Dostoevsky 1

Question 1

sybarite

Answer 1

n.
a person addicted to luxury and pleasures of the senses.

“He came from a good family, was a general’s son and a sybarite, in his tender childhood wore velvet and cambric, was educated in an aristocratic institution, and, though he did not come out of it with much learning, was successful in the service and even got himself as far as a generalship.” (6)

ancient Greek city S Italy on Gulf of Tarentum; destroyed 510 b.c.

Question 2

retrograde

Answer 2

adj.

• returning to an earlier and usually worse state or condition
• moving backward

“For some reason he considered him a retrograde and attacked him with extraordinary heat” (7)

Question 3

hemorrhoid

Answer 3

n. pain caused by venous swelling at or inside the anal sphincter

Question 4

sphincter

Answer 4

an annular muscle surrounding and able to contract or close a bodily opening

Question 5

forestall

Answer 5

verb

• to stop (something) from happening or to cause (something) to happen at a later time
• to act before (someone else) in order to prevent something

Question 6

caustic

Answer 6

adj.

• harsh or corrosive in tone.

Question 7

corrosive

Answer 7

adj.

spitefully sacrastic

Question 8

scrivener

Answer 8

n.
someone employed to make written copies of documents and manuscripts.

“And yet I precisely hold to and maintain everywhere the idea that humaneness, and precisely humaneness with subordinates, from clerk to scrivener, from scrivener to household servant, from servant to peasant-humaness, I say, may serve, so to speak, as the cornerstone of the forthcoming reform and generally toward the renewal of things.” (9)