyed
human tissue; restringents caused constipation; cephalalgics stopped headaches; icterics
were used as medicine for jaundice; apophlegmatics were cough medicine, and acoustics
were cures for the loss of hearing
lenitives, aperitives, abstersives, corrosives, restringents, palliatives, laxatives,
cephalalgics, icterics, apophlegmatics, acoustics
(
Gulliver’s Travels
by Jonathan Swift)

lest
CONJ
in case. If you do something lest something (usually) unpleasant happens you do it
to try to prevent it happening
She went in without knocking, and hurried upstairs, in great fear lest she should
meet the real Mary Ann
(
Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland
by Lewis Carroll)

levee
NOUN
a levee is an old term for a meeting held in the morning, shortly after the person
holding the meeting has got out of bed
I used to attend the King’s levee once or twice a week
(
Gulliver’s Travels
by Jonathan Swift)

life-preserver
NOUN
a club which had lead inside it to make it heavier and therefore more dangerous
and with no more suspicious articles displayed to view than two or three heavy bludgeons
which stood in a corner, and a ‘life-preserver’ that hung over the chimney-piece
. (
Oliver Twist
by Charles Dickens)