WHITE FANG Webster’s Thesaurus Edition for PSAT®, SAT®, GRE®, LSAT®, GMAT®, and AP® English Test Preparation Jack London PSAT is a registered trademark of the College Entrance Examination Board and the National Merit Scholarship Corporation neither of which sponsors or endorses this book; SAT is a registered trademark of the College Board which neither sponsors nor endorses this book; GRE, AP and Advanced Placement are registered trademarks of the Educational Testing Service which neither sponsors nor endorses this book, GMAT is a registered trademark of the Graduate Management Admissions Council which is neither affiliated with this book nor endorses this book, LSAT is a registered trademark of the Law School Admissions Council which neither sponsors nor endorses this product. All rights reserved. White Fang Webster’s Thesaurus Edition for PSAT®, SAT®, GRE®, LSAT®, GMAT®, and AP® English Test Preparation Jack London PSAT® is a registered trademark of the College Entrance Examination Board and the National Merit Scholarship Corporation neither of which sponsors or endorses this book; SAT® is a registered trademark of the College Board which neither sponsors nor endorses this book; GRE®, AP® and Advanced Placement® are registered trademarks of the Educational Testing Service which neither sponsors nor endorses this book, GMAT® is a registered trademark of the Graduate Management Admissions Council which is neither affiliated with this book nor endorses this book, LSAT® is a registered trademark of the Law School Admissions Council which neither sponsors nor endorses this product. All rights reserved. ICON CLASSICS Published by ICON Group International, Inc. 7404 Trade Street San Diego, CA 92121 USA www.icongrouponline.com White Fang: Webster’s Thesaurus Edition for PSAT®, SAT®, GRE®, LSAT®, GMAT®, and AP® English Test Preparation This edition published by ICON Classics in 2005 Printed in the United States of America. Copyright ©2005 by ICON Group International, Inc. Edited by Philip M. Parker, Ph.D. (INSEAD); Copyright ©2005, all rights reserved. All rights reserved. This book is protected by copyright. No part of it may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without written permission from the publisher. Copying our publications in whole or in part, for whatever reason, is a violation of copyright laws and can lead to penalties and fines. Should you want to copy tables, graphs, or other materials, please contact us to request permission (E-mail: [email protected]). ICON Group often grants permission for very limited reproduction of our publications for internal use, press releases, and academic research. Such reproduction requires confirmed permission from ICON Group International, Inc. PSAT® is a registered trademark of the College Entrance Examination Board and the National Merit Scholarship Corporation neither of which sponsors or endorses this book; SAT® is a registered trademark of the College Board which neither sponsors nor endorses this book; GRE®, AP® and Advanced Placement® are registered trademarks of the Educational Testing Service which neither sponsors nor endorses this book, GMAT® is a registered trademark of the Graduate Management Admissions Council which is neither affiliated with this book nor endorses this book, LSAT® is a registered trademark of the Law School Admissions Council which neither sponsors nor endorses this product. All rights reserved. ISBN 0-497-25276-7 iii Contents PREFACE FROM THE EDITOR..........................................................................................1 CHAPTER I THE TRAIL OF THE MEAT.............................................................................3 CHAPTER II THE SHE-WOLF.........................................................................................11 CHAPTER III THE HUNGER CRY....................................................................................23 CHAPTER IV THE BATTLE OF THE FANGS....................................................................35 CHAPTER V THE LAIR...................................................................................................45 CHAPTER VI THE GREY CUB.........................................................................................53 CHAPTER VII THE WALL OF THE WORLD......................................................................59 CHAPTER VIII THE LAW OF MEAT.................................................................................71 CHAPTER IX THE MAKERS OF FIRE..............................................................................77 CHAPTER X THE BONDAGE..........................................................................................89 CHAPTER XI THE OUTCAST..........................................................................................97 CHAPTER XII THE TRAIL OF THE GODS......................................................................103 CHAPTER XIII THE COVENANT....................................................................................109 CHAPTER XIV THE FAMINE.........................................................................................117 CHAPTER XV THE ENEMY OF HIS KIND......................................................................127 CHAPTER XVI THE MAD GOD.....................................................................................137 CHAPTER XVII THE REIGN OF HATE...........................................................................145 CHAPTER XVIII THE CLINGING DEATH.......................................................................151 CHAPTER XIX THE INDOMITABLE...............................................................................163 CHAPTER XX THE LOVE-MASTER...............................................................................169 CHAPTER XXI THE LONG TRAIL..................................................................................183 CHAPTER XXII THE SOUTHLAND................................................................................189 