Essay on Man: Epistle I

by Alexander Pope
In this philosophical poem, Pope attempts to define humanity's place in the universe with respect to a divine plan. Read the full text here.

Here are links to our lists for the book: The Design, Epistle I, Epistle II, Epistle III, Epistle IV
25 words 22 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. expatiate
    add details to clarify an idea
    Let us (since life can little more supply
    Than just to look about us and to die)
    Expatiate free o’er all this scene of man
  2. latent
    potentially existing but not presently evident or realized
    Together let us beat this ample field,
    Try what the open, what the covert yield;
    The latent tracts, the giddy heights, explore
  3. vindicate
    show to be right by providing justification or proof
    Laugh where we must, be candid where we can;
    But vindicate the ways of God to man.
  4. pervade
    spread or diffuse through
    But of this frame, the bearings, and the ties,
    The strong connections, nice dependencies,
    Gradations just, has thy pervading soul
    Looked through? or can a part contain the whole?
  5. presumptuous
    going beyond what is appropriate, permitted, or courteous
    Presumptuous man! the reason wouldst thou find,
    Why formed so weak, so little, and so blind?
  6. wrangle
    quarrel noisily, angrily, or disruptively
    Then in the scale of reasoning life, ’tis plain,
    There must be, somewhere, such a rank as man:
    And all the question (wrangle e’er so long)
    Is only this, if God has placed him wrong?
  7. pinion
    wing of a bird
    Hope humbly, then; with trembling pinions soar;
    Wait the great teacher Death; and God adore.
  8. providence
    the guardianship and control exercised by a deity
    Go, wiser thou! and, in thy scale of sense,
    Weigh thy opinion against providence;
    Call imperfection what thou fanciest such,
    Say, here He gives too little, there too much
  9. abode
    any address at which you dwell more than temporarily
    Pride still is aiming at the blest abodes,
    Men would be angels, angels would be gods.
  10. genial
    agreeable; conducive to comfort
    Pride answers, “’Tis for mine:
    For me kind Nature wakes her genial power,
    Suckles each herb, and spreads out every flower..."
  11. livid
    (of a light) imparting a deathlike luminosity
    But errs not Nature from this gracious end,
    From burning suns when livid deaths descend,
    When earthquakes swallow, or when tempests sweep
    Towns to one grave, whole nations to the deep?
  12. scourge
    cause extensive destruction or ruin utterly
    Who knows but He, whose hand the lightning forms,
    Who heaves old ocean, and who wings the storms;
    Pours fierce ambition in a Cæsar’s mind,
    Or turns young Ammon loose to scourge mankind?
  13. strife
    lack of agreement or harmony
    But all subsists by elemental strife;
    And passions are the elements of life.
  14. abate
    make less active or intense
    Each seeming want compensated of course,
    Here with degrees of swiftness, there of force;
    All in exact proportion to the state;
    Nothing to add, and nothing to abate.
  15. effluvium
    a foul-smelling outflow or vapor
    Or touch, if tremblingly alive all o’er,
    To smart and agonize at every pore?
    Or quick effluvia darting through the brain,
    Die of a rose in aromatic pain?
  16. myriad
    a large indefinite number
    Far as Creation’s ample range extends,
    The scale of sensual, mental powers ascends:
    Mark how it mounts, to man’s imperial race,
    From the green myriads in the peopled grass
  17. sagacious
    acutely insightful and wise
    Of smell, the headlong lioness between,
    And hound sagacious on the tainted green
  18. vernal
    of or characteristic of or occurring in spring
    Of hearing, from the life that fills the flood,
    To that which warbles through the vernal wood
  19. grovel
    show submission or fear
    How instinct varies in the grovelling swine,
    Compared, half-reasoning elephant, with thine!
  20. insuperable
    incapable of being surpassed or excelled
    What thin partitions sense from thought divide:
    And middle natures, how they long to join,
    Yet never passed the insuperable line!
  21. ethereal
    of heaven or the spirit
    Vast chain of being! which from God began,
    Natures ethereal, human, angel, man,
    Beast, bird, fish, insect, what no eye can see,
    No glass can reach; from Infinite to thee
  22. impiety
    unrighteousness by virtue of lacking respect for a god
    All this dread order break—for whom? for thee?
    Vile worm!—Oh, madness! pride! impiety!
  23. ordained
    fixed or established especially by command
    What if the foot, ordained the dust to tread,
    Or hand, to toil, aspired to be the head?
  24. repine
    express discontent
    What if the head, the eye, or ear repined
    To serve mere engines to the ruling mind?
  25. natal
    relating to or accompanying birth
    In this, or any other sphere,
    Secure to be as blest as thou canst bear:
    Safe in the hand of one disposing Power,
    Or in the natal, or the mortal hour.
Created on Wed May 12 16:57:37 EDT 2021 (updated Mon May 17 15:31:28 EDT 2021)

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.