Opposites Word Search

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happy

Happy comes from the old word hap, meaning luck or chance, the same root inside happen, perhaps, and mishap.

angry

Angry began as a feeling of being tight or pinched: its root meant narrow, the same idea behind anguish and anxious.

gigantic

Gigantic comes from the Giants of Greek myth, the Gigantes, who battled the gods and were said to lie buried beneath volcanoes.

delicate

Delicate once emphasized delight and pleasure, before its meaning shifted toward things easily damaged, like fine fabric or fragile glass.

ancient

Cleopatra lived closer to the Moon landing than to the Great Pyramid's construction, stretching the timeline hidden inside ancient Egypt.

distant

France's longest land border is with Brazil, because French Guiana is part of France, bringing the country's frontier into distant South America.

generous

Generous once meant of noble birth; only later did it come to mean giving freely, sharing a root with genus and gene.

cheerful

Cheer once meant the face or expression, so a cheerful person literally showed a bright and welcoming face.

shallow

Florida's Lake Okeechobee covers hundreds of square miles, yet averages only nine feet deep, making a huge lake unexpectedly shallow.

crooked

Pisa's tower survived earthquakes partly because the soft soil that caused its lean also reduced how strongly the structure shook.

slender

A tungsten lightbulb filament can glow hotter than lava yet stay solid, making a slender thread tougher against heat than it looks.

smooth

Shark-like surface textures can reduce drag in water, showing that a rough coating sometimes moves more efficiently than a completely smooth one.

narrow

An octopus can squeeze through a gap wider than its hard beak, fitting a remarkably large body through a surprisingly narrow opening.

silent

Silent movies often came with live musicians and sound effects, so audiences could hear plenty even without recorded dialogue on the film.

gentle

Gentle, gentleman, and genteel all descend from a Latin word for good family, once marking rank before it meant mildness.

In their words