儒琴英语文学词汇咀嚼《死亡约定》(The Pact )一书的用词。《死亡约定》 是美国当代畅销书作家朱迪·皮考特（Jodi Picoult）在1998年出版的小说。朱迪·皮考特已经出版了26部小说和短篇小说。她的书在全世界大约印刷了4000万册，被翻译成34种语言。
英语文学词汇 Literature Terms
选词 1： blurt 脱口而出，不假思索地说（v）
They were linked by the one thing they had in common—Augusta Harte—but Gus had not yet arrived. So they sat in the companionable awkwardness caused by knowing extremely private things about each other that had never been directly confided, but rather blurted by Gus Harte to her husband in bed or to Melanie over a cup of coffee. James cleared his throat and flipped the chopsticks around his fingers with dexterity. “What do you think?” he asked, smiling at Melanie. “Should I give it all up? Become a drummer?”
选词 2： put someone on the spot 陷入尴尬境地
Melanie flushed, as she always did when she was put on the spot. After years of sitting with a reference desk wrapped around her waist like a hoop skirt, concrete answers came easily to her; nonchalance (若无其事) didn’t. If James had asked, “What is the current population of Addis Ababa?” or “Can you tell me the actual chemicals in a photographic fixing bath?” she’d never have blushed, because the answers would never have offended him. But this drummer question? What exactly was he looking for?
选词 3： flippant /ˈflɪp.ənt/ 轻率的, 油嘴滑舌的 (adj)
“You’d hate it,” Melanie said, trying to sound flippant. “You’d have to grow your hair long and get a nipple ring or something like that.” “
Do I want to know why you’re talking about nipple rings?” Michael Gold said, approaching the table. He leaned down and touched his wife’s shoulder, which passed for an embrace after so many years of marriage.
选词 4： Don’t get your hopes up 不要过分期待 (idiom)
“Don’t get your hopes up,” Melanie said. “James wants one, not me.”
Michael laughed. “I think that’s automatic grounds for losing your board certification.”
“Why?” James frowned. “Remember that Nobel laureate we met on the cruise to Alaska last summer? He had a hoop through his eyebrow.”
“Exactly,” Michael said. “You don’t have to have board certification to create a poem entirely out of curse words.” He shook out his napkin and settled it in his lap.
选词 5： sleepover （年轻人的）留宿聚会 (n)
James checked his watch. He lived by it; Gus didn’t wear one at all. It drove him crazy. “I think she was taking Kate to a friend’s for a sleepover.”
“Did you order yet?” Michael asked. “Gus orders,” James said, an excuse. Gus was usually there first, and as in all other things, Gus was the one who kept the meal running smoothly.
选词 6：detention 留堂(处罚学生)
“Yeah. With a Mr. J. Foxhill. He turned out to be a third-former with a lot of extra cash who needed someone to sit in detention for him by proxy.”
James laughed. “That’s ingenuity.”
选词 7：sumptuous /ˈsʌmp.tʃu.əs/ 奢侈的 (adj)
“I like that,” Gus said. “Virtual family. There ought to be a statute . . . you know, like common-law marriage. If you live in each other’s pockets long enough, you’re related.” She swallowed the last of her pancake and stood up. “Well,” she said. “That was a sumptuous and relaxing dinner.”
选词 8: fortune cookies 签语饼
You can’t go yet,” Melanie said, turning to ask a busboy for fortune cookies. When the man returned, she stuffed a few in Gus’s pockets. “Here. The box office doesn’t offer take-out.”
Michael picked up a cookie and cracked it. “‘A gift of love is not one to be taken lightly,’” he read aloud.
选词 9: ruefully /ˈro͞ofəlē/ 悲伤地、遗憾地 (以幽默的方式)
“Check the floor, Gus. You must have dropped it. Who ever heard of a fortune cookie without a fortune?” Melanie said. But it was not on the floor, or beneath a plate, or caught in the folds of Gus’s coat. She shook her head ruefully and lifted her teacup. “Here’s to my future,” she said. She drained the tea, and then, in a hurry, she left.
选词 10: bedroom community 近郊住宅区
BAINBRIDGE, NEW HAMPSHIRE, was a bedroom community populated mostly with professors from Dartmouth College and doctors from the local hospital. It was close enough to the university to be considered attractive real estate, and far enough away to be deemed “country.” Interspersed between old holdout dairy farms were narrow roads that branched off into the five-acre parcels of land that had settled the town in the late seventies. And Wood Hollow Road, where the Golds and the Hartes lived, was one of them.