The Golden Compass: Chapters 10–13

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. abate
    become less in amount or intensity
    He explained his idea to Lyra and Farder Coram the next day, when Lyra's seasickness had abated slightly.
  2. landlubber
    a person who is unfamiliar with sailing or the sea
    Out on the deck, with the breeze blowing and the whole sea a-sparkle with light and movement, she felt little sickness at all; and now that Pantalaimon had discovered the delights of being a seagull and then a stormy petrel and skimming the wave tops, Lyra was too absorbed by his glee to wallow in landlubberly misery.
  3. repugnant
    offensive to the mind
    “Now, when I got her in the boat,” he went on, “I had the most grim shock I’d ever known, because that young woman had no dæmon.”
    It was as if he’d said, “She had no head.” The very thought was repugnant.
  4. query
    an instance of questioning
    During the next hour the sound of the engine died away to a quiet background rumble, voices shouted orders or queries, ropes were thrown, gangways lowered, hatches opened.
  5. placid
    not easily irritated
    He was a stout and placid man, and when he’d sworn at her and been sworn at in return, they became great friends.
  6. ponderous
    slow and laborious because of weight
    She and Pantalaimon avidly watched as the ship inched ponderously toward the quayside.
  7. florid
    inclined to a healthy reddish color
    He was a fat man with a florid face and a sober black suit, whose name was Martin Lanselius.
  8. engender
    call forth
    He earns a living there at the moment, but such is his temper and the fear he engenders in the dogs, his employment might not last for long.
  9. surly
    unfriendly and inclined toward anger or irritation
    We must be ready to treat with him, John. He’ll ask a lot, I’ve no doubt, and be surly and difficult to manage; but we must have him.
  10. haunch
    the upper part of the leg of an animal, often used for food
    Dim yellow light through the rear window of the bar showed a vast pale form crouching upright and gnawing at a haunch of meat which it held in both hands.
  11. malevolent
    wishing or appearing to wish evil to others
    Lyra had an impression of bloodstained muzzle and face, small malevolent black eyes, and an immensity of dirty matted yellowish fur.
  12. profound
    of the greatest intensity; complete
    As if from Heaven itself, great curtains of delicate light hung and trembled. Pale green and rose-pink, and as transparent as the most fragile fabric, and at the bottom edge a profound and fiery crimson like the fires of Hell, they swung and shimmered loosely with more grace than the most skillful dancer.
  13. evanescent
    short-lived; tending to vanish or disappear
    In the evanescent delicacy she felt something as profound as she’d felt close to the bear.
  14. pinion
    wing of a bird
    Then it glided down and landed with brisk sweeps of its powerful pinions, and came to a halt on the wooden deck a few yards from Lyra.
  15. stately
    refined or imposing in manner or appearance
    The goose made his stately way to the stern of the ship, where he looked around, elegant and wild simultaneously, and a cause of fascinated terror to Lyra, who felt as though she were entertaining a ghost.
  16. indenture
    bind by a contract for work, as an apprentice or servant
    We heard he’s serving out a term as an indentured laborer; he en’t free, as we thought he might be, he’s under sentence.
  17. singular
    unusual or striking
    All three turned to him, and their own dæmons too, who had until then affected the extreme politeness of keeping their eyes modestly away from this singular creature, here without his body.
  18. sentry
    a person employed to keep watch for some anticipated event
    Iorek Byrnison bounded out of the depot and along the narrow street before turning into the main street of the town, past the courtyard of the sysselman’s residence where a flag hung in the still air and a sentry marched stiffly up and down, down the hill past the end of the street where the witch consul lived.
  19. career
    move headlong at high speed
    People stopped to watch or scuttled out of his careering way.
  20. shrewd
    good at tricking people to get something
    We shall have to fight like tigers. And consult the bear; he’s a shrewd warrior, that one.
  21. lope
    run easily
    As for speed, he can lope for hours without tiring.
  22. outcrop
    the part of a rock formation that appears above the surface
    They climbed the low ridge, among outcrops of black rock, and were soon out of sight of the party behind them.
