Thomas Paine: Common Sense

Glossary

• apostate one who abandons loyalty to
• avarice greed
• barrister type of lawyer, specifically one who pleads cases in an English court
• bowers shelters, such as from the canopies of trees
• capricious impulsive; impetuous
• cavilings small, inconsequential objections
• convulsions violent disturbances
• countenance moral support
• credulous inclined to believe
• disaffection the loss of affection for
• encomium wholehearted praise
• execration denunciation; assertion that something is evil
• extirpate destroy
• felicity happiness
• Felo de se literally, “evildoer with respect to oneself”; something that causes its own destruction
• fidelity
• gradation change in small amounts
• impregnable secure from invasion
• jesuitically manipulatingly through language
• junto assembly of people with a common purpose
• papistical Roman Catholic; that is, in reference to the role of the pope, authoritarian
• pecuniary
• prepossession attitude previously formed
• prudence essentially, common sense with respect to government or management
• putative generally supposed
• reciprocal equally exchanged
• remissness neglect; laxity
• Rubicon a boundary that, when crossed, commits the person to a certain course
• sanguine optimistic
• sophist one who uses reason falsely or deceptively
• specious having deceptive allure
• sycophant one who flatters and serves those in power for personal gain
• toryism loyalty to the Crown
• variance discord; antagonism
• viz. namely
• wherefore thus, one can conclude that