WORD LISTS

"Harriet Tubman" by Ann Petry, Chapters 1–6

Wed Oct 14 19:48:14 EDT 2015
By Vocabulary.com (NY)Visual Thesaurus Moderator
Harriet Tubman was born into slavery, escaped to freedom, and worked to liberate countless other enslaved people. Learn more about Tubman's life by reviewing these words from Ann Petry's acclaimed biography.

Here are links to our lists for the book: Chapters 1–6, Chapters 7–12, Chapters 13–18, Chapters 19–22
quell
The local militia and Federal troops were called in to quell this unplanned and unrehearsed insurrection.
ebb
In these streams the ebb and flow of the tide is visible for miles inland—hence the name Tidewater Maryland.
manumit
If they were faithful and hardworking, the master would set them free, manumit them, when he died.
covert
This was said with a covert glance at the tiny new baby, Minta or Minty, who lay close by Old Rit’s side, in a corner of the cabin.
recalcitrant
To the slaves those words, sold South, sold down the river, carried the sound of doom. The master used it as a threat to recalcitrant slaves.
insurrection
Finally, he planned an insurrection, in which he and his followers were to kill all the white people in Charleston, South Carolina, and free the slaves.
servile
Two slaves standing talking would be whipped. They might be plotting servile insurrection, those long hard words that meant death to the master, death to the slave, too.
surreptitiously
The summers were warm, and there were creeks and inlets and streams in the nearby woods where they could catch fish, surreptitiously, of course, because they weren’t supposed to.
bequeath
The Latin dictionary was the first of thirteen thousand volumes which he would eventually buy and, at his death, bequeath to the Boston Public Library.
incur
Years later, Theodore Parker incurred the wrath of the pro-slavery forces in the country.
prophesy
The other slaves were rather in awe of Ben because he could prophesy about the weather.
philippic
His original draft of the Declaration contained a “vehement philippic against Negro slavery.”
interminable
It had seemed an interminable journey when the overseer brought her to Miss Susan’s in a wagon.
refractory
Sometimes this short, straight-backed young girl hummed under her breath, or sang, while she hoed the corn or tugged on the reins when a refractory mule refused to budge.
emancipation
The subject of slavery was introduced because some of the counties, alarmed by the Nat Turner insurrection, had petitioned for the gradual emancipation of the slaves or for abolition of slavery.

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