Vocabulary in Exposure

Showing absolutely no pity or relief; here describing a wind so brutal and unrelenting that it feels as though it is deliberately cruel to the soldiers.

To cut or stab as sharply as a knife; Owen uses it to describe the wind slicing into the soldiers' skin and bodies with a piercing, painful force.

A section of a military front line that bulges outward into enemy territory, making the soldiers there exposed to attack from three sides.

Soldiers posted to keep watch and guard a position, especially at night, so they can warn others of any approaching danger.

Covered with a thin layer of ice, or having a glassy, frozen appearance; here suggesting the landscape and the soldiers themselves are hardened and numbed by extreme cold.

Thick, wet, half-frozen mud; in the trenches this referred to the filthy, waterlogged ground that soldiers had to stand and sleep in.

Barbed wire strung across No Man's Land as a defensive barrier to slow enemy advances; soldiers heard it rattling in the wind.

Reluctant or unwilling to do something; here used in the negative — 'not loath' — meaning the soldiers do not resist lying out in the cold because they believe it serves a greater purpose.

Impossible to defeat or destroy; Owen applies it to spring to suggest a natural renewal that is beyond human power to stop, even as the soldiers feel abandoned by it.

Thin, small, and pitifully insufficient; here describing fires that give almost no warmth, emphasising how little comfort remains for the dying soldiers.

Shrinking and withering from cold or dryness; Owen uses it to describe the soldiers' blood drying up and their life force fading away in the freezing temperatures.

The condition of being left unprotected in harsh weather for so long that the body begins to fail; here it names the poem's central killer — not enemy bullets but cold, wind, and frost.