- acquittal: a release from obligation
- amiable: friendly
- analogy: a comparison
- antiquity: ancient times; a thing or people from ancient times
- apprehensive: uneasy about the future
- assert: to defend one's rights
- bayou: a marshy inlet
- callous: lacking mercy
- comendable: praiseworthy
- condescend: to stoop to something you think is low
- contemptuous: showing or feeling scorn
- electorate: all persons having the right to vote
- elite: most powerful group
- ethical: pertaining to right and wrong
- evolve: to develop gradually
- excerpt: a selected passage from a book or article
- fortitude: endurance
- grimace: distortion of face to show pain
- heresy: a different belief
- inarticulate: unable to speak understandably
- indignant: angered by unfairness
- indomitable: unconquerable
- ineffectual: unable to bring about desired result
- judicious: wise, careful, and discreet
- malleable: capable of being shaped by hammering
- melodramatic: overly dramatic
- mentor: trusted teacher
- mystic: mysterious
- notoriety: bad fame
- paraphrase: to reword the meaning of a text
- paternal: fatherly
- pauper: a person who is very poor
- personification: figure of speech in which an inanimate object posesses humanistic qualities
- posthumous: after death
- prophetic: something that foretells events
- succumb: to die; to give in
- verbatim: in exact words
- vibrant: energetic; vibrating rapidly
- visage: a facial expression; appearance
- whimsical: unpredictable; oddly out of the ordinary