Analytical reading-Part 7

Couples

By John Updike

T

he house had been built as a one-storey cottage around 1900. In the early twenties it had been jacked up on posts and a new first floor built under it, with a long screened porch that darkened the living room. Then new owners had added a servant’s wing whose level differed by two steps from the main structure. Piet showed Angela the shabby carpentry, the crumbling gypsum wallboard, the corroded iron plumbing, the antique wiring with its brittle rubber insulation, the rattling sashes chewed by animals and rain. A skylight in the main bedroom leaked. The only heat came from a single round register in the living-room floor, above a manually fed coal furnace in an unwalled clay hole. A full cellar would have to be excavated. Solid interior walls and a complete heating system were essential. The roof must be replaced. Gutters, sashes. Ceilings. The kitchen was quaint, useless; servants had run it, summers only, making lobster salads. On the two windward sides the cedar shingles had been warped and whitened and blown away. Forty thousand the asking price, and twelve more immediately, minimum. It was too much to ask him to take on. Standing at the broad slate sink contemplating the winter view of ditch-traversed marsh and the brambled islands of hawthorn and alder and the steel-blue channel beyond and the rim of dunes white as salt and above all the honed edge of ocean, Angela at last agreed.

Lexical analysis:

house

types of houses: cottage, hut, shack, shed, shanty, cabin, chalet, bungalow, country house, manor house, lodge, villa, mansion, palace, castle, detached house, semidetached house, terraced/row house, tenement house, condominium, skyscraper, penthouse, bedsitter, a two-/three-/multistory building, flat/apartment, brownstone

parts of a house: chamber, lounge, parlour, larder, pantry, scullery, attic, loft, garret, cellar, basement, hall, hallway, vestibule, foyer, lobby, porch, verandah, balcony, terrace

jacked up—to jack up—to lift with a jack крик: to jack up a car

shabby—dingy, dilapidated, dog-eared, mangy, paltry, ragged, seedy, tattered, lousy, decrepit

crumbling—to crumble—decay, deteriorate, disintegrate, decompose

plumbing—mute ‘b’

insulation—but in Bulgarian изолация

sashes—a sash—frame of a window or door рамка на прозорец

skylight—a glass-covered opening in a roof to let in light

leaked—to leak—to let some liquid/gas in/out of a crack; leeks—(usually pl.) a vegetable of the onion type праз лук

register—a hot-air register—one controlling the flow of  hot air in a building, heated from a basement fire or furnace

essential—essential to sb/smth; important for sb/to smth, interesting to sb

roof—like motif, belief, handkerchief, chef, chief—do not change the final’f’on forming plural forms

scarf, wharf, hoof—show both patterns for forming their plural forms—scarf→scarfs/scarves, hoof→hoofs/hooves, etc.

gutter—1) an open pipe fixed at the lower edge of a roof to collect rainwater; 2) a channel at the side of the street

run it—to be in charge of: to run a place/a company/one’s life

            phrasal verbs:

to run off with smth—to run away with

to run out of smth—to have finished smth

to run through sb’s fortune—to spend it away

to run up a bill—to make a great bill

            to run smth up in a shop—to find smth

            to run across smth/into sb—to come across/to meet unexpectedly

shingle—a small thin piece of wood or a tile laid in rows to cover a roof or wall шинда, шиндел (дъсчица, използвана вм. керемида)

warped—to warp—to turn or twist out of shape: (Syn.) to distort, to contort, to misshape

whitened—to whiten—варосвам

            some verbs are formed by an adjective plus the postfix –en:

            wide—to widen, broad—to broaden;

            whereas other verbs are formed by a noun plus the postfix –en:

            high—height—to heighten, long—length—to lengthen

forty but four, fourth, fourteen and forty-four

slate—a roof tile, a tile-shaped stone плоча за покрив

contemplating—to contemplate—to behold, to envisage, to meditate, to mull over, to ponder, to reflect on, to ruminate, to speculate, to muse размишлявам върху, размислям, обмислям

ditch—a drainage/sewage channel to carry away water: (Syn.) dyke, furrow, gully, trench, gutter канал, дренаж, ров

marsh: (Syn.) bog, fen, morass, quagmire, mire, swamp, slough [slau] блато, тресавище, мочурище

brambled—(n.) bramble—wild blackberry or any other wild prickly bush of the rose family къпина

hawthorn глог

thorny shrubs: thistle магарешки бодил; blackthorn/sloe трънка; dog rose/briar rose/wild briar шипка

alder елша

            deciduous trees широколистни дървета: birch бреза; poplar топола; willow върба; beech бук; ash ясен; lime липа; sycamore явор; elm бряст

honed—to hone—to sharpen, to whet точа, наточвам