Literature of Dissent Vocabulary list
(only those words that are numbered will appear on vocabulary quizzes)
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Jewett vocabulary
1. dilatory—Intended to delay; Tending to postpone or delay: dilatory in his work habits.
"[ . . . ] her cow, a plodding, dilatory, provoking creature in her behavior" (1).
2. Regionalism—late nineteenth-century literary style which emphasized local regions and their inhabitants; Includes the representation of regional dialects and cultural mores, de-centering of European-American privileged masculine authority and centering of marginal characters such as women, elders, girls, rural people, and even animals and land.
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Freeman vocabulary
3. diurnal—Relating to or occurring in a 24-hour period; daily.
"This soft diurnal commotion was over Louisa Ellis also" (1).
currants—A small seedless raisin of the Mediterranean region, used chiefly in baking.
"Then she went into the garden with a little blue crockery bowl, to pick some currants for her tea" (1).
4. stint—A length of time spent in a particular way: a two-year stint in the military.
"As for himself, his stint was done [ . . . ]" (5).
5. redolent—Having or emitting fragrance; aromatic.
"She gloated gently over her orderly bureau-drawers, with their exquisitely folded contents redolent with lavender and sweet clover and very purity" (5).
6. choleric—Easily angered; bad-tempered.
"The neighbor, who was choleric and smarting with the pain of his wound, had demanded either Caesar's death or complete ostracism" (6).
St. George's dragon—In Christian hagiography Saint George—The Saint who killed the Dragon (ca. 275-281–303) was a soldier of the Roman Empire, from Anatolia, now modern day Turkey, who was venerated as a Christian martyr. The episode of St George and the Dragon was Eastern in origin, brought back with the Crusaders and retold with the courtly appurtenances belonging to the genre of Romance (Loomis; Whatley). The earliest known depiction of the mytheme is from early eleventh-century Cappadocia (Whately), (in the iconography of the Eastern Orthodox Church, George had been depicted as a soldier since at least the seventh century); the earliest known surviving narrative text is an eleventh-century Georgian text (Whatley).
In the fully-developed Western version, a dragon makes its nest at the spring that provides water for the city of "Silene" (perhaps modern Cyrene) in Libya or the city of Lydda, depending on the source. Consequently, the citizens have to dislodge the dragon from its nest for a time, in order to collect water. To do so, each day they offer the dragon a human sacrifice. The victim is chosen by drawing lots. One day, this happened to be the princess. The monarch begs for her life with no result. She is offered to the dragon, but there appears the saint on his travels. He faces the dragon, slays it and rescues the princess. The grateful citizens abandon their ancestral paganism and convert to Christianity.
"St. George's dragon could hardly have surpassed in evil repute Louisa Ellis's old yellow dog" (6).
7. sanguinary—Accompanied by bloodshed.
"She fed him on ascetic fare of corn-mush and cakes, and never fired his dangerous temper with heating and sanguinary diet of flesh and bones" (6).
troth-plight—Archaic. n. A betrothal.
"Even now she could hardly believe that she had heard aright, and that she would not do Joe a terrible injury should she break her troth-plight" (8).
8. list—To lean or cause to lean to the side: The damaged ship listed badly to starboard. Erosion first listed, then toppled the spruce tree.
"Louisa could sew linen seams, and distil roses, and dust and polish and fold away in lavender, as long as she listed" (9).
9. pottage—A thick soup or stew of vegetables and sometimes meat.
The idiom Freeman is using here is from the Bible and has come to have a general meaning: if a person sells her birthright for a mess of pottage, she accepts some trivial financial or other gain, but loses something much more important.
Scripture: Genesis 25: 29-34: 29 Once when Jacob was cooking some stew, Esau came in from the open country, famished. 30 He said to Jacob, "Quick, let me have some of that red stew! I'm famished!"31 Jacob replied, "First sell me your birthright." 32 "Look, I am about to die," Esau said. "What good is the birthright to me?" 33 But Jacob said, "Swear to me first." So he swore an oath to him, selling his birthright to Jacob. 34 Then Jacob gave Esau some bread and some lentil stew. He ate and drank, and then got up and left. So Esau despised his birthright.
"If Louisa Ellis had sold her birthright she did not know it, the taste of the pottage was so delicious, and had been her sole satisfaction for so long" (9).
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Washington vocabulary
10. flog—To beat severely with a whip or rod.
"Besides, when I was late in getting home I knew I would always get a severe scolding or a flogging" (2).
William Lloyd Garrison (1805-1879) was a prominent United States abolitionist, journalist, and social reformer. He is best known as the editor of the radical abolitionist newspaper, The Liberator, and as one of the founders of the American Anti-Slavery Society.
Elijah P. Lovejoy (1802-1837), the son of Daniel Lovejoy, a Congregational minister, was an American minister and journalist who was murdered for his abolitionist views. His brother was reverend and congressman Owen Lovejoy.
gewgaws—A decorative trinket; a bauble.
"[They] shall prosper in proportion as we learn to draw the line between the superficial and the substantial, the ornamental gewgaws of life and the useful" (9).
Tuskegee Institute—an American institution of higher learning located in Tuskegee, Alabama. The school was the dream of Lewis Adams, a former slave and George W. Campbell, a former slave owner. During Reconstruction, the period following the American Civil War, the South was impoverished. Many African Americans were illiterate and had few employable job skills. Adams was especially concerned that, without an education, the recently freed former slaves would not be able to support themselves. Campbell, of like-thinking, had become a merchant and a banker. He had little experience with educational institutions, but was always willing to contribute all of his resources and efforts to make the school a success. W.F. Foster, a European American candidate for the Alabama Senate, came to Adams with a question. What would Adams want in return for securing the votes of African Americans in Macon County for Foster and another European American candidate? In response, Adams asked for a normal school for the free men, freed slaves and their children (a normal school, at that time, was the name for a teacher's college) to be established in the area. Foster and the other candidate were elected. He worked with the other fellow legislator Arthur L. Brooks to draft and pass legislation authorizing $2,000 to create the school. Adams, Thomas Dyer, and M.B. Swanson formed Tuskegee's first board of commissioners. They wrote to Hampton Institute in Virginia, asking the school to recommend someone to head their new school. Former Union Army General and Hampton Principal Samuel C. Armstrong felt that he knew just the man for the job: 25 year-old Booker T. Washington.
