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Unit 4: Vocabulary from Readings 3

This list covers "The Destructive Male," "Woman’s Right to Suffrage," and "The Story of an Hour."
12 words 6 learners

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Full list of words from this list:

  1. aggrandize
    embellish; increase the scope, power, or importance of
    The male element is a destructive force, stern, selfish, aggrandizing, loving war, violence, conquest, acquisition, breeding in the material and moral world alike discord, disorder, disease, and death.
  2. disfranchised
    deprived of the rights of citizenship especially the right to vote
    Though disfranchised, we have few women in the best sense; we have simply so many reflections, varieties, and dilutions of the masculine gender.
  3. arrant
    complete and without qualification
    To protest against the intrigue, bribery, and corruption of public life, to desire that her sons might follow some business that did not involve lying, cheating, and a hard, grinding selfishness, would be arrant nonsense.
  4. expend
    use up or consume fully
    For example, the love of acquisition and conquest, the very pioneers of civilization, when expended on the earth, the sea, the elements, the riches and forces of nature, are powers of destruction when used to subjugate one man to another or to sacrifice nations to ambition.
  5. subjugate
    make subservient; force to submit or subdue
    For example, the love of acquisition and conquest, the very pioneers of civilization, when expended on the earth, the sea, the elements, the riches and forces of nature, are powers of destruction when used to subjugate one man to another or to sacrifice nations to ambition.
  6. indictment
    a formal document charging a person with some offense
    Friends and fellow citizens: I stand before you tonight under indictment for the alleged crime of having voted at the last presidential election, without having a lawful right to vote.
  7. alleged
    declared but not proved
    Friends and fellow citizens: I stand before you tonight under indictment for the alleged crime of having voted at the last presidential election, without having a lawful right to vote.
  8. posterity
    all future generations
    The preamble of the Federal Constitution says: “We, the people of the United States, in order to form a more perfect union, establish justice, insure domestic tranquillity, provide for the common defense, promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.”
  9. odious
    extremely repulsive or unpleasant
    It is an odious aristocracy; a hateful oligarchy of sex; the most hateful aristocracy ever established on the face of the globe; an oligarchy of wealth, where the rich govern the poor.
  10. oligarchy
    a political system governed by a few people
    An oligarchy of learning, where the educated govern the ignorant, or even an oligarchy of race, where the Saxon rules the African, might be endured; but this oligarchy of sex, which makes father, brothers, husband, sons, the oligarchs over the mother and sisters, the wife and daughters, of every household—which ordains all men sovereigns, all women subjects, carries dissension, discord, and rebellion into every home of the nation.
  11. tumultuous
    characterized by unrest or disorder or insubordination
    Now her bosom rose and fell tumultuously. She was beginning to recognize this thing that was approaching to possess her, and she was striving to beat it back with her will—as powerless as her two white slender hands would have been.
  12. importunity
    insistent solicitation and entreaty
    She arose at length and opened the door to her sister’s importunities.
Created on Wed Mar 03 09:07:26 EST 2021 (updated Fri Mar 12 12:10:01 EST 2021)

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