  23. prattle
    speak about unimportant matters rapidly and incessantly
    So as he loped along, his great legs swinging tirelessly, she sat with the movement and said nothing. Perhaps he preferred that anyway, she thought; she must seem a little prattling cub, only just past babyhood, in the eyes of an armored bear.
  24. gesticulate
    show, express, or direct through movement
    The man explained, gesticulating fearfully.
  25. uncanny
    suggesting the operation of supernatural influences
    A human being with no dæmon was like someone without a face, or with their ribs laid open and their heart torn out: something unnatural and uncanny that belonged to the world of night-ghasts, not the waking world of sense.
  26. frail
    physically weak
    “No,” she said in a voice as frail and frightened as she felt.
  27. anorak
    a kind of heavy hooded jacket
    He was dressed in warm enough garments, a thickly padded and quilted coal-silk anorak and fur boots, but they had a secondhand look and didn’t fit well.
  28. suffuse
    become overspread as with a fluid, a color, or light
    The sky was pale in the southeast, and the air was suffused with a gray mist, through which the gyptians moved like bulky ghosts, loading sledges and harnessing dogs to the traces.
  29. carrion
    the dead and rotting body of an animal; unfit for human food
    So John Faa ordered a fire built, and they’re a going to cremate him, so as not to have him despoiled by carrion eaters.
  30. bearing
    the direction or path along which something moves or lies
    They stopped to eat and drink and rest in a fold of the hills, and to get their bearings, and while John Faa talked to Lee Scoresby about the way they might best use the balloon, Lyra thought of the spy-fly; and she asked Farder Coram what had happened to the smokeleaf tin he’d trapped it in.
  31. deftly
    in an agile manner
    He listened, and then took the lid of a biscuit tin and deftly folded it into a small flat cylinder.
  32. innate
    inborn or existing naturally
    She marveled at the skill of his hands; unlike most bears, he and his kin had opposable thumb claws with which they could hold things still to work on them; and he had some innate sense of the strength and flexibility of metals which meant that he only had to lift it once or twice, flex it this way and that, and he could run a claw over it in a circle to score it for folding.
  33. lichen
    a plant occurring in crusty patches on tree trunks or rocks
    At Lyra’s bidding he made two: one the same size as the original smokeleaf tin, and another just big enough to contain the tin itself and a quantity of hairs and bits of moss and lichen all packed down tight to smother the noise.
  34. teeming
    abundantly filled with especially living things
    Instead she asked lorek Byrnison about Svalbard, and listened eagerly as he told her of the slow-crawling glaciers, of the rocks and ice floes where the bright-tusked walruses lay in groups of a hundred or more, of the seas teeming with seals, of narwhals clashing their long white tusks above the icy water, of the great grim iron-bound coast, the cliffs a thousand feet and more high where the foul cliff-ghasts perched and swooped...
  35. pedantic
    marked by a narrow focus on or display of learning
    The voice that had spoken it was a Scholar’s, precise and pedantic and lazily arrogant, very much a Jordan College voice.
  36. rapier
    a straight sword with a narrow blade and two edges
    Eager to try, she snapped a stick off a snow-laden bush, trimmed all the side shoots off, and swished it from side to side like a rapier.
  37. feint
    deceive by a mock action
    When she was ready, she faced him, but she didn’t like to stab at him because he looked so peaceable. So she flourished it, feinting to right and left, not intending to hit him at all, and he didn’t move.
  38. parry
    impede the movement of
    She became exasperated, and threw herself into a furious attack, jabbing and lashing and thrusting and stabbing, and never once did she get past those paws. They moved everywhere, precisely in time to parry, precisely at the right spot to block.
  39. dirigible
    a steerable self-propelled aircraft
    You’d need a dirigible with a gas engine, something like a zeppelin, or else a good south wind.
  40. inhospitable
    unfavorable to life or growth
    Have you ever seen it? The bleakest barest most inhospitable godforsaken dead end of nowhere.
Created on Fri Jul 14 13:27:20 EDT 2017 (updated Thu Aug 17 10:00:29 EDT 2023)

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