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Dubois vocabulary
11. peremptory—Putting an end to all debate or action: a peremptory decree; Not allowing contradiction or refusal; imperative: The officer issued peremptory commands.
"The exchange was merry, till one girl, a tall newcomer, refused my card, —refused it peremptorily, with a glance" (1).
12. sychophant—a servile self-seeking flatterer
"With other black boys the strife was not so fiercely sunny: their youth shrunk into tasteless sycophancy, or into silent hatred of the pale world about them [ . . . ]" (1).
13. husband—a frugal manager
14. latent—present and capable of becoming though not now visible, obvious, active, or symptomatic. (a latent infection).
"This, then, is the end of his striving: to be a co-worker in the kingdom of culture, to escape both death and isolation, to husband and use his best powers and his latent genius" (2).
15. quackery—a charlatan; a pretender to medical skill
16. demagogue—a leader who makes use of popular prejudices and false claims and promises in order to gain power.
"By the poverty and ignorance of his people, the Negro minister or doctor was tempted toward quackery and demagogery [ . . . ]" (2).
"Some of this opposition is, of course, mere envy; the disappointment of displaced demagogues and the spite of narrow minds" (7).
17. will o' the wisp—a delusive or elusive goal
"The first decade was merely a prolongation of the vain search for freedom, the boon that seemed ever barely to elude their grasp,—like a tantalizing will-o'-the-wisp, maddening and misleading the headless host" (3).
18. franchise (enfranchize)—a special privilege granted to an individual or group; especially the right to be and exercise the powers of a corporation b: a constitutional or statutory right or privilege; especially the right to vote
"Had not votes enfranchised the freedmen?" (2).
19. cabalistic—origin: (Kabbalah) a medieval and modern system of Jewish theosophy, mysticism, and thaumaturgy marked by belief in creation through emanation and a cipher method of interpreting Scripture; here: a traditional, esoteric, occult, or secret matter b: esoteric doctrine or mysterious art
"[ . . . ] the curiosity, born of compulsory ignorance, to know and test the power of the cabalistic letters of the white man, the longing to know" (3).
20. obeisance—A gesture or movement of the body, such as a curtsy, that expresses deference or homage; An attitude of deference or homage.
"[ . . . ] he humbly bows and meekly does obeisance" (4).
21. Sturm und Drang—Turmoil; ferment: “A book's historical roots represent another barrier; so does the personal Sturm und Drang of the author” (Robert Kanigel); A late-18th-century German romantic literary movement whose works typically depicted the struggles of a highly emotional individual against conventional society.
"So dawned the time of Sturm und Drang: storm and stress to-day rocks our little boat on the mad waters of the world-sea [ . . . ]" (4).
22. credulous—Disposed to believe too readily; gullible.
"No, not that, but each alone was over-simple and incomplete,—the dreams of a credulous race-childhood [ . . . ]" (4).
23. dyspeptic—Of or displaying a morose disposition.
"Will America be poorer if she replace her brutal dyspeptic blundering with light-hearted but determined Negro humility?" (5).
24. captious—Marked by a disposition to find and point out trivial faults: a captious scholar.
"And yet the time is come when one may speak in all sincerity and utter courtesy of the mistakes and shortcomings of Mr. Washington's career, as well as of his triumphs, without being thought captious or envious, and without forgetting that it is easier to do ill than well in the world" (6).
25. intemperate—Not moderate; excessive, especially in the use of alcoholic beverages.
"It leads some of the best of the critics to unfortunate silence and paralysis of effort, and others to burst into speech so passionately and intemperately as to lose listeners" (7).
26. nice—Showing or requiring great precision or sensitive discernment; subtle: a nice distinction; a nice sense of style.
"The way in which this is done is at once the most elementary and the nicest problem of social growth" (7).
27. tender—A formal offer
28. palm branch—The palm branch was a symbol of triumph and victory in pre-Christian times. The Romans rewarded champions of the games and celebrated military successes with palm branches. The motto of the HMS Nelson and the University of Southern California is "Palmam qui meruit ferat," which means in Latin, "Let him bear the palm who has deserved it." Jews followed a similar tradition of carrying palm branches during festive times
"As a result of this tender of the palm-branch, what has been the return?" (9)
propaganda—The systematic propagation of a doctrine or cause or of information reflecting the views and interests of those advocating such a doctrine or cause; Material disseminated by the advocates or opponents of a doctrine or cause: wartime propaganda; (secondary definition) information which is false or twisted
"These movements are not, to be sure, direct results of Mr. Washington's teachings; but his propaganda has, without a shadow of doubt, helped their speedier accomplishment" (9).
29. inveigh—To give vent to angry disapproval; protest vehemently.
"[ . . . ] to inveigh indiscriminately against "the South" is unjust [ . . . ]" (11).
fain—Happily; gladly: “I would fain improve every opportunity to wonder and worship, as a sunflower welcomes the light” (Henry David Thoreau).
"By every civilized and peaceful method we must strive for the rights which the world accords to men, clinging unwaveringly to those great words which the sons of the Fathers would fain forget: "We hold these truths to be self-evident: That all men are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness" (12).