Scarlet Letter 9-13 Flashcards
Zeal
A feeling of strong eagerness (usually in favor of a person or cause)
“They seldom, it would appear, partook of the religious zeal that brought other emigrants across the Atlantic.”
Vindicate
Maintain, uphold, or defend; clear of accusation
“Then why—since the choice was with himself—should the individual, whose connexion with the fallen woman had been the most intimate and sacred of them all, come forward to vindicate his claim to an inheritance so little desirable?”
Affinity
A close connection marked by community of interests or similarity in character
“if he have the power, which must be born with him, to bring his mind into such affinity with his patient’s, that this last shall unawares have spoken what he imagines himself only to have thought”
Erudition
Profound scholarly knowledge "Here the pale clergyman piled up his library, rich with parchment-bound folios of the Fathers, and the lore of Rabbis, and monkish erudition, of which the Protestant divines, even while they vilified and decried that class of writers, were yet constrained often to avail themselves."
Vilify
Spread negative information about "Here the pale clergyman piled up his library, rich with parchment-bound folios of the Fathers, and the lore of Rabbis, and monkish erudition, of which the Protestant divines, even while they vilified and decried that class of writers, were yet constrained often to avail themselves."
Commodious
Large and roomy
“commodiousness of situation, these two learned persons sat themselves down, each in his own domain, yet familiarly passing from one apartment to the other, and bestowing a mutual”
Inimical
Not friendly
“In other words, Mr. Dimmesdale, whose sensibility of nerve often produced the effect of spiritual intuition, would become vaguely aware that something inimical to his peace had thrust itself into relation with him.”
Propagate
Multiply sexually or asexually
“Their love for man, their zeal for God’s service—these holy impulses may or may not coexist in their hearts with the evil inmates to which their guilt has unbarred the door, and which must needs propagate a hellish breed within them.”
Emaciated
Very thin especially from disease or cold or hunger
““Thus, a sickness,” continued Roger Chillingworth, going on, in an unaltered tone, without heeding the interruption, but standing up and confronting the emaciated and white-cheeked minister, with his low, dark, and misshapen figure”
Palliate
Lessen or try to lessen the seriousness or extent of
“after a few hours of privacy, was sensible that the disorder of his nerves had hurried him into an unseemly outbreak of temper, which there had been nothing in the physician’s words to excuse or palliate.”
Latent
Not presently active
“Calm, gentle, passionless, as he appeared, there was yet, we fear, a quiet depth of malice, hitherto latent, but active now, in this unfortunate old man, which led him to imagine a more intimate revenge than any mortal had ever wreaked upon an enemy.”
Odious
Unequivocally detestable
“His gestures, his gait, his grizzled beard, his slightest and most indifferent acts, the very fashion of his garments, were odious in the clergyman’s sight; 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.”
Antipathy
Feeling of intense dislike
“His gestures, his gait, his grizzled beard, his slightest and most indifferent acts, the very fashion of his garments, were odious in the clergyman’s sight; 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
“Would not the people start up in their seats, by a simultaneous impulse, and tear him down out of the pulpit which he defiled?”
