H.O.D vocab #2 Flashcards
Their talk, however, was the talk of sordid buccaneers: it was reckless without hardihood, greedy without AUDACITY, and cruel without courage
Audacity
excessive boldness, rashness, daring
He carried his fat paunch with OSTENTATION on his short legs, and during the time his gang infested the station spoke to no one but his nephew.
Ostentation
pretentious and vulgar display - boasting
You know I am not used to such ceremonies, and there was something OMINOUS in the atmosphere.
Ominous
giving the impression that something bad is going to happen
It was the stillness of an **implacable ** brooding over an inscrutable intention.
Implacable
Not to be appeased or quieted
He squinted at the steam-gauge and at the water-gauge with an evident effort of intrepidity and he had filed teeth, too, the poor devil, and the wool of his pate shaved into queer patterns, and three ornamental scars on each of his cheeks.
Intrepidity
the fact or quality of being resolutely fearless or dauntless
They still belonged to the beginnings of time – had no inherited experience to teach them as it were), and of course, as long as there was a piece of paper written over in accordance with some farcical law or other made down the river, it didn’t enter anybody’s head to trouble how they would live.
Farcical
very silly, unlikely
Yes; I looked at them as you would on any human being, with a curiosity of their impulses, motives, capacities, weaknesses, when brought to the test of an inexorable physical necessity.
Inexorable
impossible to stop or prevent.
The knitting old woman with the cat obtruded herself upon my memory as a most improper person to be sitting at the other end of such an affair.
Obtruded
To force or impose without warrant or request
No sooner had we fairly entered it than I became aware it was much narrower than I had supposed. To the left of us there was the long uninterrupted shoal, and to the right a high, steep bank heavily overgrown with bushes.
Shoal
a large number of people.
And I heard – him – it – this voice – other voices – all of them were so little more than voices – and the memory of that time itself lingers around me, impalpable, like a dying vibration of one immense jabber, silly, atrocious, sordid, savage, or simply mean, without any kind of sense. Voices, voices – even the girl herself – now –
Atrocious
horrifyingly wicked
The peroration was magnificent, though difficult to remember, you know.
Peroration
the concluding part of a speech
It was very simple, and at the end of that moving appeal to every altruistic sentiment it blazed at you, luminous and terrifying, like a flash of lightning in a serene sky: `Exterminate all the brutes!
Altruistic
unselfish
He looked like a harlequin
Harlequin
a character in comedy
His need was to exist, and to move onwards at the greatest possible risk, and with a maximum of privation
Privation
lacking the basic necessities of life
The admirer of Mr. Kurtz was a bit crestfallen
Crestfallen
sad and disappointed
