Key Historical and Literary Terms Defined
Classified in History
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Debase
v. To lower in value, quality, or dignity; to cheapen.
Prophesy
v. To predict (something) by or as if by divine guidance.
Defray
v. To furnish money for.
Lucrative
Adj. Producing wealth or profit.
Countenance
n. Face; facial expression.
Stoicism
n. Indifference to pleasure or pain.
Warfare with Revolutionary and Napoleonic France
The warfare with Revolutionary and Napoleonic France took place from 1792-1815.
Sussex, Huntingdonshire, and West Riding
Former counties or divisions in southeastern England.
Ben Nevis and Helvellyn
Mountains in Britain.
Crash in 1720: South Sea Bubble
Financial crisis caused by the overvaluation of stock.
More into the Exchequer
More into the treasury than taxes on domestic goods.
Charles the Second
King of England from 1660 to 1685.
Sailing without Wind
Traveling on steamships and beginning to travel on railroads.
Gulliver’s Travels
Satire by Jonathan Swift, published in 1726.
Fee-simple and the Plantagenets
Complete ownership of the Plantagenet estates.
Elizabeth I and Oliver Cromwell
Queen Elizabeth I ruled England from 1558 to 1603; Oliver Cromwell ruled as Lord Protector from 1653 to 1658.
Forty Shillings Freeholder
Only males with a certain minimum income were able to vote.
Junius and Lord Chatham
William Pitt the Elder, who led Britain into the costly Seven Years’ War with France, was named Earl of Chatham in 1766.
Pitt, Fox, and Burke
British political leaders of the late 18th century.
Inanition
Lack of spirit or vitality; loss or absence of social, moral, or intellectual vigor.
Baleful Fiat
Harmful decree or law.
Master-workers and Master-idlers
Terms for industrialists who employ other workers and for those wealthy enough to be idle.
Bastille
Royal prison destroyed by a mob at the start of the French Revolution.
"Work cannot be done in them"
Uses "work" to refer to gainful or useful employment.
Impotences
Weaknesses; inabilities.
Dante Alighieri and the Inferno
The poet Dante Alighieri gives a detailed account of hell, which he calls the Inferno, in the Divine Comedy.
Thrifty Scotland, Glasgow, and Edinburgh
People of Scotland have a longstanding reputation for being thrifty; Glasgow and Edinburgh are Scotland’s two largest cities.
Dr. Alison
Scottish physician, author of Observations on the Management of the Poor in Scotland.
Not in Occasional Outbreaks but Continual Decay
Not in occasional strong outbreaks but in a continual state of decay. Gangrene is the decay of tissue caused by the lack of blood flow to a particular part of the body.
Byword
A topic of gossip.
Potosi
South American city known for its large reserves of silver.
Stockport Assizes
Superior court in the city of Stockport in northwestern England.
Plethoric
Overabundant; excessive.
Garnitures
Furnishings; ornaments.
"If we move beyond the dyspeptic stomach"
If we move beyond the upset stomach.
Guineas
British gold coins worth 21 shillings.
No Whit
Not a bit.
Fifty-pound Tenants
Renters who paid 50 pounds a year to rent land from the wealthy landowner.
Corn Law
Limited the import of cheaper foreign grain into Britain by limiting food supplies and keeping grain prices artificially high.