The Amber Spyglass: Chapters 32-38

by Philip Pullman
When the third book of Philip Pullman's His Dark Materials trilogy begins, Lyra has been kidnapped, and both Will and the evil forces of the Consistorial Court are searching for her. Lyra and Will must fight against a power-hungry archangel as they learn more about the mysterious substance called Dust.

Here are links to our lists for The Amber Spyglass: Chapters 1-8, Chapters 9-16, Chapters 17-23, Chapters 24-31, Chapters 32-38

Here are links to our lists for works by Philip Pullman: The Golden Compass, The Subtle Knife, The Amber Spyglass
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Full list of words from this list:

words only definitions & notes
  1. passivity
    the trait of remaining inactive; a lack of initiative
    And from the absolute passivity of their limbs, they seemed in the last stages of exhaustion.
  2. undulation
    a wavelike curve
    It was nowhere entirely flat; gentle undulations and little ridges and gullies varied the surface wherever she looked, and here and there she saw a stand of trees so tall they seemed to be constructed rather than grown.
  3. relish
    derive or receive pleasure from
    She stood for a long time with the sun on her head and her body, relishing the cool mud under her feet and the cold flow of springwater around her calves.
  4. lateral
    situated at or extending to the side
    The leader moved ahead a little, trunk raised, and they could see how he propelled himself with powerful backward strokes of his lateral limbs.
  5. imposition
    an uncalled-for burden
    It was quite unlike the brutal, rational way roads in Will’s world sliced through hillsides and leapt across valleys on bridges of concrete. This was part of the landscape, not an imposition on it.
  6. bask
    expose oneself to warmth and light, as for relaxation
    Instead, they had to point: at the trees, in amazement at their size and splendor; at a flock of birds, the strangest they had ever seen, their fore and aft wings giving them a twisting, screwing motion through the air; at a fat blue lizard as long as a horse basking in the very middle of the road (the wheeled creatures divided to ride on either side of it, and it took no notice at all).
  7. rapture
    a state of elated bliss
    The thundering of the wheels, the rush of the grassland on either side, the sure and powerful lean into the broad curve ahead, the clearheaded rapture of speed—the creatures loved this, and Will and Lyra felt their joy and laughed in happy response.
  8. ruddy
    inclined to a healthy reddish color
    Mary had come out of one of the huts, her faded blue shirt, her stocky figure, her warm, ruddy cheeks both strange and familiar.
  9. groggy
    stunned or confused and slow to react
    Lyra sat up groggily to see Mary talking to five or six of the mulefa, who were surrounding her, clearly excited; but whether they were angry or joyful, she couldn’t tell.
  10. procession
    the action of a group moving ahead in regular formation
    And out of it was coming a procession of ghosts.
  11. unaccountable
    not to be explained
    It was one of those moments when we suddenly recall a dream that we’ve unaccountably forgotten, and back in a flood comes all the emotion we felt in our sleep.
  12. injunction
    a formal command or admonition
    All that was left was the sweetness of that feeling, and the injunction to tell them stories.
  13. infusion
    a solution obtained by steeping or soaking a substance
    “Well, now,” Mary said when they’d eaten some bread and fruit and drunk a scalding infusion of something like mint.
  14. unobtrusive
    not undesirably noticeable
    Steadily they filled their bags, and Mary led them unobtrusively back to the edge of the marsh, for the tide was turning.
  15. savanna
    a flat grassland in tropical or subtropical regions
    But animals migrated for a purpose; when you saw herds of reindeer moving across the tundra, or wildebeest crossing the savanna, you knew they were going where the food was, or to places where it was good to mate and bear offspring.
  16. topple
    fall down, as if collapsing
    Boughs groaned, twigs snapped, great balks of green wood snapped off like dry sticks and fell all the long way to the ground, and then the crown itself—the crown of the very tree she knew so well—leaned and leaned and slowly began to topple.
  17. inexorable
    impossible to prevent, resist, or stop
    In fact, the whole sky seemed to be flowing with it, a great inexorable flood pouring out of the world, out of all the worlds, into some ultimate emptiness.
  18. nurture
    provide with nourishment
    The mulefa had told her that the sraf, which had nurtured their lives and their world for thirty-three thousand years, had begun to fail just over three hundred years ago.
  19. brutish
    resembling a beast; showing lack of human sensibility
    Thought, imagination, feeling, would all wither and blow away, leaving nothing but a brutish automatism; and that brief period when life was conscious of itself would flicker out like a candle in every one of the billions of worlds where it had burned brightly.
  20. frail
    physically weak
    As she looked again at the clouds and the moon in the Dust flow, they looked as frail and doomed as a dam of little twigs and tiny pebbles trying to hold back the Mississippi.
  21. subside
    wear off or die down
    When the intensity of her feeling began to subside, and exhaustion took its place, she made her way slowly down the hill toward the village.
  22. surreptitiously
    in a secretive manner
    She and Lyra were on the riverbank, Lyra to wash, and Mary to look, surreptitiously, for the man’s footprints.
  23. limpid
    clear and bright
    All around them the wide, clear morning lay limpid in the hollows and pearly blue in the warm air above.
  24. dappled
    having spots or patches of color
    The undergrowth got thicker as they went down the valley; the stream went into tunnels of green and emerged in dappled clearings, only to tumble over a lip of stone and bury itself in the green again, and they had to follow it as much by hearing as by sight.
  25. evangelize
    preach the gospel to
    He was so close to success now that for the first time he found himself speculating on what he would do afterward, and whether he would please the Kingdom of Heaven more by going back to Geneva or staying to evangelize this world.
