WORD LISTS

"Oedipus the King" by Sophocles, List 2

Wed Jul 16 15:07:31 EDT 2025
By Vocabulary.com (NY)Visual Thesaurus Moderator
When a plague ravages the city of Thebes, Oedipus hears a prophecy that begins to unravel everything he thought was true. Read the full text here.

Here are links to our lists for the play: List 1, List 2, List 3

Here is a link to our list for Antigone by Sophocles.
taciturnity
Monster! thy silence would incense a flint.
Will nothing loose thy tongue? Can nothing melt thee,
Or shake thy dogged taciturnity?
flout
And who could stay his choler when he heard
How insolently thou dost flout the State?
stint
Teiresias's status in Thebes gives him some freedom in his speech (and silence). But Oedipus's wrath and choler are getting the better of him (this same angry nature is what led him to murder the travelers). No longer able to stint his words, Oedipus accuses Teiresias of being the mastermind behind the murder of Laius. This actually succeeds in provoking Teiresias to throw the truthful accusation back at Oedipus.
Yea, I am wroth, and will not stint my words,
but speak my whole mind.
calumny
Thou shalt rue it
Twice to repeat so gross a calumny.
charlatan
"Charlatan," "mountebank," and "tricksy beggar-priest" are all the same insult. Angry that Teiresias should dare accuse him of being the cause of the kingdom's troubles, Oedipus accuses Teiresias not only of being a false prophet for profit, but also of conspiring with Creon to take his throne.
for this crown
The trusty Creon, my familiar friend,
Hath lain in wait to oust me and suborned
This mountebank, this juggling charlatan,
This tricksy beggar-priest, for gain alone
Keen-eyed, but in his proper art stone-blind.
reverberate
Oedipus gets a huge hint here that there's something seriously wrong with his marriage (a hymeneal is a wedding march) that would make his cries reverberate off mountains. But he is so angry that he does not see the truth and believes instead that Teiresias is just being foolishly rude.
Ah whither shall thy bitter cry not reach,
What crag in all Cithaeron but shall then
Reverberate thy wail, when thou hast found
With what a hymeneal thou wast borne
Home, but to no fair haven, on the gale!
petulance
This taunt, it well may be, was blurted out
In petulance, not spoken advisedly.
glib
Thou art glib of tongue, but I am slow to learn
Of thee; I know too well thy venomous hate.
repose
First, I bid thee think,
Would any mortal choose a troubled reign
Of terrors rather than secure repose,
If the same power were given him?
probity
Respect a man whose probity and troth
Are known to all and now confirmed by oath.
truculent
Thou art as sullen in thy yielding mood
As in thine anger thou wast truculent.
unrelenting
Let me too, I adjure thee, know, O king,
What cause has stirred this unrelenting wrath.
suffice
Yet was I quits with him and more; one stroke
Of my good staff sufficed to fling him clean
Out of the chariot seat and laid him prone.
And so I slew them every one.
ethereal
My lot be still to lead
The life of innocence and fly
Irreverence in word or deed,
To follow still those laws ordained on high
Whose birthplace is the bright ethereal sky
emulous
But O may Heaven the true patriot keep
Who burns with emulous zeal to serve the State.

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