WORD LISTS

Heart of Darkness Vocabulary

Wed Nov 30 13:47:17 EST 2016
By FryGuy (MA)
Here's a list of excellent words from Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness.
altruistic
"It was very simple, and at the end of that moving appeal to every altruistic sentiment it blazed at you..." (57)
ascetic
"He had sunken cheeks, a yellow complexion, a straight back, an ascetic aspect,..." (4)
evanescent
"...I saw vague forms of men running bent double, leaping, gliding, distinct, incomplete, evanescent." (52)
inscrutable
"...as inscrutable as Destiny." (5)

"It was the stillness of an implacable force brooding over an inscrutable intention." (38)

"She stood looking at us without a stir, and like the wilderness itself, with an air of brooding over an inscrutable purpose." (70)
lugubrious
"There was a touch of insanity in the proceeding, a sense of lugubrious dollery in the sight..." (15)
rapacity
"A taint of imbecile rapacity blew through it all..." (25-26)
sagacious
"...his sagacious relative lifted his head." (37)
sedentary
"...most seamen lead, if one may so express it, a sedentary life." (5)

"The expression sounded wonderfully odd, with its suggestion of sedentary desk-life." (20)
sententious
"....he said sententiously..." (12)
somnambulist
"...I began to think of getting out of her way, as you would for a somnambulist..." (10)
tenebrous
"...the image of its own tenebrous and passionate soul." (70)
trenchant
"...he certainly could make his glance fall on one as trenchant and heavy as an axe." (23-24)
wanton
Here are the definitions you should know for the word "wanton":
adjective
1.
done, shown, used, etc., maliciously or unjustifiably:
a wanton attack; wanton cruelty.
2.
deliberate and without motive or provocation; uncalled-for; headstrong; willful:
Why jeopardize your career in such a wanton way?
3.
without regard for what is right, just, humane, etc.; careless; reckless:
a wanton attacker of religious convictions.
"It was a wanton smash-up." (18)

"'...no sensible man rejects wantonly the confidence of his superiors.'" (31)
recondite
"...the director...didn't want to stop the steamer for some more or less recondite reason." (46)
philanthropic
"It might have been connected with the philanthropic desire of giving the criminals something to do." (18)

"It was as unreal as everything else--as the philanthropic pretence of the whole concern." (27)

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