  26. invigorate
    impart strength or vitality to
    They took off their shoes and socks and sat down on the mossy rocks at the edge of the stream, dipping their feet in the cold water and feeling the shock of it invigorate their blood.
  27. reverberate
    ring or echo with sound
    He stopped in astonishment: the word angel reverberated in his mind.
  28. oblivious
    lacking conscious awareness of
    They were holding hands, talking together, heads close, oblivious to everything else; she could see that even from a distance.
  29. saturate
    infuse or fill completely
    The Dust pouring down from the stars had found a living home again, and these children-no-longer-children, saturated with love, were the cause of it all.
  30. implacable
    incapable of being appeased or pacified
    This little brown bird was radiating an implacable ferocity as palpable as heat, and Serafina was afraid of it.
  31. palpable
    able to be felt by tactile examination
    This little brown bird was radiating an implacable ferocity as palpable as heat, and Serafina was afraid of it.
  32. crucial
    of extreme importance; vital to the resolution of a crisis
    She knew nothing about Mary except that she came from the same world as Will, and that her part in the events was crucial.
  33. humble
    low or inferior in station or quality
    “And for most of that time, wisdom has had to work in secret, whispering her words, moving like a spy through the humble places of the world while the courts and palaces are occupied by her enemies.”
  34. distressed
    afflicted with or marked by anxious uneasiness or trouble
    Mary, distressed, said, “How can we tell Lyra?”
  35. seep
    pass gradually or leak or as if through small openings
    They fought it, they pushed it away, but it was just like the gray light that seeps into the sky and extinguishes the stars: it crept past every barrier they could put up and under every blind and around the edges of every curtain they could draw against it.
  36. radiance
    the quality of being bright and sending out rays of light
    The bright moonlight, reflected off the white sand, lit up her face with a radiance that seemed to draw out some other radiance from inside her; her eyes glittered, and her expression was so serious and absorbed that Will could have fallen in love with her again if love didn’t already possess every fiber of his being.
  37. austere
    of a stern or strict bearing or demeanor
    It was impossible to tell if she was old or young, but her expression was austere and compassionate, and both Will and Lyra felt as if she knew them to their hearts.
  38. surly
    unfriendly and inclined toward anger or irritation
    “And if you help everyone else in your worlds to do that, by helping them to learn and understand about themselves and each other and the way everything works, and by showing them how to be kind instead of cruel, and patient instead of hasty, and cheerful instead of surly, and above all how to keep their minds open and free and curious..."
  39. resentful
    full of or marked by indignant ill will
    I shall decide what I do. If you say my work is fighting, or healing, or exploring, or whatever you might say, I’ll always be thinking about it. And if I do end up doing that, I’ll be resentful because it’ll feel as if I didn’t have a choice, and if I don’t do it, I’ll feel guilty because I should. Whatever I do, I will choose it, no one else.
  40. lithe
    moving and bending with ease
    Pantalaimon was now an animal whose name he couldn’t quite find: like a large and powerful ferret, red-gold in color, lithe and sinuous and full of grace.
  41. subtlety
    the quality of being difficult to detect or analyze
    But she was a cat of no ordinary size, and her fur was lustrous and rich, with a thousand different glints and shades of ink black, shadow gray, the blue of a deep lake under a noon sky, mist-lavender-moonlight-fog...To see the meaning of the word subtlety, you had only to look at her fur.
  42. resolute
    firm in purpose or belief
    A new mood had taken hold of him, and he felt resolute and peaceful.
  43. blissful
    completely happy and contented
    So, wondering whether any lovers before them had made this blissful discovery, they lay together as the earth turned slowly and the moon and stars blazed above them.
  44. frumpy
    drab, old-fashioned, and unattractive
    Dame Hannah had been at that first dinner, too, and if Lyra was surprised to see her here now, she greeted her politely, and found that her memory was at fault: for this Dame Hannah was much cleverer, and more interesting, and kindlier by far than the dim and frumpy person she remembered.
  45. wane
    become smaller
    It seemed that the power of the Church had increased greatly, and that many brutal laws had been passed, but that the power had waned as quickly as it had grown: upheavals in the Magisterium had toppled the zealots and brought more liberal factions into power.
  46. faction
    a dissenting clique
    It seemed that the power of the Church had increased greatly, and that many brutal laws had been passed, but that the power had waned as quickly as it had grown: upheavals in the Magisterium had toppled the zealots and brought more liberal factions into power.
  47. upheaval
    a violent disturbance
    In fact, Lord Asriel had done nothing of the sort, but Jordan College was rich, and the Master had money of his own, even after the recent upheavals.
  48. revel
    take delight in
    Once she would have reveled in showing it off to all her urchin friends, and making them goggle with fear, but Will had taught her the value of silence and discretion.
  49. discretion
    refined taste; tact
    Once she would have reveled in showing it off to all her urchin friends, and making them goggle with fear, but Will had taught her the value of silence and discretion.
  50. sonorous
    full and loud and deep
    All the different bells of the city chimed, once each, this one high, that one low, some close by, others farther off, one cracked and peevish, another grave and sonorous, but agreeing in all their different voices on what the time was, even if some of them got to it a little more slowly than others.
Created on Thu Sep 07 13:50:51 EDT 2017 (updated Wed Sep 27 09:33:22 EDT 2017)

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