Vocabulary Word of the Day for Shiloh

grovel - to creep face down

Page 4 - Dog goes down on his stomach, groveling about in the grass.

abandoned - deserted, empty, no one's there

Page 14 - Dad's crossing the bridge by the old abandoned gristmill, turning at the boarded-up school, and for the first time I can feel Shiloh's body begin to shake.            

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sickle - tool with crescent-shaped blade for cutting grass and weeds

Page 24 - He's got a big old sickle; is cutting weeds along his side of the road.

feeble - frail, puny, sickly, weak

Page 29 - It isn't that we're rock-poor; trouble is that Grandma Preston's got real feeble, and she's being cared for by Dad's sister over in Clarksburg.

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jowls - cheeks, jaws

commence - to begin, to start, initiate

Page 41 - The only sound you can hear is the swishing of Shiloh's tail, hitting the fence, the soft pad of his paws as he leaps up in the air in sheer, pure happiness; the sloppy slap of his jowls together as he gobbles down the supper I've brought him and then he commences to slobber love all over me as well.

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frankfurter - hot dog

Page 62 - I give him all the change I got, and he lets me have a big hunk of cheese, moldy on one side, a carton of sour cream, and a half a package of frankfurters that someone opened and bought five of.

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suspicions - The act of suspecting something, especially something wrong, on little evidence or without proof; notion, idea, guess

Page 73 - "Well, I had my suspicions before, but it was the squash that did it."

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antibiotics - infection-fighting drugs

Page 95 - But I got him sewn back up and full of antibiotics.

turpentine - a solvent derived from the sap of pine trees and used as a paint thinner and a cleaning fluid

Page 99 - Takes a little dab of turpentine and rubs it on the tick's rear end, and the tick backs out of Shiloh's skin mighty quick.

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property - something owned; a possession.

Page 110 - Folks ain't that fond of Judd, and most of 'em likes my dad, but when it comes to taking a man's property, I figure they'll side with Judd.

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omission - something neglected or left undone

Page 123 - If I tell Ma and Dad everything except about the deer, that's lying by omission.

jubilation - happiness, delight, joyfulness

Page 125 - "Heeeow!" I go again, out of joy and jubilation, the way they do in church.

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