What should a critical thinker do when the meaning of a word is not clear?

look the word in dictionary,

look at familiar latin or greek roots in the word to get an idea of its meaning and  

use the word in sentence to know what the word must mean.

hope this helped

and ur welcm

his tongue, i believe, was bloody and hanging out of his mouth.

he looked as if he were hungry.

he has several wolf-like qualities; a gray coat, sharp claws and yellow fangs.

those eyes made me feel, dear reader, like the end was near.

as i reached for a stick, he moved to the other side of the hill.

panting and hungry, he looked at me, a defenseless human and he snarled.

well i said my prayers, however, he simply turned and limped off.