Death Comes for the Archbishop: Book Three

by Willa Cather
Following the Mexican-American War, Bishop Jean Latour and Father Joseph Vaillant work to build a new Roman Catholic dicoese in New Mexico.

Here are links to our lists for the novel: Prologue–Book One, Book Two, Book Three, Book Four, Book Five, Book Six, Book Seven, Book Eight, Book Nine

Here is a link to My Antonia by Willa Cather.
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Full list of words from this list:

words only definitions & notes
  1. cordial
    politely warm and friendly
    Gallegos was cordial and most ceremoniously polite.
  2. cataract
    disease that involves the clouding of the lens of the eye
    His right eye was overgrown by a cataract, and he kept his head tilted as if he were trying to see around it.
  3. thicket
    a dense growth of bushes
    It was like a country of dry ashes; no juniper, no rabbit brush, nothing but thickets of withered, dead-looking cactus, and patches of wild pumpkin--the only vegetation that had any vitality.
  4. vitality
    the property of being able to survive and grow
    It was like a country of dry ashes; no juniper, no rabbit brush, nothing but thickets of withered, dead-looking cactus, and patches of wild pumpkin--the only vegetation that had any vitality.
  5. petrify
    change into stone
    Father Latour found these were petrified sand dunes; long waves of soft, gritty yellow rock, shining and bare except for a few lines of dark juniper that grew out of the weather cracks,--little trees, and very, very old.
  6. inflection
    the patterns of stress and intonation in a language
    He had noticed how kind the Indian voice could be when it was kind at all; a slight inflection made one feel that one had received a great compliment.
  7. superfluous
    serving no useful purpose; having no excuse for being
    In the Indian conception of language, such attachments were superfluous and unpleasing, perhaps.
  8. firmament
    the sphere on which celestial bodies appear to be projected
    The two companions sat, each thinking his own thoughts as night closed in about them; a blue night set with stars, the bulk of the solitary mesas cutting into the firmament.
  9. vehement
    marked by extreme intensity of emotions or convictions
    Father Vaillant's, for example, was kindly but too vehement.
  10. vast
    unusually great in size or amount or extent or scope
    From the flat red sea of sand rose great rock mesas, generally Gothic in outline, resembling vast cathedrals.
  11. vista
    the visual percept of a region
    They were not crowded together in disorder, but placed in wide spaces, long vistas between.
  12. inconceivable
    totally unlikely
    The great tables of granite set down in an empty plain were inconceivable without their attendant clouds, which were a part of them, as the smoke is part of the censer, or the foam of the wave.
  13. yearn
    desire strongly or persistently
    The rock, when one came to think of it, was the utmost expression of human need; even mere feeling yearned for it; it was the highest comparison of loyalty in love and friendship.
  14. noxious
    injurious to physical or mental health
    By its dark blue-green leaves, large and coarse-toothed, Father Latour recognized a species of the noxious datura.
  15. abyss
    a bottomless gulf or pit
    At the very edge of the mesa, overhanging the abyss so that its retaining wall was like a part of the cliff itself, was the old warlike church of Ácoma, with its two stone towers.
  16. antediluvian
    so extremely old as seeming to belong to an earlier period
    He felt as if he were celebrating Mass at the bottom of the sea, for antediluvian creatures; for types of life so old, so hardened, so shut within their shells, that the sacrifice on Calvary could hardly reach back so far.
  17. cloister
    residence that is a place of religious seclusion
    Besides the church proper there was the cloister, large, thick-walled, which must have required an enormous labour of portage from the plain.
  18. epoch
    a period marked by distinctive character
    He was on a naked rock in the desert, in the stone age, a prey to homesickness for his own kind, his own epoch, for European man and his glorious history of desire and dreams.
  19. crustacean
    mainly aquatic arthropod usually having a segmented body
    Something reptilian he felt here, something that had endured by immobility, a kind of life out of reach, like the crustaceans in their armour.
  20. ecclesiastical
    of or associated with a church
    His errands were seldom of an ecclesiastical nature.
  21. whet
    make keen or more acute
    The difficulty of obtaining an interesting and varied diet on a naked rock seemed only to whet his appetite and tempt his resourcefulness.
  22. girth
    the distance around something, especially a person's body
    One summer the Friar, who did not make long journeys now that he had grown large in girth, decided that he would like company,-- someone to admire his fine garden, his ingenious kitchen, his airy loggia with its rugs and water jars, where he meditated and took his after-dinner siesta.
  23. malediction
    the act of calling down a curse that invokes evil
    He caught up the empty pewter mug at his right and threw it at the clumsy lad with a malediction.
  24. indignant
    angered at something unjust or wrong
    He felt, indeed, very remorseful and uncomfortable, also indignant with his departed guests.
  25. inclination
    an attitude of mind that favors one alternative over others
    Mechanically he took the turkey from the spit, not because he felt any inclination for food, but from an instinct of compassion, quite as if the bird could suffer from being burned to a crisp.
  26. vassal
    a person who owes allegiance and service to a feudal lord
    He was accustomed to command, not to entreat, and he retained the respect of his Indian vassals to the end.
  27. defile
    make dirty or spotty
    The execution was not followed by any sacrilege to the church or defiling of holy vessels, but merely by a division of the Padre's stores and household goods.
Created on Mon Mar 25 12:14:34 EDT 2013 (updated Mon Jul 16 17:31:42 EDT 2018)

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