Let the document select the sense
Read for meaning first. Select a highlighted word if you want a closer look.
A regal crest on the bridgekeeper's old service box displayed a crown and motto granted by the royal household of the invented island. Sobriety on duty was an explicit condition in the fictional harbor manual, meaning that crew members were to be free from intoxication. The keeper's diary used rarefied to describe the thin, less dense air at a high mountain station she once visited. The curator placed a short explanation beside each object, allowing visitors to distinguish royal association, a state concerning intoxication, and a physical description of air.
The box's regal emblem referred to its royal association rather than proving that the keeper herself held sovereign authority. Sobriety in the manual concerned freedom from intoxication, although the same noun can also describe seriousness or restraint in another context. The diary's rarefied air used the less-dense physical sense, not a claim that the mountain station belonged to an exclusive social world. By returning to the surrounding words, visitors could select the intended sense without assuming that the first meaning they remembered would fit every item in the display.
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Look away from the passage. Can you explain each focus word in your own words?
Original fictional passages for vocabulary practice.