The Subtle Knife: Chapters 4-6

by Philip Pullman
In the second book of Philip Pullman's His Dark Materials trilogy, Lyra and her new friend Will learn how to open windows into different worlds. They discover truths that will change their lives and the universe.

Here are links to our lists for The Subtle Knife: Chapters 1-3, Chapters 4-6, Chapters 7-9, Chapters 10-12, Chapters 13-15

Here are links to our lists for works by Philip Pullman: The Golden Compass, The Subtle Knife, The Amber Spyglass
50 words 84 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. poignant
    arousing powerful emotions, especially pity or sadness
    In her own Oxford there would have been a dozen places within five minutes’ walk, but this Oxford was so disconcertingly different, with patches of poignant familiarity right next to the downright outlandish: why had they painted those yellow lines on the road?
  2. anesthetic
    a drug that causes temporary loss of bodily sensations
    No anesthetic, no disinfectant, probably done with stone tools. They must have been tough, mustn’t they?
  3. putrefaction
    a state of decay usually accompanied by an offensive odor
    On the one hand he was kind and friendly and very clean and smartly dressed, but on the other hand Pantalaimon, inside her pocket, was plucking at her attention and begging her to be careful, because he was half-remembering something too; and from somewhere she sensed, not a smell, but the idea of a smell, and it was the smell of dung, of putrefaction.
  4. thud
    make a heavy, dull sound
    His heart thudded, because there was a picture of his own mother. Holding a baby. Him.
  5. baffle
    be a mystery or bewildering to
    There was no other mention in the index, and Will got up from the microfilm reader baffled. There must be some more information somewhere else; but where could he go next?
  6. vacuous
    devoid of intelligence
    He looked at her carefully, but he was no match for the bland and vacuous docility Lyra could command when she wanted to; and finally he nodded and went back to his newspaper.
  7. docile
    willing to be taught or led or supervised or directed
    He looked at her carefully, but he was no match for the bland and vacuous docility Lyra could command when she wanted to; and finally he nodded and went back to his newspaper.
  8. particle
    (nontechnical usage) a tiny piece of anything
    “You might not call it that. It’s elementary particles. In my world the Scholars call it Rusakov Particles, but normally they call it Dust...."
  9. amplify
    increase in size, volume or significance
    Normally they put detectors very deep underground, but what we’ve done instead is to set up an electromagnetic field around the detector that shuts out the things we don’t want and lets through the ones we do. Then we amplify the signal and put it through a computer.
  10. archaeologist
    an anthropologist who studies prehistoric culture
    Because one of our team, you see, is a bit of an amateur archaeologist And he discovered something one day that we couldn’t believe.
  11. consciousness
    an alert cognitive state in which you are aware of yourself
    They’re conscious. That’s right. Shadows are particles of consciousness.
  12. physicist
    a scientist trained in the science of matter and energy
    It didn’t make any sense in the way a physicist would expect. He got a piece of ivory, just a lump, and there were no Shadows with that. It didn’t react. But a carved ivory chess piece did. A big splinter of wood off a plank didn’t, but a wooden ruler did. And a carved wooden statuette had more.... I’m talking about elementary particles here, for goodness’ sake.
  13. aurora
    bands of light caused by charged solar particles
    A stream of dancing lights, for all the world like the shimmering curtains of the aurora, blazed across the screen.
  14. welter
    a confused multitude of things
    The screen responded as quickly as thought itself, and out of the welter of lines and flashes a series of pictures formed with perfect clarity: compasses, alpha and omega again, lightning, angel.
  15. clarity
    the quality of being coherent and easily understood
    The screen responded as quickly as thought itself, and out of the welter of lines and flashes a series of pictures formed with perfect clarity: compasses, alpha and omega again, lightning, angel.
  16. divination
    the art or gift of prophecy by supernatural means
    Yes, it’s Chinese. A form of divination—fortune-telling, really.... And, yes, they use sticks.
  17. geologist
    a specialist in the history of the Earth recorded in rocks
    Sometimes on an expedition like this you combine forces with people from another discipline—you know, geologists or whatever—to split the cost.
  18. avalanche
    a slide of large masses of snow, ice and mud down a mountain
    All his childish games came back to him, with himself and his father rescuing each other from avalanches or fighting pirates.
  19. subdued
    quieted and brought under control
    They were quarreling passionately, but in subdued voices, because of the quiet in the square and the people who were wandering past nearby.
  20. perceptive
    having the ability to understand
    Lyra wasn’t usually so perceptive, but something in his manner made her think: He’s afraid but he’s mastering his fear, like Iorek Byrnison said we had to do; like I did by the fish house at the frozen lake.
  21. conspicuous
    obvious to the eye or mind
    Luckily it was a noisy audience, full of children, and her excitement wasn’t conspicuous.
  22. genial
    diffusing warmth and friendliness
    My darling—the usual mixture of efficiency and chaos—all the stores are here but the physicist, a genial dimwit called Nelson, hasn't made any arrangements for carrying his damn balloons up into the mountains—having to twiddle our thumbs while he scrabbles around for transport.
  23. anomaly
    deviation from the normal or common order, form, or rule
    He told me of some narwhal-ivory carvings he'd found on a previous dig—carbon 14-dated to some incredible age, way outside the range of what was previously assumed; anomalous, in fact. Wouldn't it be strange if they'd come through my anomaly, from some other world?
  24. initiation
    a formal entry into an organization or position or office
