Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass - Chapters 6 through 10 Vocabulary

Servility

The quality of being slavishly submissive or fawning; too eager to serve someone else

Impudent

Marked by contemptuous or cocky boldness or disregard for others

Vestige

A trace, mark, or visible sign left by something vanished or lost; a small trace

Depravity

A corrupt act or practice

Indispensable

Absolutely necessary

Divest

To deprive or dispossess especially of property, authority, or title

Denunciation

The act of pronouncing to be blameworthy or evil, especially publically.

Vindication

The act of freeing from allegation or blame

Sunder

To break apart or in two; separated by or as if by violence or intervening time or space

Profligate

Wildy extravagant

Dissipation

The action or process of breaking up, scattering, or vanishing

Disposition

Prevailing tendency, mood or inclination

Conspicuous

Obvious to the eye or mind.

Exhort

To incite by argument or advice

Pernicious

Highly injurious or destructive

Languish

To be or become feeble, weak, or enervated

Apostrophe

The addressing of a usually absent person or a usually personified thing rhetorically

Turbid

Characterized by or producing obscurity (as of mind or emotions)

Offal

The remaining entrails and internal organs of animals that have been butchered for meat

Chattel

An enslaved person considered as property

Ell

An antiquated measure of length equal to about 45 inches

Urchin

A poor, raggedy clothed youngster (often associated with mischeif)

Larboard Starboard Aft

Designated directions on board a boat: left, right, rear

Betwixt

Archaic version of “between”

Bushel

A unit of measurement for dry goods

Thicket

A dense growth of shrubs and/or small trees

Yoke(d)

A wooden bar fitted to the neck of oxen to harness them to a cart or plow

Dregs

The most undesirable parts

Constable

Law enforcement officer (akin to a sherriff)