The Tempest: Act 3

by William Shakespeare
After a shipwreck, a group of noblemen wash up on an enchanted island ruled by the magician Prospero. Read the full text here.

Here are links to our lists for the play: Act 1, Act 2, Act 3, Act 4, Act 5

Here are links to our lists for other plays by William Shakespeare: Romeo and Juliet, Hamlet, King Lear, Julius Caesar, Much Ado About Nothing, Twelfth Night, Measure for Measure, Othello, A Midsummer Night's Dream
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Full list of words from this list:

words only definitions & notes
  1. odious
    extremely repulsive or unpleasant
    This my mean task
    Would be as heavy to me as odious, but
    The mistress which I serve quickens what’s dead
    And makes my labors pleasures.
  2. injunction
    a formal command or admonition
    I must remove
    Some thousands of these logs and pile them up,
    Upon a sore injunction.
  3. peerless
    eminent beyond or above comparison
    But you, O you,
    So perfect and so peerless, are created
    Of every creature’s best.
  4. precept
    a rule of personal conduct
    But I prattle
    Something too wildly, and my father’s precepts
    I therein do forget.
  5. bondage
    the state of being under the control of another person
    Ay, with a heart as willing
    As bondage e’er of freedom.
  6. batter
    strike violently and repeatedly
    There thou mayst brain him,
    Having first seized his books, or with a log
    Batter his skull, or paunch him with a stake,
    Or cut his weasand with thy knife.
  7. sot
    a chronic drinker
    Remember
    First to possess his books, for without them
    He’s but a sot, as I am, nor hath not
    One spirit to command.
  8. nonpareil
    model of excellence or perfection of a kind
    He himself
    Calls her a nonpareil. I never saw a woman
    But only Sycorax my dam and she;
    But she as far surpasseth Sycorax
    As great’st does least.
  9. jocund
    full of or showing high-spirited merriment
    Thou mak’st me merry. I am full of pleasure.
    Let us be jocund.
  10. flout
    treat with contemptuous disregard
    Flout ’em and cout ’em
    And scout ’em and flout ’em!
    Thought is free.
  11. hark
    listen; used mostly in the imperative
    What harmony is this? My good friends, hark.
  12. viand
    a choice or delicious dish
    No matter, since
    They have left their viands behind, for we have
    stomachs.
  13. bereft
    sorrowful through loss or deprivation
    Thee of thy son, Alonso,
    They have bereft; and do pronounce by me
    Ling’ring perdition, worse than any death
    Can be at once, shall step by step attend
    You and your ways, whose wraths to guard you from—
  14. perdition
    the place or state in which one suffers eternal punishment
    Thee of thy son, Alonso,
    They have bereft; and do pronounce by me
    Ling’ring perdition, worse than any death
    Can be at once, shall step by step attend
    You and your ways, whose wraths to guard you from—
  15. fiend
    an evil supernatural being
    But one fiend at a time,
    I’ll fight their legions o’er.
Created on Thu Feb 18 12:45:35 EST 2016 (updated Wed Aug 06 13:37:43 EDT 2025)

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