Nathaniel Hawthorne

Advanced

A gentleman advanced in years, with a hard experience written in his wrinkles.

Affair

A certain affair of fine red cloth much worn and faded.

Apprehensive

It may be pardonable to imagine that a friend, a kind and apprehensive . . . friend, is listening to our talk.

Atmosphere

The chillest of social atmospheres.

Austerity

Partly owing to the studied austerity of her dress, and partly to the lack of demonstration in her manners.

Autumnal

An autumnal matron.

Bar

He barely looked the idea in the face, and hastened to bar it in its dungeon.

Bear

Her sentence bore that she should stand a certain time upon the platform.

Bewilderment

He . . . soon lost all traces of it amid bewilderment of tree trunks and underbrush.

Bloom

Every successive mother has transmitted a fainter bloom, a more delicate and briefer beauty.

Bore

It is as great a bore as to hear a poet read his own verses.

Brightly

Looking brightly into the mother's face.

Brood

Brooding over all these matters, the mother felt like one who has evoked a spirit.

Bulky

A bulky digest of the revenue laws.

Calculated

The minister, on the other hand, had never gone through an experience calculated to lead him beyond the scope of generally received laws.

Cast

This freakish, elvish cast came into the child's eye.

Casual

A constant habit, rather than a casual gesture.

Cheery

His cheery little study, where the sunshine glimmered so pleasantly.

Clump

A clump of shrubby trees.

Commote

Society being more or less commoted and made uncomfortable.

Confront

Hester caught hold of Pearl, and drew her forcibly into her arms, confronting the old Puritan magistrate with almost a fierce expression.

Conscious

Her conscious heart imputed suspicion where none could have been felt.

Contrive

neither do thou imagine that I shall contrive aught against his life.

Conventionalism

All the artifice and conventionalism of life.

Cool

Its cool stare of familiarity was intolerable.

Crossbones

Crossbones, scythes, hourglasses, and other lugubrious emblems of mortality.

Cushionless

Rows of long, cushionless benches, supplying the place of pews.

Dab

A scratch of her claw, a dab of her beak.

Darkly

Looking darkly at the clerguman.

Dashingly

A dashingly dressed gentleman.

Deal

The deacons of his church, who, to use their own phrase, “dealt with him” on the sin of rejecting the aid which Providence so manifestly held out.

Difficult

There is not the strength or courage left me to venture into the wide, strange, and difficult world, alone.

Diffused

It grew to be a widely diffused opinion.

Dulcify

As she . . . was further dulcified by her pipe of tobacco.

Dusky

The figure of that first ancestor invested by family tradition with a dim and dusky grandeur.

Dutiable

All kinds of dutiable merchandise.

Dye

He might truly be termed a legitimate son of the revenue system dyed in the wool.

Eager

A crowd of eager and curious schoolboys.

Early

The doorsteps and threshold with the early grass springing up about them.

Effluence

And, as if the gloom of the earth and sky had been but the effluence of these two mortal hearts, it vanished with their sorrow.

Elegance

A trait of native elegance, seldom seen in the masculine character after childhood or early youth, was shown in the General's fondness for the sight and fragrance of flowers.

Elfish

The elfish intelligence that was so familiar an expression on her small physiognomy.

Engage

Taking upon himself the difficult task of engaging him in conversation.

Engross

Some period long past, when clerks engrossed their stiff and formal chirography on more substantial materials.

Entertain

A rumor gained ground, -- and, however absurd, was entertained by some very sensible people.

Essential

Majestic as the voice sometimes became, there was forever in it an essential character of plaintiveness.

Esteem

Famous men, -- whose scientific attainments were esteemed hardly less than supernatural.

Etherealize

Etherealized, moreover, by spiritual communications with the other world.

Evanescent

So evanescent are the fashions of the world in these particulars.

Exquisitely

To a sensitive observer there was something exquisitely painful in it.

Faculty

He had a ready faculty, indeed, of escaping from any topic that agitated his too sensitive and nervous temperament.

Fairly

Even the nature of Mr. Dimmesdale's disease had never fairly been revealed to him.

Such means of comfort or even luxury, as lay fairly within their grasp.

Fantastically

the letter A, in scarlet, fantastically embroidered with gold thread, upon her bosom.

Fantasy

Embroidered with fantasies and flourishes of gold thread.

Farfetched

Every remedy contained a multitude of farfetched and heterogeneous ingredients.

Flightiness

The flightness of her temper.

Forebode

If I forebode aright.

Formal

She took off the formal cap that confined her hair.

Forthrightness

Dante's concise forthrightness of phrase.

Ghostology

It seemed even more unaccountable than if it had been a thing of ghostology and witchcraft.

gibberish

Such gibberish as children may be heard amusing themselves with.

Good

The young count's good nature and easy persuadability were among his best characteristics.

Grandfatherly

He was a grandfatherly sort of personage.

Heartquake

In many an hour of danger and heartquake.

Heighten

An aspect of mystery which was easily heightened to the miraculous.

Impending

An impending brow.

Incommodity

Buried him under a bulk of incommodities.

Indifferent

His slightest and most indifferent acts . . . were odious in the clergyman's sight.

Insidious

The insidious whisper of the bad angel.

Institution

We ordered a lunch (the most delightful of English institutions, next to dinner) to be ready against our return.

