Silent Spring: Chapters 1–6

by Rachel Carson
This groundbreaking book, published in the early 1960s, investigated the devastating effects of chemical pesticides on the environment. Carson's work is credited with helping to create the Environmental Protection Agency.

Here are links to our lists for the book: Chapters 1–6, Chapters 7–9, Chapters 10–13, Chapters 14–17
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Full list of words from this list:

words only definitions & notes
  1. moribund
    being on the point of death
    The few birds seen anywhere were moribund; they trembled violently and could not fly.
  2. lethal
    of an instrument of certain death
    The most alarming of all man’s assaults upon the environment is the contamination of air, earth, rivers, and sea with dangerous and even lethal materials.
  3. impetuous
    characterized by undue haste and lack of thought
    The rapidity of change and the speed with which new situations are created follow the impetuous and heedless pace of man rather than the deliberate pace of nature.
  4. vernacular
    the everyday speech of the people
    Since the mid-1940’s over 200 basic chemicals have been created for use in killing insects, weeds, rodents, and other organisms described in the modern vernacular as “pests”; and they are sold under several thousand different brand names.
  5. engender
    call forth
    The crusade to create a chemically sterile, insect-free world seems to have engendered a fanatic zeal on the part of many specialists and most of the so-called control agencies.
  6. progenitor
    an ancestor in the direct line
    It makes the progenitor of all this group of insecticides, DDT, seem by comparison almost harmless.
  7. ephemeral
    anything short-lived, as an insect that lives only for a day
    Indeed, its existence is so ephemeral that medical researchers are unable, without special procedures, to sample it before the body has destroyed it.
  8. bellicose
    having or showing a ready disposition to fight
    Honeybees become “wildly agitated and bellicose” on contact with it, perform frantic cleaning movements, and are near death within half an hour.
  9. disseminate
    cause to become widely known
    The legend that the herbicides are toxic only to plants and so pose no threat to animal life has been widely disseminated, but unfortunately it is not true.
  10. malignant
    dangerous to health
    Some are general poisons, some are powerful stimulants of metabolism, causing a fatal rise in body temperature, some induce malignant tumors either alone or in partnership with other chemicals, some strike at the genetic material of the race by causing gene mutations.
  11. insidious
    working or spreading in a hidden and usually injurious way
    While the results of weed killers such as sodium arsenite or the phenols are grossly obvious, some other herbicides are more insidious in their effects.
  12. turbid
    clouded as with sediment
    Clear Lake lies in mountainous country some 90 miles north of San Francisco and has long been popular with anglers. The name is inappropriate, for actually it is a rather turbid lake because of the soft black ooze that covers its shallow bottom.
  13. macerate
    soften and cause to disintegrate as a result
    They macerate and digest the leaves, and aid in mixing the decomposed matter with the surface soil.
  14. dearth
    an insufficient quantity or number
    There is no dearth of men who understand these things, but these are not the men who order the wholesale drenching of the landscape with chemicals.
  15. chromosome
    a threadlike strand of DNA that carries genes
    It has been shown experimentally to disturb the basic physiological process of respiration in the cell, and to imitate X-rays in damaging the chromosomes.
Created on Fri May 13 20:34:40 EDT 2016 (updated Wed Jul 02 21:41:09 EDT 2025)

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