Heart of Darkness Vocabulary : List 1

Ap Lit Heart of Darkness

Interminable (1)

"The sea-reach of the Thames stretched before us like the beginning of'an interminable waterway".

endless

Luminous (1)

"It was difficult to realize his work was not out there in the luminous estuary, but behind him, within the brooding gloom."

bright; brilliant; glowing

Ascetic (1)

"He had sunken cheeks, a yellow complexion, a straight back, an ascetic aspect, and with his arms dropped, the palms of hands outwards, resembled an idol."

practicing self-denial

Diaphanous (2)

"...the very must on the Essex marshes was like a gauzy and radiant fabric, hung from the wooded rises inland, and draping the low shores in diaphanous folds."

very sheer and light; almost completely transparent

Venerable (2)

"We looked at the venerable stream not in the vivid flush of a short day that comes and departs forever..."

respected because of age

Lurid (3)

"And farther west on the upper reaches the place of the monstrous town was still marked ominously on the sky, a brooding gloom in sunshine, a lurid glare under the stars."

causing shock or horror

Inscrutable (3)

"...for there is nothing mysterious to a seaman unless it be the sea itself, which is the mistress of his existence and as inscrutable as destiny."

impossible to understand or interpret

Somnambulist (7)

"The slim one got up and walked straight at me - still knitting with downcast eyes - and only just as I began to think of getting out of her way, as you would for a somnambulist, stood still, and looked up."

sleepwalker ; sleepwalking

Sententiously (9)

" 'I am not such a fool as I look, quoth Plato to his disciples,' he said sententiously, emptied his glass with great resolution, and we rose."

given to excessive moralizing; self-righteous

Imperturbably (9)

" 'Every doctor should be- a little,' answered that original, imperturbably."

unexcitedly, calmly

Lugubrious (11)

"There was a touch of insanity in the proceeding, a sense of lugubrious drollery in the sigh: and it was not dissipated by somebody on board assuring me earnestly there was a camp of natives - he called them enemies! - hidden out of sight somewhere."

mournful; gloomy

Declivity (12)

"A rocky cliff appeared, mounds of turned-up earth by the shore, houses on a hill, others with iron roofs, amongst a waste of excavations, or hanging to the declivity."

A downward slope; a dip

Recrudescence (12)

"A blinding sunlight drowned all this at times in a sudden recrudescence of glare."

revival ; a new outbreak after a period of abatement or inactivity

Insidious (13)

" How insidious he could be, too, I was only to find out several months later and a thousand miles farther. "

intended to deceive or entrap; sly, treacherous

Philanthropic (13)

"It might have been connected with the philanthropic desire of giving the criminals something to do."

charitable ; humanitarian; benevolent; relating to monetary generosity

Moribund (14)

" These moribund shapes were free as air—and nearly as thin."

dying

Propitiatory (14)

"He had tied a bit of white worsted round his neck—Why? Where did he get it? Was it a badge—an ornament—a charm—a propitiatory act? Was there any idea at all connected with it? It looked startling round his black neck, this bit of white thread from beyond the seas."

conciliatory, appeasing, mitigating

Rout (18)

"He had served three terms of three years out there... Because triumphant health in the general rout of constitutions is a kind of power in itself."

an overwhelming defeat

Insolence (19)

"He allowed his 'boy'—an overfed young negro from the coast—to treat the white men, under his very eyes, with provoking insolence."

rude and disrespectful behavior

Rapacity (20)

"You would think they were praying to it. A taint of imbecile rapacity blew through it all, like a whiff from some corpse"

aggressive greed

Beguile (21)

"They beguiled the time by back-biting and intriguing against each other in a foolish kind of way."

To deceive; to charm; to enchant

Enigma

The Riddler ; Puzzling