The Volatile Truth of Our Words Should Continually Betray the Inadequacy of the Residual Statement
Walden: List 6
In this classic of the transcendentalist movement, Thoreau explains what he learned by living simply and in seclusion near a pond in eastern Massachusetts. Read the full text here.This list covers "The Pond in Winter"–"Conclusion."
Here are links to our lists for the memoir: List 1, List 2, List 3, List 4, List 5, List 6
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Full list of words from this list:
- dormant
in a condition of biological rest or suspended animation
Like the marmots in the surrounding hills, it closes its eye-lids and becomes dormant for three months or more.
- grub
a soft thick wormlike larva of certain insects
The perch swallows the grub -worm, the pickerel swallows the perch, and the fisherman swallows the pickerel; and so all the chinks in the scale of being are filled.
- cadaverous
of or relating to a corpse
They possess a quite dazzling and transcendent beauty which separates them by a wide interval from the cadaverous cod and haddock whose fame is trumpeted in our streets.
- capacious
large in the amount that can be contained
It is surprising that they are caught here,—that in this deep and capacious spring, far beneath the rattling teams and chaises and tinkling sleighs that travel the Walden road, this great gold and emerald fish swims.
- convulsive
affected by involuntary jerky muscular contractions
Easily, with a few convulsive quirks, they give up their watery ghosts, like a mortal translated before his time to the thin air of heaven.
- chasm
a deep opening in the earth's surface
No doubt many a smiling valley with its stretching cornfields occupies exactly such a "horrid chasm," from which the waters have receded, though it requires the insight and the far sight of the geologist to convince the unsuspecting inhabitants of this fact.
- arbitrarily
in a random or indiscriminate manner
In one instance, on a line arbitrarily chosen, the depth did not vary more than one foot in thirty rods; and generally, near the middle, I could calculate the variation for each one hundred feet in any direction beforehand within three or four inches.
- shoal
a sandbank in a stretch of water that is visible at low tide
Cape becomes bar, and plain shoal, and valley and gorge deep water and channel.
- vitiate
take away the legal force of or render ineffective
If we knew all the laws of Nature, we should need only one fact, or the description of one actual phenomenon, to infer all the particular results at that point. Now we know only a few laws, and our result is vitiated, not, of course, by any confusion or irregularity in Nature, but by our ignorance of essential elements in the calculation.
- concur
be in agreement
Our notions of law and harmony are commonly confined to those instances which we detect; but the harmony which results from a far greater number of seemingly conflicting, but really concurring, laws, which we have not detected, is still more wonderful.
- aggregate
a sum total of many heterogeneous things taken together
Such a rule of the two diameters not only guides us toward the sun in the system and the heart in man, but draw lines through the length and breadth of the aggregate of a man's particular daily behaviors and waves of life into his coves and inlets, and where they intersect will be the height or depth of his character.
- advent
arrival that has been awaited
At the advent of each individual into this life, may we not suppose that such a bar has risen to the surface somewhere?
- conversant
well informed about or knowing thoroughly
It is true, we are such poor navigators that our thoughts, for the most part, stand off and on upon a harborless coast, are conversant only with the bights of the bays of poesy, or steer for the public ports of entry, and go into the dry docks of science, where they merely refit for this world, and no natural currents concur to individualize them.
- solder
join or fuse with an alloy
It was a small cavity under ten feet of water; but I think that I can warrant the pond not to need soldering till they find a worse leak than that.
- infinitesimal
immeasurably small
When two legs of my level were on the shore and the third on the ice, and the sights were directed over the latter, a rise or fall of the ice of an almost infinitesimal amount made a difference of several feet on a tree across the pond.
- mottled
having spots or patches of color
When such holes freeze, and a rain succeeds, and finally a new freezing forms a fresh smooth ice over all, it is beautifully mottled internally by dark figures, shaped somewhat like a spider's web, what you may call ice rosettes, produced by the channels worn by the water flowing from all sides to a centre.
