chapters 9-13 Flashcards
zeal
strong eagerness
“partook of the religious zeal that brought emigrants”
affinity
close connection marked by community or interests
“if he have the power, which most be born with him, to bring his Mind into such affinity with his patients”
erudition
profound scholarly knowledge
“monkish erudition, of which the Protestant divines”
vilify
spread negative information about "even while they vilified and decried that class of writers"
commodious
large and roomy
“with such commodiousness of situation”
inimical
not friendly
“would become vaguely aware that something inimical to his peace had thrust itself into relation with him
propagate
multiply sexually or asexually
“and which much needs propagate a hellish breed within them”
emaciated
very thin from hunger or cold
“standing up and confronting the emaciated white cheeked minister”
palliate
try to lessen the seriousness of extent of
“which there had been nothing in the physicians words to excuse or palliate”
latent
not presently active
“a quiet depth of malice, hitherto latent, but active now, in this unfortunate old man”
odious
unequivocally detestable
“his gestures….his slightest and most indifferent acts, the very fashion of his garments, were odious in the clergyman’s sight”
antipathy
feeling of intense dislike
“a token implicitly to be relied on of a deeper antipathy in the breast of the latter than he was willing to acknowledge to himself”
ethereal
of heaven or the spirit
“it kept him down on a level with the lowest; him, the man of ethereal attributes, whose voice the Angels might else have listened to and answered”
defile
spot stain or pollute
“and tear him down out of the pulpit in which he defiled?”
inextricable
incapable of being disentangled or united
“in the same inextricable knot, the agony of heaven-defying guilt and vain repentance”
expiation
act of astonishing sin or wrongdoing
“while standing on the scaffold, in this vain show of expiation, mr dimmesdale was overcome with a great horror of mind”
impute
attribute it credit to
“we impute it, therefore, solely to the disease in his own eye and heart that the minister..”
admonish
warn strongly or put on guard
“the meteor kindled up in the shy and disclosed the earth with an awfulness that admonished Hester Prynne and the clergyman of the day of judgement..”
beseech
ask for or request earnestly
“come with me, I beseech you, reverend sir”
replete
deeply filled or permeated
“and the most replete with heavenly influences, that had ever proceeded from his lips”
scurrilous
expressing offensive reproach
“Sagan dropped it there,I take it, intending a scurrilous jest against your reverence”
portent
a sign of something about to happen
“but did your reverence hear of the portent that was seen last night?”
despotic
having the characteristics of a tyrannical ruler
“the public is despotic in its temper”
benign
pleasant and beneficial in nature of influence
“Soviet was inclined to show its former victim a more benign countenance than she cared to be favored with”
vindicate
maintain, uphold
“come forward to vindicate his claim to an inheritance so little desirable”
