The Golden Compass: Chapters 1–4

by Philip Pullman
This first book of His Dark Materials trilogy starts off at Oxford's Jordan College, where eleven-year-old Lyra Belacqua and her dæmon Pantalaimon are given a device called an alethiometer that Lyra learns to interpret in order to discover truths, especially in connection to the kidnapping of children.

Here are links to our lists for the novel: Chapters 1–4, Chapters 5–9, Chapters 10–13, Chapters 14–17, Chapters 18–23

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Full list of words from this list:

words only definitions & notes
  1. apprehension
    fearful expectation or anticipation
    Lyra always heard that harsh voice with a mixture of pleasure and apprehension.
  2. ingratiate
    gain favor with somebody by deliberate efforts
    The Steward was the superior, but the Butler had more opportunities to ingratiate himself with the Scholars, and made full use of them.
  3. languid
    lacking spirit or liveliness
    She saw him fully, and marveled at the contrast he made with the plump Butler, the stooped and languid Scholars. Lord Asriel was a tall man with powerful shoulders, a fierce dark face, and eyes that seemed to flash and glitter with savage laughter.
  4. patronize
    treat condescendingly
    It was a face to be dominated by, or to fight: never a face to patronize or pity.
  5. unfathomable
    impossible to come to understand
    His dæmon came close and leaned her head on his waist, and he looked down at her unfathomably before turning away and walking to the table.
  6. earnestly
    in a sincere and serious manner
    "I can only say once again, my lord, I do most earnestly beg your pardon; I don’t know what—”
  7. austere
    of a stern or strict bearing or demeanor
    “It might be,” Pantalaimon said austerely, in his tiny moth voice. “And it might not.”
  8. impassive
    having or revealing little emotion or sensibility
    He moved away with the Chaplain, leaving Lyra with a clear view of the Master’s face. It was impassive, but the dæmon on his shoulder was shuffling her feathers and moving restlessly from foot to foot.
  9. chastise
    scold or criticize severely
    She knew the Scholars well: the Librarian, the Sub-Rector, the Enquirer, and the rest; they were men who had been around her all her life, taught her, chastised her, consoled her, given her little presents, chased her away from the fruit trees in the garden; they were all she had for a family.
  10. pallid
    lacking in intensity or brightness; dim or feeble
    The moonlight bathed everything in the same pallid gleam.
  11. emulsion
    a light-sensitive coating on paper or film
    “That photogram was taken with a standard silver nitrate emulsion,” Lord Asriel said.
  12. aurora
    bands of light caused by charged solar particles
    “Forgive my ignorance,” said the shaky voice of the old Precentor, “but if I ever knew what the Aurora was, I have forgotten. Is it what they call the Northern Lights?”
  13. treatise
    a formal text that treats a particular topic systematically
    There was a stir of excitement among some of the Scholars, as if, having written treatises on the existence of the unicorn without ever having seen one, they’d been presented with a living example newly captured.
  14. venerable
    profoundly honored
    All the venerable heads were craning forward, their spectacles glinting; only the Master and the Librarian leaned back in their chairs, with their heads close together.
  15. crevasse
    a deep fissure
    It’s been assumed that he had an accident and that his body’s been lying in a crevasse all this time.
  16. sardonic
    disdainfully or ironically humorous
    Lyra looked again at her uncle, who was watching the Scholars with a glitter of sardonic amusement, and saying nothing.
  17. affectation
    a deliberate pretense or exaggerated display
    He’s a usurper, of sorts; tricked his way onto the throne, or so I understand; but a powerful figure, by no means a fool, in spite of his ludicrous affectations—having a palace built of imported marble—setting up what he calls a university—
  18. ermine
    mustelid of northern hemisphere in its white winter coat
    Soon she was fast asleep, with Pantalaimon curled around her neck in his favorite sleeping form as an ermine.
  19. providence
    the guardianship and control exercised by a deity
    The question was whether doing that would be worse than the consequences of not doing it. Well, some providence has intervened, and it hasn’t happened.
  20. postulate
    maintain or assert
    Barnard and Stokes were two—how shall I put it—renegade theologians who postulated the existence of numerous other worlds like this one, neither heaven nor hell, but material and sinful.
  21. heresy
    a belief that rejects the orthodox tenets of a religion
    The Holy Church naturally disapproved of this abominable heresy, and Barnard and Stokes were silenced.
  22. theological