- extraction
properties attributable to your ancestry
In the winter of '46–7 there came a hundred men of Hyperborean extraction swoop down on to our pond one morning, with many car-loads of ungainly-looking farming tools, sleds, ploughs, drill-barrows, turf-knives, spades, saws, rakes, and each man was armed with a double-pointed pike-staff, such as is not described in the New-England Farmer or the Cultivator.
- tract
an extended area of land
The opening of large tracts by the ice-cutters commonly causes a pond to break up earlier; for the water, agitated by the wind, even in cold weather, wears away the surrounding ice.
- epitome
a standard or typical example
The day is an epitome of the year. The night is the winter, the morning and evening are the spring and fall, and the noon is the summer.
- foliage
the aggregate of leaves of one or more plants
It is a truly grotesque vegetation, whose forms and color we see imitated in bronze, a sort of architectural foliage more ancient and typical than acanthus, chiccory, ivy, vine, or any vegetable leaves; destined perhaps, under some circumstances, to become a puzzle to future geologists.
- transcend
go beyond the scope or limits of
The very globe continually transcends and translates itself, and becomes winged in its orbit.
- invective
abusive language used to express blame or censure
They were wholly deaf to my arguments, or failed to perceive their force, and fell into a strain of invective that was irresistible.
- influx
the process of flowing in
Suddenly an influx of light filled my house, though the evening was at hand, and the clouds of winter still overhung it, and the eaves were dripping with sleety rain.
- precursor
something indicating the approach of something or someone
In almost all climes the tortoise and the frog are among the precursors and heralds of this season, and birds fly with song and glancing plumage, and plants spring and bloom, and winds blow, to correct this slight oscillation of the poles and preserve the equilibrium of Nature.
- oscillation
a complete execution of a periodically repeated phenomenon
In almost all climes the tortoise and the frog are among the precursors and heralds of this season, and birds fly with song and glancing plumage, and plants spring and bloom, and winds blow, to correct this slight oscillation of the poles and preserve the equilibrium of Nature.
- debauch
corrupt morally or by intemperance or sensuality
You may have known your neighbor yesterday for a thief, a drunkard, or a sensualist, and merely pitied or despised him, and despaired of the world; but the sun shines bright and warm this first spring morning, re-creating the world, and you meet him at some serene work, and see how his exhausted and debauched veins expand with still joy and bless the new day, feel the spring influence with the innocence of infancy, and all his faults are forgotten.
- innate
present at birth but not necessarily hereditary
Men seeing the nature of this man like that of the brute, think that he has never possessed the innate faculty of reason.
- suppliant
humbly entreating
Punishment and fear were not; nor were threatening words read
On suspended brass; nor did the suppliant crowd fear
The words of their judge; but were safe without an avenger. - hummock
a small natural mound
I have penetrated to those meadows on the morning of many a first spring day, jumping from hummock to hummock, from willow root to willow root, when the wild river valley and the woods were bathed in so pure and bright a light as would have waked the dead, if they had been slumbering in their graves, as some suppose.
- tonic
a medicine that strengthens and invigorates
We need the tonic of wildness,—to wade sometimes in marshes where the bittern and the meadow-hen lurk, and hear the booming of the snipe; to smell the whispering sedge where only some wilder and more solitary fowl builds her nest, and the mink crawls with its belly close to the ground.
- repast
the food served and eaten at one time
We are cheered when we observe the vulture feeding on the carrion which disgusts and disheartens us and deriving health and strength from the repast.
- untenable
incapable of being defended or justified
Compassion is a very untenable ground. It must be expeditious. Its pleadings will not bear to be stereotyped.
- volatile
tending to vary often or widely
The volatile truth of our words should continually betray the inadequacy of the residual statement. Their truth is instantly translated; its literal monument alone remains.
- piety
righteousness by virtue of being religiously devout
The words which express our faith and piety are not definite; yet they are significant and fragrant like frankincense to superior natures.
- obsequious
attempting to win favor from influential people by flattery
I sat at a table where were rich food and wine in abundance, and obsequious attendance, but sincerity and truth were not; and I went away hungry from the inhospitable board.
Created on March 1, 2013 (updated May 22, 2022)
Source: https://www.vocabulary.com/lists/241171
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