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Vocabulary found in Irving Biography and the story "The Devil and Tom Walker"

 

  1. prevalent: frequent or common

  2. meager:  deficient in amount or quality or extent

  3. miser: a stingy hoarder of money and possessions

  4. termagant: a scolding nagging bad-tempered woman

  5. stagnant: not circulating or flowing

  6. precarious: without ease or reassurance, fraught  with danger

  7. melancholy:  tendency to be gloomy and depressed

  8. impregnable:  immune to attack; incapable of being tampered with

  9. obliterate: remove completely from recognition or memory

  10. avarice: reprehensible acquisitiveness; insatiable desire for wealth

  11. resolute: Firm in purpose or belief; characterized by firmness and determination

  12. propitiate: make peace with

  13. carrion:  dead and rotting body of an animal; unfit for human food

  14. usurer:  one who lends money at excessive rates of interest

  15. mortgage: a conditional pledge of property to a creditor as security for repayment of a debt

  16. security: property that your creditor can claim in case you default on your obligation

  17. foreclose: take away the right of mortgagors to redeem their mortgage

  18. bond: certificate of debt that is issued by a government or corporation in order to raise money

  19. collateral: security pledged for the repayment of a loan

  20. waxed: Increase (wane: decrease)

  21. ostentation:  a gaudy outward display

  22. parsimony: extreme stinginess, cheap

  23. superfluous: serving no useful purpose; having no excuse for being

  24. coffers: chest for storing valuables