Vocab Fairytale - Chapter 1

It was a warm afternoon. The brazen sun lit up every corner of the field--dewy grass brooked his arrogant rays; blighted corn stalks bemoaned their harsh, dry fate. Despite the heat, sweet daffodils and lilies flourished, ebullient with stunning alacrity. The western end of the field stretched itself into an amenable little hill, upon which sat a decorous little cottage, dapper among an exemplary selection of wildflowers. As the scene unfolds, the cottage door creaks open tenuously and a young, golden-haired maiden slides a golden-toed shoe and basket past the doorway. A harangue followed her out the door.

"What shall I do with you, you dilatory girl! How could you have overslept again, you indolent child! Left your Ma with a prodigious cache of dishes to do alone, and you would do naught but gambol about the garden! Look how hoary I have become because of your torpor! Now get out -- consider it a reclamation -- don't make your grandmother wait so long for you that she passes away before you arrive!"

The pejorative speech (with some latter curses expurgated for the safety of the reader) was coming from a thin, fastidious woman standing in the doorway -- her hair meticulously braided in a thick auburn knot and a clean starched apron fastened around her waist. Her tirade complete, she pushed the rest of the aureate-haired girl out and brusquely slammed the door with a "humph!" of rectitude.

Balmy sunlight again warmed the girl's unnettled face. The didactic admonishment, intended to galvanize, instead left the obdurate girl utterly incorrigible. Not that she recoiled against pundits and jurisprudence by nature, but the simple fact was that she was air-headed, a paradigm of carelessness. Nothing impinged her puerility and her inveterate mawkishness. With a jejune smile, our light-hearted ingenue flipped her bouncy curls off her shoulders, smoothed her worn apron and greying, indigent dress, and skipped down the path intrepidly, through the prairie and into the woods, her ruddy red eclectically patchworked hood and cloak trailing off behind her.

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1. brazen (adj) - harsh or contemptuously rude
2. brook (v, intr) - to put up with, tolerate
3. blighted (adj) - deteriorated, destroyed
4. ebullient (adj) - boiling, bubbling, agitated / having or showing liveliness and enthusiasm
5. alacrity (adj) - cheerfulness
6. amenable (adj) - suited / cooperative / willing, responsible, obedient
7. decorous (adj) - marked by propriety (suitableness) and having good taste
8. exemplary (adj) - commendable, deserving imitation because of exellence
9. tenuously (adv) - flimsily, weakly, shakily
10. harangue (n) - lecture, ranting speech or writing
11. dilatory (adj) - tardy, characterized by procrastination
12. indolent (adj) - adverse to activity, lazy
13. prodigious (adj) - great number
14. gambol (v) - frolic, frisk
15. torpor (n) - apathy, dullness, lethargy
16. hoary (adj) - gray or white as if with age / extremely ancient
17. reclamation (n) - reformation, rehabilitation / recovery
18. pejorative (n) - having negative connotations, tending to disparage or belittle: depreciatory
19. expurgate (v) - to censor
20. fastidious (adj) - having high and capricious standards, difficult to please
21. aureate (adj) - golden
22. brusquely (adv) - short and abrupt, bluntness to the point of ungracious harshness
23. rectitude (n) - righteousness
24. balmy (adj) - soothing, mild (the qualities of lip balm)
25. nettled (adj) - irritated, annoyed
26. didactic (adj) - designed or intended to teach
27. admonishment (n) - indicate duties or obligations to, offer friendly advice, reprove
28. galvanize (v) - stimulate to action
29. obdurate (adj) - stubbornly persistent in wrongdoing
30. incorrigible (adj) - incapable of being set straight, unrepairable
31. pundit (n) - one with authority: teacher, critic
32. jurisprudence (n) - system or body of law
33. paradigm (n) - an example or archetype
35. impinge (v) - encroach + infringe; make an effect on
36. inveterate (adj) - habitual, firmly established by long persistence
37. jejune (adj) - childish, intellectually unsatisfying
38. ingenue (n) - an inexperience and naive young woman
39. indigent (adj) - impoverished
40. intrepid (adj) - characterized by resolute fearlessness, fortitude, endurance
41. eclectic (adj) - composed of various elements