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The Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass – Vocabulary List
1. Abolition (noun) - literally to bring to an end; in this context the campaign to end the slave trade and
slavery
2. Apprentice (noun) - a person who learns a craft or trade by working for a specialist or master for an agreed
period, usually at low wages
3. Assimilation (noun) - a process of making or becoming similar to others; to integrate into the majority
4. Coffle (noun) - used to describe a group of animals and prisoners or enslaved people chained together in a
line commonly used by slavers in the 18th century
5. Emancipation (noun) - being set free, or granted rights equal to others who already enjoy them (including
allowing non-Anglicans to sit in Parliament and have other civic rights); the freeing of enslaved people from
slavery
6. Insurrection (noun) - rebellion, uprising, open resistance to authority
7. Reparation (noun) - making amends, compensation; claim to payments to the descendants of the
enslaved and to Africa by those who benefited economically from slavery
8. Obdurate (adjective) – stubbornly persistent in wrongdoing
9. Middle Passage (noun) - The route across the Atlantic Ocean from Africa to the Americas that
the slave ships took transporting slaves to America.
10. Colonization (noun) - a process of one country taking over another in order to exploit it
11. Pharisaical (adjective) - excessively or hypocritically pious
12. Execrate (verb) - curse or declare to be evil or anathema
13. Exculpate (verb) - pronounce not guilty of criminal charges
14. Imbue (verb) - to impregnate or inspire, as with feelings, opinions
15. Reverberate (verb) - ring or echo with sound
16. Misnomer (noun) - an incorrect or unsuitable name
17. Debase (verb) - make impure by adding a foreign or inferior substance
18. Imbibe (verb) - to take or receive into the mind, as knowledge, ideas, or the like
19. Noisome (adjective) - causing or able to cause nausea; harmful or injurious to health; noxious
20. Scathing (adjective) - marked by harshly abusive criticism
21. Commensurate (adjective) - having the same measure; of equal extent or duration
22. Turbid (adjective) - not clear or transparent because of stirred-up sediment or the like; clouded;
opaque; obscured
23. Misapprehension (noun) - an understanding of something that is not correct; misunderstanding
24. Reprove (verb) - to criticize or correct, especially gently
25. Sunder (verb) - break apart or in two, using violence
26. Immutable (adjective) - not subject or susceptible to change or variation
27. Evince (verb) - to show clearly; make evident or manifest; prove
28. Odium (noun) - intense hatred or dislike, especially toward a person or thing regarded as
contemptible, despicable, or repugnant
29. Perdition (noun) - the place or state in which one suffers eternal punishment
30. Impropriety (noun) - the quality or condition of being improper; incorrectness