"Boar Out There" by Cynthia Rylant

In this vignette from Cynthia Rylant's collection Every Living Thing, Jenny is the only one brave enough to look for a boar that lives in the woods by her town.
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Full list of words from this list:

words only definitions & notes
  1. boar
    a wild swine that is the ancestor of most domestic pigs
    Everyone in Glen Morgan knew there was a wild boar in the woods over by the Miller farm.
  2. splintery
    resembling or consisting of or embedded with long slender fragments of (especially) wood having sharp points
    The boar was out beyond the splintery rail fence and past the old black Dodge that somehow had ended up in the woods and was missing most of its parts.
    These descriptions of being broken or missing foreshadow the appearance of the boar. They could also represent the unhealthy relationship between humans and nature, because 1) the broken fence is supposed to separate the farm from the woods; and 2) the car with the missing parts is not useful to anything in the woods.
  3. tremble
    move quickly and involuntarily up and down or sideways
    She imagined him running heavily through the trees, ignoring the sharp thorns and briars that raked his back and sprang away trembling.
    The phrase "sprang away trembling" could later describe the boar. But at this point, Jenny has not met the boar, so she imagines that it is the scary rather than the scared one. So here, the thorns and briars (a briar is a plant with thorns) are the ones that are trembling because they have come into contact with the charging boar.
  4. spear
    pierce with a long pointed rod
    The note would glide through the night and spear the heart of the moon.
    The verb is used figuratively here, because the boar does not actually have a spear, nor can its cry spear the moon. This example sentence, along with her belief that the boar has a spear-like, musical, golden horn on its head, shows that Jenny has a strong imagination.
  5. damp
    slightly wet
    Moving slowly over damp brown leaves, Jenny could sense her ears tingle and fan out as she listened for thick breathing from the trees.
  6. linger
    be about
    She needed to be reminded that there was a world above and apart from the trees--a world of space and air, air that didn't linger all about her, didn't press deep into her skin, as forest air did.
  7. stamp
    walk heavily
    She forgot to breathe, standing there listening to the stamping of hooves, and she choked and coughed.
  8. support
    the act of bearing the weight of or strengthening
    His large gray-black body shivered as he waited just beyond the shadow of the tree she held for support.
    The definition connects to physical support, which a tree can give. But Jenny also holds onto the tree for emotional support, because she is now face to face with the boar.
  9. astonishingly
    in an amazing manner; to everyone's surprise
    His nostrils glistened, and his eyes; but astonishingly, he was silent.
  10. glisten
    be shiny, as if wet
    He shivered and glistened and was absolutely silent.
  11. rigid
    fixed and unmoving
    Jenny matched his silence, and her body was rigid, but not her eyes.
    Compare the example sentence to this one: "She stood stiff with wet eyes and knew she could always pray, but for some reason didn't." In both moments, Jenny's body does not move ("rigid" and "stiff" are synonyms), but her eyes fill with tears and travel along the boar's body.
  12. bristle
    rise up as in fear
    They traveled along his scarred, bristling back to his thick, hind legs.
    The definition is for a verb, but "bristling" is used as a participial adjective to describe the boar's back. The boar's back could also be bristling because it is covered with bristles (stiff hairs) that are now rising up in fear.
  13. ragged
    having an irregular outline
    Tears spilling and flooding her face, Jenny stared at the boar's ragged ears, caked with blood.
  14. snort
    make a puffing sound by exhaling hard
    Then the boar snorted and jerked.
  15. terror
    an overwhelming feeling of fear and anxiety
    Jenny stood like a rock as the boar wildly flung his head and in terror bolted past her.
Created on Fri Mar 13 12:26:10 EDT 2015 (updated Mon Aug 06 15:18:09 EDT 2018)

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