Home Word List
Curandera Out
of the Dump pg. No page number “The Twins”
Sentence:
The curandera answered, “It’s because your husband beats your older son.”
Meaning: A
woman who can cure the evil eye.
Superfluous The Orphan Trains pg. 6
Sentence: In
19th century America there were other, less drastic ways of solving the problem
of superfluous children.
Meaning:
overflow, more than is needed, unnecessary
Vendue The Orphan Trains pg. 6
Sentence: In
a vendue the town father auctioned off impoverished families.
Meaning: the
town fathers auctioned off Families. The
lowest bidder got the family and the town gave the bidder the sum of money he’d
named. The money was used to clothe and feed
the family for one year. The family gave back
slave labor.
Deprecated The Orphan Trains pg. 55
Sentence:
One Catholic leader declared, the system which is flooding our western country with
undisciplined, vicious children is much to be deprecated.
Meaning: To
feel disapproval of and to plead against.
Bosh The Orphan Trains pg. 58
Sentence: As
to the stories of ill treatment of our children, whether in the West or in the South, we
hold them to be bosh.
Meaning: A
Turkish word for empty.
Austere The Orphan Trains pg. 59
Sentence: As
one child care association reported many years later, the orphanages of the time were
“huge fortresses, regimented and impersonal, where orphans’ heads were shaved
for fear of ringworm, life was austere and discipline was stern.”
Meaning:
Having a severe or stern look or manner.
Street Arabs The Orphan Trains pg. 10
Sentence:
The vagrant children – street Arabs – they were called then, slept where they
could: in doorways, and cellars, under stairways, in outhouses (privies), on hay barges,
and in discarded cardboard boxes.
Meaning:
Homeless children.
Immigrants The Orphan Trains pg. 9
Sentence:
New York was in a period of frenzied growth, with immigrants from Europe pouring in at the
rate of 1,000 a day.
Meaning: A
person who has come to a new country.
Asylums The Orphan Trains pg. 9
Sentence:
But, before long, even the new orphan asylums weren’t enough to take care of the
growing hordes of destitute children in cities like New York.
Meaning: A
place where one is safe and secure.
Tenements The Orphan Trains pg. 12
Sentence:
Most of the buildings in the jam-packed city slums were tenements.
Meaning: A
building divided into tenements, or apartments. An apartment that is in a slum.
Foundling The Orphan Trains pg. 6
Sentence:
Whatever their condition or wherever they were found, abandoned babies were known as
foundlings.
Meaning:
Abandoned babies.
Little Waifs The Orphan Trains pg. 14
Sentence:
But there was hope, he believed, for the “neglected youth” and “little
waifs” of society who, through not fault of their own, were cast out on the currents
of a large city.”
Meaning:
Anything found by chance that is without an owner.
Infanticide: The Orphan Trains pg. 36
Sentence:
One of her main objects in establishing the home for unwanted babies was to prevent
infanticide – a crime that occurred almost every day in New York.
Meaning: The
murder of a baby.