    of or relating to or concerning the study of religion
    “Why should a distant theological riddle interest a healthy, thoughtless child?”
  23. squalid
    foul and run-down and repulsive
    The buildings, which were grouped around three irregular quadrangles, dated from every period from the early Middle Ages to the mid-eighteenth century. It had never been planned; it had grown piecemeal, with past and present overlapping at every spot, and the final effect was one of jumbled and squalid grandeur.
  24. eminence
    high status importance owing to marked superiority
    She was proud of her College’s eminence, and liked to boast of it to the various urchins and ragamuffins she played with by the canal or the claybeds; and she regarded visiting Scholars and eminent professors from elsewhere with pitying scorn, because they didn’t belong to Jordan and so must know less, poor things, than the humblest of Jordan’s under-Scholars.
  25. judicious
    marked by the exercise of common sense in practical matters
    Lyra imagined the Chaplain speaking loftily, listening to the star dæmons’ remarks, and then nodding judiciously or shaking his head in regret.
  26. inscrutable
    difficult or impossible to understand
    And she would mutter whatever she could dredge up about geometry or Arabic or history or anbarology, and he would sit back with one ankle resting on the other knee and watch her inscrutably until her words failed.
  27. sinuous
    curved or curving in and out
    With sinuous movements he inches down the steps toward the boy, and sits a step above him.
  28. stolid
    having or revealing little emotion or sensibility
    The kind lady saw him settled on a bench against the wall, and provided by a silent serving woman with a mug of chocolatl from the saucepan on the iron stove. Tony ate the rest of his pie and drank the sweet hot liquor without taking much notice of his surroundings, and the surroundings took little notice of him: he was too small to be a threat, and too stolid to promise much satisfaction as a victim.
  29. inveigle
    influence or urge by gentle urging, caressing, or flattering
    However, that was a distraction; Lyra was still intent on playing Gobblers, and she inveigled Roger down into the wine cellars, which they entered by means of the Butler’s spare set of keys.
  30. indifference
    the trait of lacking enthusiasm for or interest in things
    When Lyra was younger, he had taken an interest in her spiritual welfare, only to be confounded by her sly indifference and insincere repentances.
  31. propitiate
    make peace with
    Roger’s dæmon anxiously wagged her terrier tail to propitiate him.
  32. contemptuous
    expressing extreme scorn
    Everyone’s dæmon instantly became warlike: each child was accompanied by fangs, or claws, or bristling fur, and Pantalaimon, contemptuous of the limited imaginations of these gyptian dæmons, became a dragon the size of a deer hound.
  33. extravagant
    unrestrained, especially with regard to feelings
    No one worried about a child gone missing for a few hours, certainly not a gyptian: in the tight-knit gyptian boat world, all children were precious and extravagantly loved, and a mother knew that if a child was out of sight, it wouldn’t be far from someone else’s who would protect it instinctively.
  34. crony
    a close friend or associate
    “They eat kids?” said Lyra’s other crony, Hugh Lovat, a kitchen boy from St. Michael’s.
  35. precipitate
    bring about abruptly
    “Let’s go and look for ’em! And their white truck!”
    And that precipitated a swarm.
  36. sanctimonious
    excessively or hypocritically pious
    The Porter was sanctimonious.
    “I had to ring the Master and tell him,” he said.
  37. desultory
    marked by lack of definite plan, purpose, or enthusiasm
    She dragged the dress over her head and dropped it on the narrow bed, and began to wash desultorily while Pantalaimon, a canary now, hopped closer and closer to Mrs. Lonsdale’s dæmon, a stolid retriever, trying in vain to annoy him.
  38. torpid
    slow and apathetic
    The two female Scholars sat up very slightly, though their dæmons, either well behaved or torpid, did no more than flick their eyes at each other.
  39. pique
    a sudden outburst of anger
    She did sleep, finally, though Pantalaimon wouldn’t settle until she snapped at him, when he became a hedgehog out of pique.
  40. errant
    moving in an uncontrolled, irregular, or unpredictable way
    Lyra spent a long time turning the hands to point at one symbol or another (angel, helmet, dolphin; globe, lute, compasses; candle, thunderbolt, horse) and watching the long needle swing on its never-ceasing errant way, and although she understood nothing, she was intrigued and delighted by the complexity and the detail.
Created on Fri Jul 14 11:58:03 EDT 2017 (updated Thu Aug 17 10:02:49 EDT 2023)

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