The Red Room

Anonymous
12 words 20 learners

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Full list of words from this list:

words only definitions & notes
  1. alcove
    a small recess opening off a large room or garden
    And looking around that large shadowy room, with its shadowy window bays, its recesses and alcoves, one could well understand the legends that had sprouted in its black corners, its germinating darkness.
  2. withered
    lean and wrinkled by shrinkage as from age or illness
    "It is your own choosing," said the man with the withered arm, and glanced at me askance.
  3. buhl
    an inlaid furniture decoration
    That incident for at time restored my nerve, and a procelain Chinaman on a buhl table, whose head rocked silently as I passed him, scarcely startled me.
  4. foregather
    collect in one place
    I must confess that the oddness of these three old pensioners in whose charge her ladyship had left the castle, and the deep-toned, old fashioned furniture of the housekeeper�s room in which they foregathered, affected me in spite of my efforts to keep myself at a matter-of-fact phase.
  5. penumbra
    a region of light shadow around the darkest part of a shadow
    The one in the alcove flared in a draught, and the fire�s flickering kept the shadows and penumbra perpetually shifting and stirring.
  6. baize
    a bright green fabric napped to resemble felt
    "You go along the passage for a bit," said he, "until you come to a door, and through that is a spiral staircase, and half way up that is a landing and another door covered with baize.
  7. atavistic
    characteristic of a throwback
    There is to my mind something inhuman in senility, something crouching and atavistic; the human qualitites seem to drop from old people insensibly day by day.
  8. facetiousness
    playful humor
    "These candles are wanted," speaking with a half-hysterical facetiousness, and scratching away at a match the while for the mantel candlesticks.
  9. senility
    the state of being infirm with age
    There is to my mind something inhuman in senility, something crouching and atavistic; the human qualitites seem to drop from old people insensibly day by day.
  10. postulate
    maintain or assert
    I postulated quite unreservedly that nothing supernatural could happen, and to pass the time I began to string some rhymes together, Ingoldsby fashion, of the original legend of the place.
  11. apoplexy
    a loss of consciousness from the lack of oxygen in the brain
    That had been the end of his vigil, of his gallant attempt to conquer the ghostly tradition of the place; and never, I thought, had apoplexy better served the ends of superstition.
  12. dishevelled
    in disarray; extremely disorderly
    I leaped panting and dishevelled from candle to candle in a vain struggle against that remorseless advance.
Created on Mon Nov 23 15:05:30 EST 2009

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