Charles and Emma: Chapters 17–24

by Deborah Heiligman
This biography explores Charles Darwin's relationship with his wife Emma, whose faith both challenged and influenced Darwin's theory of evolution.

Here are links to our lists for the book: Chapters 1–8, Chapters 9–16, Chapters 17–24, Chapters 25–33

Here is a link to Vincent and Theo by Deborah Heiligman.
40 words 56 learners

Learn words with Flashcards and other activities

Definition First
Print Flashcards

Other learning activities

Answer a few questions about each word. Use this to prep for your next quiz! Compete with other teams in real time to see who answers the most questions correctly! Test your spelling acumen. Read the definition, listen to the word and try spelling it!

Teaching tools

Create and assign quizzes to your students to test their vocabulary. Assign learning activities including Practice, Vocabulary Jams and Spelling Bees to your students, and monitor their progress in real-time.

Full list of words from this list:

words only definitions & notes
  1. presumption
    audacious behavior that you have no right to
    I think I have found out (here's presumption!) the simple way by which species become exquisitely adapted to various ends.
  2. solace
    comfort offered to one who is disappointed or miserable
    Although both Emma and Charles were struck hard by the death, they found some solace in keeping busy.
  3. consolation
    the comfort you feel when soothed in times of disappointment
    And Charles and Emma found consolation in each other.
  4. amass
    collect or gather
    He continued to make observations and amass facts.
  5. irrefutable
    impossible to deny or disprove
    He knew his ideas were practically blasphemous and so his book had to be as irrefutable as he could make it.
  6. competent
    properly or sufficiently qualified, capable, or efficient
    If, as I believe that my theory is true & if it be accepted even by one competent judge, it will be a considerable step in science.
  7. ramification
    a consequence, especially one that causes complications
    And despite her misgivings about the religious ramifications, Emma not only agreed she would publish this draft in case of his sudden death, she also helped him make it better.
  8. transform
    change or alter in appearance or nature
    The author argued that species were transforming all the time.
  9. indisputable
    not open to question; obviously true
    Charles knew that in order to avoid the criticisms being leveled at Vestiges, he would have to build up his argument even more, and gather more examples, more indisputable factual evidence.
  10. negotiate
    succeed in passing through, around, or over
    She went without the children, which was quite unusual, leaving Charles to negotiate his work around them.
  11. adept
    having or showing knowledge and skill and aptitude
    To work out his species theory he had to become adept at describing at least one creature in minute detail.
  12. dissect
    cut open or cut apart
    He wrote to FitzRoy that he was spending day after day “hard at work dissecting a little animal about the size of a pin’s head ... and I could spend another month, and daily see more beautiful structure.”
  13. genus
    taxonomic group containing one or more species
    A century earlier, the Swedish botanist Carl Linnaeus had come up with a system for classifying living beings—from kingdoms (plant and animal) to class (such as mammal), order (Carnivora), family (Canidae), genus (Canis), and species (Canis familiaris, or dog).
  14. mutable
    capable of or tending to change in form or quality or nature
    As he looked at the many minute variations in the Cirripedia under his microscope he saw the opposite of the prevailing assumption, and confirmation of his presumption: species were mutable.
  15. incessant
    uninterrupted in time and indefinitely long continuing
    All last autumn and winter my health grew worse and worse: incessant sickness, tremulous hands, and swimming head.
  16. stagnation
    a state of inactivity
    His only complaint was that he couldn’t think—he had “the most complete stagnation of mind."
  17. aura
    distinctive but intangible quality around a person or thing
    Emma and Charles were both loving parents, and illness had kind of a happy aura about it, in part because Charles was always sick, and everyone loved Charles.
  18. soothe
    cause to feel better
    Charles said that when Annie was unwell, “her mother lying down beside her seemed to soothe her in a manner quite different from what it would have done to any of our other children.”
  19. listless
    marked by low spirits; showing no enthusiasm
    It was hard for Charles to concentrate on work with Annie being listless and weak, so unlike her usual energetic, engaged, cheerful self.
  20. clairvoyance
    apparent power to perceive things not present to the senses
    He was a traditionally trained doctor, but he also believed in things Charles thought were nonsense, such as diagnostic clairvoyance and spiritualism.
  21. lethargy
    inactivity; showing an unusual lack of energy
    Soon Annie had a bad cough in addition to her lethargy.
  22. trinity
    three people or things considered as a unit
    Emma took the children to church, though during the Trinity prayer, which proclaimed God as three in one—Father, Son, and Holy Spirit—she turned away from the altar in disagreement.
  23. quest
    the act of searching for something
    It was a sort of themed autobiography—an account of Newman’s own loss of faith and the quest for a new one.
  24. transpire
    come about, happen, or occur
    She wanted to know every single thing that transpired with her darling girl.
  25. distraught
    deeply agitated especially from emotion
    When Annie had a peaceful night’s sleep and Dr. Gully told Charles that she was turning the corner, Charles was so happy he sent an electronic telegram to Erasmus and asked him to send a servant to Down House so Emma would get the good news before she became distraught over the last letters.
  26. imminent
    close in time; about to occur
    Emma read the telegraph: “Annie has rallied—has passed good night—danger much less imminent.”
  27. invariably
    without change, in every case
    “Do what you can to bear up, and think how invariably kind and tender you have been to her.
  28. conspicuous
    obvious to the eye or mind
    The hovel in which she had expired had been burnt to the ground: her body being enclosed between two small canoes was placed upright on the ground, and protected by an enclosure bearing wooden images of their gods, and the whole was painted bright red, so as to be conspicuous from afar.
  29. buoyant
    characterized by liveliness and lightheartedness
    She was my favourite child; her cordiality, openness, buoyant joyousness and strong affections made her most lovable.
  30. fleeting
    lasting for a markedly brief time
    She wrote to Emma, “Now that I stand at the end of my life, as it were, and commonly called a long one, too, the whole appears to me so short, so fleeting, as if nothing was worth thinking of but the Eternity in which we recover all our earthly loves.”
  31. beckon
    summon with a wave, nod, or some other gesture
    Would Emma see Charles on her deathbed, beckoning her to the beyond?
  32. upheaval
    disturbance usually in protest
    But he did not want to cause upheaval or controversy.
  33. pretense
    a false or unsupportable quality
    Emma was, and had always been, sincere and without pretense.
  34. abhor
    feel hatred or disgust toward
    Emma must have had mixed feelings about her daughter not being confirmed, but she abhorred hypocrisy.
  35. dilettante
    an amateur engaging in an activity without serious intention
    Charles wasn’t a dilettante; he was serious about the breeding and created his own new lines of pigeons.
  36. perilous
    fraught with danger
    At forty-eight, she was quite old to be having a baby in the medically perilous nineteenth century.
  37. equanimity
    steadiness of mind under stress
    But usually the baby just lay in Charles’s lap, staring up at his father’s face with pleasure and equanimity.
  38. paltry
    contemptibly small in amount or size
    “I would far rather burn my whole book,” he told Lyell, “than that he or any man should think that I had behaved in a paltry spirit.”
  39. conceive
    have the idea for
    Poor Emma behaved nobly and how she stood it all I cannot conceive.
  40. priority
    status established in order of importance or urgency
    He still felt badly that he was so worried about establishing priority, of ensuring that all would know that he was the first of the two men to have the idea.
Created on Mon Sep 02 22:33:12 EDT 2013 (updated Wed Aug 01 15:10:57 EDT 2018)

Sign up now (it’s free!)

Whether you’re a teacher or a learner, Vocabulary.com can put you or your class on the path to systematic vocabulary improvement.