    They'd known about it for centuries; part of the initiation of a medicine man involved going through and bringing back a trophy of some kind—though some never came back.
  25. orchestrate
    plan and direct (a complex undertaking)
    The holdup in Fairbanks was orchestrated by him, would you believe?
  26. stout
    courageous and dependable
    And I pretend to be bluff Major Parry, stout fellow in a crisis but not too much between the ears, what.
  27. catastrophic
    extremely harmful; bringing physical or financial ruin
    The conversation turned to the topic on everyone’s lips: the catastrophic changes taking place around them, which no one could see.
  28. toil
    work hard
    I tell you, friends, that was something worth toiling fifty years to see, a sight like that.
  29. haggle
    wrangle, as over a price or terms of an agreement
    It wasn’t easy to find someone willing to risk the journey in the fog, but Lee was persuasive, or his money was; and eventually an old Tartar from the Ob region agreed to take him there, after a lengthy bout of haggling.
  30. undulation
    a wavelike curve
    The driver wouldn’t tell him any more, and soon they moved on, tracking slowly over undulations and hollows and past outcrops of dim rock, dark through the pallid fog, until the old man said: “Observatory up there. You walk now. Path too crooked for sledge."
  31. taciturn
    habitually reserved and uncommunicative
    Lee had thought he was naturally taciturn, but prompted by Hester, he casually glanced across during the next break in the conversation to see the man’s dæmon, a snowy owl, glaring at him with bright orange eyes.
  32. inscrutable
    difficult or impossible to understand
    Lee knew that Hester would remain inscrutable, with her eyes half-closed and her ears flat along her back, and he put on a cheerful innocence as he looked from face to face.
  33. tourniquet
    a bandage that stops the flow of blood by applying pressure
    “Reckon my bullet must have hit an artery,” he said. “Let go my sleeve and I’ll make a tourniquet.”
  34. bleak
    offering little or no hope
    But he never had the chance to complete his question, because with a bleak little shiver the owl dæmon disappeared.
  35. bludgeon
    strike with a club
    While they bludgeoned his dying body, the saint’s dæmon was borne upward by cherubs and offered a spray of palm, the badge of a martyr.
  36. renegade
    someone who rebels and becomes an outlaw
    “No, we’re renegades,” she said. “Not by our choice, but by his malice. Once the Church learns about this, we’re done for anyway."
  37. spectral
    resembling or characteristic of a phantom
    It might have been a good land to live in, but for the spectral forms that drifted like mist over the grasslands and congregated near streams and low-lying water.
  38. tract
    an extended area of land
    “Are they alive, do you think, Serafina Pekkala?” said Ruta Skadi as the witches circled high above a group of the things that stood motionless at the edge of a tract of forest.
  39. evanescence
    the event of fading and gradually vanishing from sight
    In some lights they were hardly there at all, just visible as a drifting quality in the light, a rhythmic evanescence, like veils of transparency turning before a mirror.
  40. oblique
    slanting or inclined in direction or course or position
    The late afternoon sun slanted across the grassland, drawing an intense green out of the ground and a dusty gold out of the air, and in that rich oblique light the witches saw a band of travelers making for the bridge, some on foot, some in horse-drawn carts, two of them riding horses.
  41. ford
    cross a river where it's shallow
    There was a father with his child who had tried to ford the river to get away, but a Specter had caught up with them, and as the child clung to the father’s back, crying, the man slowed down and stood waist-deep in the water, arrested and helpless.
  42. sate
    fill to contentment
    As the last of the Specters drifted away, sated, Serafina flew down and alighted in front of a woman sitting on the grass, a strong, healthy-looking woman whose cheeks were red and whose fair hair was glossy.
  43. suffuse
    cause to spread or flush or flood through, over, or across
    The evening sun suffused the air with a golden light in which every detail was clear and nothing was dazzling, and the faces of the children and the man and woman too seemed immortal and strong and beautiful.
  44. scavenge
    collect discarded or refused material
    But Specter-orphans are common, as you can imagine—children whose parents have been taken; they gather in bands and roam the country, and sometimes they hire themselves out to adults to look for food and supplies in a Specter-ridden area, and sometimes they simply drift about and scavenge.
  45. beset
    assail or attack on all sides
    And when the fog came, after the great storm, I was beset by Specters in the hills behind the city of Sant’Elia, on my way homeward.
  46. devastation
    the state of being decayed or destroyed
    But the devastation would be enormous, and the consequences for us...I can’t imagine it.
  47. outstrip
    go far ahead of
    They weren’t armed, but on the other hand they were flying easily within their power, and might even outstrip her if it came to a chase.
  48. pinion
    wing of a bird
    At once they beat their wings and surged forward, and she darted with them, surfing on the turbulence their pinions caused in the air and relishing the speed and power it added to her flight.
  49. jagged
    having a sharply uneven surface or outline
    As soon as the angel spoke, she fixed her attention on three jagged peaks below her and memorized their configuration exactly.
  50. drone
    make a monotonous low dull sound
    And from every direction, she could see more flights of angels winging toward it, and not only angels, but machines too: steel-winged craft gliding like albatrosses, glass cabins under flickering dragonfly wings, droning zeppelins like huge bumblebees—all making for the fortress that Lord Asriel was building on the mountains at the edge of the world.
Created on Thu Sep 07 11:06:42 EDT 2017 (updated Thu Sep 21 16:22:38 EDT 2017)

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.