CHAPTER XXIII THE GOD'S DOMAIN...........................................................................197 CHAPTER XXIV THE CALL OF KIND............................................................................207 CHAPTER XXV THE SLEEPING WOLF..........................................................................215 GLOSSARY...................................................................................................................223 Jack London 1 PREFACE FROM THE EDITOR Designed for school districts, educators, and students seeking to maximize performance on standardized tests, Webster’s paperbacks take advantage of the fact that classics are frequently assigned readings in English courses. By using a running thesaurus at the bottom of each page, this edition of White Fang by Jack London was edited for students who are actively building their vocabularies in anticipation of taking PSAT®, SAT®, AP® (Advanced Placement®), GRE®, LSAT®, GMAT® or similar examinations.1 Webster’s edition of this classic is organized to expose the reader to a maximum number of synonyms and antonyms for difficult and often ambiguous English words that are encountered in other works of literature, conversation, or academic examinations. Extremely rare or idiosyncratic words and expressions are given lower priority in the notes compared to words which are “difficult, and often encountered” in examinations. Rather than supply a single synonym, many are provided for a variety of meanings, allowing readers to better grasp the ambiguity of the English language, and avoid using the notes as a pure crutch. Having the reader decipher a word’s meaning within context serves to improve vocabulary retention and understanding. Each page covers words not already highlighted on previous pages. If a difficult word is not noted on a page, chances are that it has been highlighted on a previous page. A more complete thesaurus is supplied at the end of the book; Synonyms and antonyms are extracted from Webster’s Online Dictionary. Definitions of remaining terms as well as translations can be found at www.websters-online- dictionary.org. Please send suggestions to [email protected] The Editor Webster’s Online Dictionary www.websters-online-dictionary.org 1 P S A T ® i s a r e g i s t e r e d t r a d e m a r k o f t h e College Entrance Examination Board and the National Merit Scholarship Corporation neither of which sponsors or endorses this book; SAT® is a registered trademark of the College Board which neither sponsors nor endorses this book; GRE®, AP® and Advanced Placement® are registered trademarks of the Educational Testing Service which neither sponsors nor endorses this book, GMAT® is a registered trademark of the Graduate Management Admissions Council which is neither affiliated with this book nor endorses this book, LSAT® is a registered trademark of the Law School Admissions Council which neither sponsors nor endorses this product. All rights reserved. Jack London 3 CHAPTER I THE TRAIL OF THE MEAT Dark spruce forest frowned on either side the frozen waterway. The trees had been stripped by a recent wind of their white covering of frost, and they seemed to lean towards each other, black and ominous, in the fading light. A vast silence reigned over the land. The land itself was a desolation, lifeless, without movement, so lone and cold that the spirit of it was not even that of sadness. There was a hint in it of laughter, but of a laughter more terrible than any sadness--a laughter that was mirthless as the smile of the sphinx, a laughter cold as the frost and partaking of the grimness of infallibility. It was the masterful and incommunicable wisdom of eternity laughing at the futility of life and the effort of life. It was the Wild, the savage, frozen- hearted Northland Wild.% But there was life, abroad in the land and defiant. Down the frozen waterway toiled a string of wolfish dogs. Their bristly fur was rimed with frost. Their breath froze in the air as it left their mouths, spouting forth in spumes of vapour that settled upon the hair of their bodies and formed into crystals of frost. Leather harness was on the dogs, and leather traces attached them to a sled which dragged along behind. The sled was without runners. It was made of stout birch-bark, and its full surface rested on the snow. The front end of the sled was turned up, like a scroll, in order to force down and under the bore of soft snow Thesaurus bristly: (adj) barbed, thorny, rough, noncommittal, undefinable, assonant, rimy, riming, parky, nippy, spiny, stiff, hairy, setaceous, briery, beggaring description, beyond nipping, icy, glacial. bristled, barbellate, briary. words. sled: (n) sledge, luge, toboggan, ANTONYM: (adj) soft. infallibility: (n) inerrability, inerrancy, bobsleigh, pung, maul, jumper, grimness: (n) asperity, austerity, rigor, dependability, reliability, dogsled, dog sleigh. sternness, rigour, ghastliness, inerrableness, dependableness, spouting: (adj) spurting, squirting, strictness, bleakness, hardness, infallibleness, truth. flowing; (n) jet, running, harangue, gloominess, harshness. ANTONYMS: mirthless: (adj) cheerless, melancholy, drift, scope. (n) brightness, pleasantness, warmth. gloomy, lacking mirth, unhappy, wolfish: (adj) edacious, esurient, incommunicable: (adj) unspeakable, unamused. voracious, ravening, rapacious, unutterable, ineffable, indescribable, partaking: (n) input, contribution. predatory, ferocious, savage, beyond description, inalienable, rimed: (adj) frosty, rhyming, frosted, wolflike, greedy; (n) lupine. 4 White Fang that surged like a wave before it. On the sled, securely lashed, was a long and narrow oblong box. There were other things on the sled--blankets, an axe, and a coffee-pot and frying-pan; but prominent, occupying most of the space, was the long and narrow oblong box.