Coming to a new field of study, institution, or activity for the first time, a participant is often baffled by the many unfamiliar concepts and terms. In college, introductory courses in all the academic disciplines often seem like courses in definitions of new terms. In the same way, newcomers to a sport like sailing or rock climbing often need to learn a great deal of specialized terminology. Writers of textbooks and manuals that cover such topics rely on brief sentence definitions to explain terms and concepts. The most obvious strategies simply announce a definition:
Definition
A karyotype is a graphic representation of a set of chromosomes.
Then, within the first week, the cells begin to differentiate—to specialize in structure and function.
Posthypnotic suggestions (suggestions to be carried out after the hypnosis session has ended) have helped alleviate headaches, asthma, warts, and stress-related skin disorders.
Other, less direct strategies for integrating definitions are signaled by subordinate clauses:
During the oral stage, which lasts throughout the first 18 months, the infant’s sensual pleasures focus on sucking, biting, and chewing.
Hemophilia is called the bleeder’s disease because the affected person’s blood does not clot.
Another common defining strategy is to use an appositive— a brief, inserted word or phrase that presents either the definition or the word to be defined:
Taxonomy, the science of classifying groups (taxa) of organisms in formal groups, is hierarchical.
The actual exchange of gases takes place in small air sacs, the alveoli, which are clustered in branches like grapes around the ends of the smallest bronchioles.
Look up any three of the following words or phrases in a dictionary. Define each one in a sentence. Try to use a different sentence pattern for each of your definitions.
| bull market | ecumenism | samba |
| carcinogen | edema | seasonal affective disorder |
| caricature | harangue | sonnet |
| clinometer | hyperhidrosis | testosterone |
| ectomrph | nemonic | zero-based budgeting |
Turn to the essay in Chapter 8 entitled “What College Rankings Really Tell Us” by Malcolm Gladwell (pp. 368–71) and analyze the sentence definition in paragraph 2. Notice the strategy Gladwell relies on. Keeping in mind that Gladwell’s purpose is to persuade readers to accept his criticism of the U.S. News staff’s college rankings, how helpful do you find this sentence definition?