11th Grade Recommended Reading List: "The Pit and the Pendulum" by Edgar Allan Poe

This terrifying gothic tale imagines the tortures experienced by prisoners during the Spanish Inquisition. Read the full text here.

Click here to explore other works by Edgar Allan Poe.
12 words 3985 learners

Learn words with Flashcards and other activities

Definition First
Print Flashcards

Other learning activities

Answer a few questions about each word. Use this to prep for your next quiz! Compete with other teams in real time to see who answers the most questions correctly! Test your spelling acumen. Read the definition, listen to the word and try spelling it!

Teaching tools

Create and assign quizzes to your students to test their vocabulary. Assign learning activities including Practice, Vocabulary Jams and Spelling Bees to your students, and monitor their progress in real-time.

Full list of words from this list:

words only definitions & notes
  1. galvanic
    pertaining to electric current by chemical action
    ...all at once, there came a most deadly nausea over my spirit, and I felt every fiber in my frame thrill as if I had touched the wire of a galvanic battery....
  2. gossamer
    characterized by unusual lightness and delicacy
    Arousing from the most profound of slumbers, we break the gossamer web of some dream.
  3. lucid
    capable of thinking in a clear and consistent manner
    ...there have been brief, very brief periods when I have conjured up remembrances which the lucid reason of a later epoch assures me could have had reference only to that condition of seeming unconsciousness.
  4. pervade
    spread or diffuse through
    Then again sound, and motion, and touch — a tingling sensation pervading my frame.
  5. insuperable
    impossible to surmount
    The difficulty, nevertheless, was but trivial; although, in the disorder of my fancy, it seemed at first insuperable.
  6. prostrate
    stretched out and lying at full length along the ground
    In the confusion attending my fall, I did not immediately apprehend a somewhat startling circumstance, which yet, in a few seconds afterward, and while I still lay prostrate, arrested my attention.
  7. frivolous
    not serious in content, attitude, or behavior
    And the death just avoided, was of that very character which I had regarded as fabulous and frivolous in the tales respecting the Inquisition.
  8. pertinacity
    persistent determination
    I dwelt upon it with a pertinacity of attention — as if, in so dwelling, I could arrest here the descent of the steel.
  9. inevitably
    in such a manner as could not be otherwise
    Down — still unceasingly — still inevitably down!
  10. proximity
    the region close around a person or thing
    But how fearful, in that case, the proximity of the steel!
  11. spectral
    resembling or characteristic of a phantom
    These colors had now assumed, and were momentarily assuming, a startling and most intense brilliancy, that gave to the spectral and fiendish portraitures an aspect that might have thrilled even firmer nerves than my own.
  12. lurid
    shining with an unnatural red glow
    Demon eyes, of a wild and ghastly vivacity, glared upon me in a thousand directions, where none had been visible before, and gleamed with the lurid luster of a fire that I could not force my diseased imagination to regard as unreal.
Created on Wed Oct 05 19:16:51 EDT 2016 (updated Mon Aug 04 18:55:17 EDT 2025)

Sign up now (it’s free!)

Whether you’re a teacher or a learner, Vocabulary.com can put you or your class on the path to systematic vocabulary improvement.