Intense

In this intense seclusion of the forest.

Intuition

Sagacity and a nameless something more, -- let us call it intuition.

Inveigh

The artificial life against which we inveighed.

Invest

Awe such as must always invest the spectacle of the guilt.

Investment

An investment in ink, paper, and steel pens.

Ladylike

She was ladylike, too, after the manner of the feminine gentility of those days.

Light

Specimens of New England humor laboriously light and lamentably mirthful.

Lightsome

Happiness may walk soberly in dark attire, as well as dance lightsomely in a gala dress.

Lugubrious

Crossbones, scythes, hourglasses, and other lugubrious emblems of mortality.

Mainland

After the two wayfarers had crossed from the peninsula to the mainland.

malignant

Something deleterious and malignant as his touch.

Middling

Plainly furnished, as beseemed the middling circumstances of its inhabitants.

Mightily

Practical jokes amused us mightily.

Mighty

Mighty was their fuss about little matters.

Mingle

[He] proceeded to mingle another draught.

Mobile

The quick and mobile curiosity of her disposition.

Mood

The desperate recklessness of her mood.

Moral

She had wandered without rule or guidance in a moral wilderness.

Muster

The hurried muster of the soldiers of liberty.

Nameless

I have a nameless horror of the man.

Naturalize

Its wearer suggested that pears and peaches might yet be naturalized in the New England climate.

nerveless

Awaking, all nerveless, from an ugly dream.

One

It was well worth one's while.

Order

Which, to his order of mind, must have seemed little short of crime.

Outlandish

Something outlandish, unearthy, or at variance with ordinary fashion.

Penetrative

His look became keen and penetrative.

Puritanic

He had all the puritanic traits, both good and evil.

Rage

Convulsed with a rage of grief.

Reckon

Without her eccentricities being reckoned to her for a crime.

Reduce

Hester Prynne was shocked at the condition to which she found the clergyman reduced.

Reel

In these lengthened vigils his brain often reeled.

Regard

Save the long-sought regards of woman, nothing is sweeter than those marks of childish preference.

Religionist

It might be that an Antinomian, a Quaker, or other heterodo religionists, was to be scourged out of the town.

Repel

[He] gently repelled their entreaties.

Requirement

God gave her the child, and gave her too an instinctive knowledge of its nature and requirements.

Reserve

The clergyman's shy and sensitive reserve had balked this scheme.

Retired

A retired part of the peninsula.

Rigid

The more rigid order of principles in religion and government.

Rotundity

A boldness and rotundity of speech.

Rusty

The rusty little schooners that bring firewood from the British provinces.

Saker

The culverins and sakers showing their deadly muzzles over the rampart.

Salt

Around the door are generally to be seen, laughing and gossiping, clusters of old salts.

School

The mother, while loving her child with the intensity of a sole affection, had schooled herself to hope for little other return than the waywardness of an April breeze.

Scope

An intellectual cultivation of no moderate depth or scope.

Scorch

He laid his long forefinger on the scarlet letter, which forthwith seemed to scorch into Hester's breast, as if it had been red hot.

Shine

The distant shine of the celestial city.

Skip

So she drew her mother away skipping, dancing, and frisking fantastically.

Slumberous

His quiet and almost slumberous countenance.

Speculate

It is remarkable that persons who speculate the most boldly often conform with the most pefect quietude to the external regulations of society.

Sphere

Taking her out of the ordinary relations with humanity, and inclosing her in a sphere by herself.

Steeple-crowned

This grave, bearded, sable-cloaked, and steeple-crowned progenitor.

Stifled

The close and stifled study.

Still

Toil that would, at least, have stilled an unquiet impulse in me.

Strange

She may be strange and shy at first, but will soon learn to love thee.

Subtile

The subtile influence of an intellect like Emerson's.

Subtly

Subtly communicating itself to my sensibilities, but evading the analysis of my mind.

Sweet

A voice sweet, tremulous, but powerful.

Swell

The gigantic swells and billows of the snow.

Trace

Some faintly traced features or outline of the mother and the child, slowly lading into the twilight of the woods.

Twig

As if he were looking right into your eyes and twigged something there which you had half a mind to conceal.

Ungentle

That ungentle flavor which distinguishes nearly all our native and uncultivated grapes.

Unseemly

An unseemly outbreak of temper.

Utilize

In former ages, the mile-long corridors, with their numerous alcoves, might have been utilized as . . . dungeons.

Vague

The poet turned away, and gave himself up to a sort of vague revery, which he called thought.

Vaguely

What he vaguely hinted at, but dared not speak.

Vanish

Gliding from the twilight past to vanish among realities.

Warrant

How little while it is since he went forth out of his study, -- chewing a Hebrew text of Scripture in his mouth, I warrant.

Wave

Where the flags of three nations has successively waved.

Web

The somber spirit of our forefathers, who wove their web of life with hardly a . . . thread of rose-color or gold.

Wink

A baby of some three months old, who winked, and turned aside its little face from the too vivid light of day.

Wiry

He bore his age well, and seemed to retain a wiry vigor and alertness.

Womankind

A sanctuary into which womankind, with her tools of magic, the broom and mop, has very infrequent access.

Work

She marveled how she could ever have been wrought upon to marry him.

Yankee

The alertness of the Yankee aspect.