The Scarlet Letter: Chapters 9–13

by Nathaniel Hawthorne
After having a child out of wedlock, Hester Prynne is shunned by her Puritan community and forced to wear a scarlet "A" on her clothing—but Hester is not the only one who has transgressed. This classic novel explores guilt, sin, and hypocrisy.

Here are links to our lists for the novel: The Custom-House, Chapters 1–4, Chapters 5–8, Chapters 9–13, Chapters 14–19, Chapters 20–24

Here are links to our lists for other works by Nathaniel Hawthorne: The Scarlet Letter, The Blithedale Romance, The House of the Seven Gables, Dr. Heidegger's Experiment, Feathertop, Rappaccini's Daughter, The Minister's Black Veil, Young Goodman Brown, The Birthmark
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Full list of words from this list:

words only definitions & notes
  1. vindicate
    maintain, uphold, or defend
    Then why — since the choice was with himself — should the individual, whose connexion with the fallen woman had been the most intimate and sacred of them all, come forward to vindicate his claim to an inheritance so little desirable?
  2. sagacity
    the trait of having wisdom and good judgment
    If the latter possess native sagacity, and a nameless something more, — let us call it intuition; if he show no intrusive egotism, nor disagreeable prominent characteristics of his own; if he have the power, which must be born with him, to bring his mind into such affinity with his patient's, that this last shall unawares have spoken what he imagines himself only to have thought...
  3. vilify
    spread negative information about
    Here the pale clergyman piled up his library, rich with parchment-bound folios of the Fathers, and the lore of Rabbis, and monkish erudition, of which the Protestant divines, even while they vilified and decried that class of writers, were yet constrained often to avail themselves.
  4. inimical
    tending to obstruct or cause harm
    In other words, Mr. Dimmesdale, whose sensibility of nerve often produced the effect of spiritual intuition, would become vaguely aware that something inimical to his peace had thrust itself into relation with him.
  5. manifestation
    an appearance in bodily form
    "Thus, a sickness," continued Roger Chillingworth, going on, in an unaltered tone, without heeding the interruption, but standing up and confronting the emaciated and white-cheeked minister, with his low, dark, and misshapen figure, — "a sickness, a sore place, if we may so call it, in your spirit hath immediately its appropriate manifestation in your bodily frame..."
  6. palliate
    lessen or to try to lessen the seriousness or extent of
    The young clergyman, after a few hours of privacy, was sensible that the disorder of his nerves had hurried him into an unseemly outbreak of temper, which there had been nothing in the physician's words to excuse or palliate.
  7. latent
    not presently active
    Calm, gentle, passionless, as he appeared, there was yet, we fear, a quiet depth of malice, hitherto latent, but active now, in this unfortunate old man, which led him to imagine a more intimate revenge than any mortal had ever wreaked upon an enemy.
  8. antipathy
    a feeling of intense dislike
    His gestures, his gait, his grizzled beard, his slightest and most indifferent acts, the very fashion of his garments, were odious in the clergyman's sight; a token implicitly to be relied on of a deeper antipathy in the breast of the latter than he was willing to acknowledge to himself.
  9. ethereal
    of heaven or the spirit
    It kept him down on a level with the lowest; him, the man of ethereal attributes, whose voice the angels might else have listened to and answered!
  10. expiation
    the act of atoning for sin or wrongdoing
    And thus, while standing on the scaffold, in this vain show of expiation, Mr. Dimmesdale was overcome with a great horror of mind, as if the universe were gazing at a scarlet token on his naked breast, right over his heart.
  11. admonish
    warn strongly; put on guard
    Certainly, if the meteor kindled up the sky, and disclosed the earth, with an awfulness that admonished Hester Prynne and the clergyman of the day of judgment, then might Roger Chillingworth have passed with them for the arch-fiend, standing there with a smile and scowl, to claim his own.
  12. replete
    deeply filled or permeated
    The next day, however, being the Sabbath, he preached a discourse which was held to be the richest and most powerful, and the most replete with heavenly influences, that had ever proceeded from his lips.
  13. scurrilous
    expressing offensive, insulting, or scandalous criticism
    Satan dropped it there, I take it, intending a scurrilous jest against your reverence.
  14. portent
    a sign of something about to happen
    "But did your reverence hear of the portent that was seen last night? a great red letter in the sky — the letter A, which we interpret to stand for Angel. For, as our good Governor Winthrop was made an angel this past night, it was doubtless held fit that there should be some notice thereof!"
  15. despotic
    having the characteristics of a tyrannical ruler
    The public is despotic in its temper; it is capable of denying common justice when too strenuously demanded as a right; but quite as frequently it awards more than justice, when the appeal is made, as despots love to have it made, entirely to its generosity.
Created on Tue Mar 05 15:35:07 EST 2013 (updated Thu Jul 03 11:33:22 EDT 2025)

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