% In advance of the dogs, on wide snowshoes, toiled a man. At the rear of the sled toiled a second man. On the sled, in the box, lay a third man whose toil was over,--a man whom the Wild had conquered and beaten down until he would never move nor struggle again. It is not the way of the Wild to like movement. Life is an offence to it, for life is movement; and the Wild aims always to destroy movement. It freezes the water to prevent it running to the sea; it drives the sap out of the trees till they are frozen to their mighty hearts; and most ferociously and terribly of all does the Wild harry and crush into submission man--man who is the most restless of life, ever in revolt against the dictum that all movement must in the end come to the cessation of movement. But at front and rear, unawed and indomitable, toiled the two men who were not yet dead. Their bodies were covered with fur and soft-tanned leather. Eyelashes and cheeks and lips were so coated with the crystals from their frozen breath that their faces were not discernible. This gave them the seeming of ghostly masques, undertakers in a spectral world at the funeral of some ghost. But under it all they were men, penetrating the land of desolation and mockery and silence, puny adventurers bent on colossal adventure, pitting themselves against the might of a world as remote and alien and pulseless as the abysses of space. They travelled on without speech, saving their breath for the work of their bodies. On every side was the silence, pressing upon them with a tangible presence. It affected their minds as the many atmospheres of deep water affect the body of the diver. It crushed them with the weight of unending vastness and unalterable decree. It crushed them into the remotest recesses of their own minds, pressing out of them, like juices from the grape, all the false ardours and exaltations and undue self-values of the human soul, until they perceived themselves finite and small, specks and motes, moving with weak cunning and Thesaurus ferociously: (adv) brutally, wildly, rectangular, rounded; (v) unalterable: (adj) constant, inalterable, savagely, inhumanly, severely, longitudinal; (n) block, quadrangle. immutable, permanent, invariable, violently, vehemently, roughly, pitting: (n) stoning, indentation, firm, changeless, rigid, stable, furiously, cruelly, atrociously. destructive pitting, corrosion, pit, pin irrevocable, unchangeable. ANTONYMS: (adv) pleasantly, holes, indenture, indent, harshness, ANTONYMS: (adj) alterable, tamely. erosion, disorderliness. impermanent, temporary, fluid, indomitable: (adj, v) firm, gritty, iron; pulseless: (adj) inanimate, dead, flexible. (adj) dogged, invincible, inflexible, breathless, nonliving, dyspnoeic, unawed: (adj) unflinching, tough, irresistible, rigid, dauntless, dyspnoeal, dyspneic, dyspneal, unshrinking, unblanched, undaunted. ANTONYMS: (adj) breathtaking, appearing dead. unabashed, unapprehensive, feeble, submissive, weak, irresolute. remotest: (adj) furthest, uttermost, undaunted, undismayed, final, firmly oblong: (adj) oval, elliptical, endmost, extreme, last, utmost. determined, peremptory, positive. Jack London 5 little wisdom amidst the play and inter-play of the great blind elements and forces.% An hour went by, and a second hour. The pale light of the short sunless day was beginning to fade, when a faint far cry arose on the still air. It soared upward with a swift rush, till it reached its topmost note, where it persisted, palpitant and tense, and then slowly died away. It might have been a lost soul wailing, had it not been invested with a certain sad fierceness and hungry eagerness. The front man turned his head until his eyes met the eyes of the man behind. And then, across the narrow oblong box, each nodded to the other. A second cry arose, piercing the silence with needle-like shrillness. Both men located the sound. It was to the rear, somewhere in the snow expanse they had just traversed. A third and answering cry arose, also to the rear and to the left of the second cry. "They're after us, Bill," said the man at the front. His voice sounded hoarse and unreal, and he had spoken with apparent effort. "Meat is scarce," answered his comrade. "I ain't seen a rabbit sign for days." Thereafter they spoke no more, though their ears were keen for the hunting- cries that continued to rise behind them. At the fall of darkness they swung the dogs into a cluster of spruce trees on the edge of the waterway and made a camp. The coffin, at the side of the fire, served for seat and table. The wolf-dogs, clustered on the far side of the fire, snarled and bickered among themselves, but evinced no inclination to stray off into the darkness. "Seems to me, Henry, they're stayin' remarkable close to camp," Bill commented. Henry, squatting over the fire and settling the pot of coffee with a piece of ice, nodded. Nor did he speak till he had taken his seat on the coffin and begun to eat. Thesaurus arose: (v) happen, occur. aflare, flittering, flying, unsteady, blurred. clustered: (adj) agglomerated, flaring, uneasy. topmost: (adj) highest, upmost, upper, agglomerative, bunched, bunchy, shrillness: (n) timbre, timber, acumen, maximum, uppermost, head, gregarious, concentrated, acuteness, sharpness, keenness, supreme, utmost, crowning, apical, conglomerate, collective. stridency, stridence, high pitch, uttermost. ANTONYM: (adj) bottom. fierceness: (n) ferocity, violence, sensitiveness, quality. wailing: (n, v) lamentation, lament, cruelty, force, brutality, rage, squatting: (adj) crouching; (n) leg moaning; (adj) lamenting, weeping, intensity, strength, vehemence, exercise, colonization, movement, crying, wailful, howling, sobbing; wildness, ferociousness. knee bend; (v) couchant; (adv) asquat. (adj, n) bawling; (n) cry. ANTONYMS: (n) friendliness, sunless: (adj) cloudy, dark, cheerless, waterway: (n) ditch, watercourse, calmness, meekness. clouded, lightless, gloomy, channel, stream, trench, canal, drain, palpitant: (adj) fluttering, trembling, tenebrous, mentally disordered, rapid, tailrace, conduit, headrace.