Types of Context Clues
An explanation of the word’s meaning before or after the word appears, usually set off by a comma
What is definition?
"How, then, am I mad?"
What is interrogative?
The type of writing Poe did for a local newspaper/magazine as a full-time job before the company went bankrupt.
What is criticism? (Also accept critiques/critic)
What is a mattress?
One or more of this type may be listed in a text that demonstrates the meaning of a word.
What is example?
"So you see he would have been a very profound old man, indeed, to suspect that every night, just at twelve, I looked in upon him while he slept."
What is declarative?
The job Poe was hired to do right before he died.
What is editing a collection of poems for a poetess?
The number of times the old man shrieks when attacked by the narrator.
Determining a word’s meaning based on how it is like something else in the text
"The old man’s terror must have been extreme!"
What is exclamatory?
The year Edgar Allan Poe died.
What is 1849?
The way the narrator disposed of the body.
What is dismembering and hiding under the floorboards?
Determining a word’s meaning based on how it is unlike something else in the text
What is contrast?
"Yet the sound increased—and what could I do? "
What is interrogative?
The disease that killed Edgar Allan Poe's wife.
What is Tuberculosis?
The time when the police come to check about the noise the old man made.
What is 4:00 AM?
The use of the word as the result of something else that happens in the text.
What is cause-and-effect?
"dissemble no more" and "tear up the planks," as examples
What are imperative sentences?
The title of his first book.
What is "Tamerlane and Other Poems"?
The excuse the narrator gives for the shrieking sound the old man made.
What is a shriek the narrator made due to a dream?