47 Great Words From - The Brief and Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, - by Junot Diaz - Vocabulary List - Vocabulary

22/11/2014
47 Great Words from "The Brief and Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao," by Junot Diaz - Vocabulary List : Vocabulary.com
VOCABULARY LISTS > LITERATURE
47 Great Words from "The Brief and

Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao," by Junot Diaz
47 words
June 6, 2012 By Vocabulary.com (NY)
Find more Summer Reading Vocabulary Lists here.
bane
1.
something causing misery or death

EXAMPLE SENTENCE:
They say it came first from Africa, carried in the screams of the enslaved; that it was the death
bane of the Tanos, uttered just as one world perished and another began; that it was a demon
drawn into Creation through the nightmare door that was cracked open in the Antilles.
2.
utter
express audibly; utter sounds (not necessarily words)
EXAMPLE SENTENCE:
They say it came first from Africa, carried in the screams of the enslaved; that it was the death
bane of the Tanos, uttered just as one world perished and another began; that it was a demon
drawn into Creation through the nightmare door that was cracked open in the Antilles.
3.
provenance
where something originated or was nurtured in its early existence
EXAMPLE SENTENCE:
No matter what its name or provenance, it is believed that the arrival of Europeans on Hispaniola
unleashed the fuk on the world, and weve all been in the shit ever since.
4.
implacable
incapable of being placated
EXAMPLE SENTENCE:
For those of you who missed your mandatory two seconds of Dominican history: Trujillo, one of the
twentieth centurys most infamous dictators, ruled the Dominican Republic between 1930 and 1961
with an implacable ruthless brutality.
5.
potent
having a strong physiological or chemical effect
EXAMPLE SENTENCE:
A portly, sadistic, pig-eyed mulato who bleached his skin, wore platform shoes, and had a
fondness for Napoleon-era haberdashery, Trujillo (also known as El Jefe, the Failed Cattle Thief,
and Fuckface) came to control nearly every aspect of the DRs political, cultural, social, and
economic life through a potent (and familiar) mixture of violence, intimidation, massacre, rape, cooptation, and terror; treated the country like it was a plantation and he was the master.
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6.
designation
identifying word or words by which someone or something is called and classified or distinguished from others
EXAMPLE SENTENCE:
Im not entirely sure Oscar would have liked this designation.
7.
cohere
cause to form a united, orderly, and aesthetically consistent whole
EXAMPLE SENTENCE:
Twenty-four-hour zafa in the hope that the bad luck will not have had time to cohere.
8.
nascent
being born or beginning
EXAMPLE SENTENCE:
Because in those days he was (still) a normal Dominican boy raised in a typical Dominican
family, his nascent pimpliness was encouraged by blood and friends alike.
9.
debonair
having a sophisticated charm
EXAMPLE SENTENCE:
A tall, debonair pretty boy whose enormous phallus created havoc in Europe and North America,
Rubirosa was the quintessential jet-setting car-racing polo-obsessed playboy, the Trujillatos happy
side (for he was indeed one of Trujillos best-known minions).
10.
havoc
violent and needless disturbance
EXAMPLE SENTENCE:
A tall, debonair pretty boy whose enormous phallus created havoc in Europe and North America,
Rubirosa was the quintessential jet-setting car-racing polo-obsessed playboy, the Trujillatos happy
side (for he was indeed one of Trujillos best-known minions).
11.
apotheosis
model of excellence or perfection of a kind; one having no equal
EXAMPLE SENTENCE:
It truly was a Golden Age for Oscar, one that reached its apotheosis in the fall of his seventh
year, when he had two little girlfriends at the same time, his first and only mnage a trios.
12.
morose
showing a brooding ill humor
EXAMPLE SENTENCE:
Oscar went home morose to his pre-Korean-sweatshop-era cartoons to the Herculoids and
Space Ghost.
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13.
lope
a slow pace of running
EXAMPLE SENTENCE:
In later years, after he and Olga had both turned into overweight freaks, Oscar could not resist
feeling the occasional flash of guilt when he saw Olga loping across a street or staring blankly out
near the New York bus stop, couldnt stop himself from wondering how much his cold-as-balls
breakup had contributed to her present fucked-upness.
14.
pejorative
expressing disapproval
EXAMPLE SENTENCE:
The pejorative parigiayo, Watchers agree, is a corruption of the English neologism party
watcher.
15.
neologism
a newly invented word or phrase
EXAMPLE SENTENCE:
The pejorative parigiayo, Watchers agree, is a corruption of the English neologism party
watcher.
16.
introvert
(psychology) a person who tends to shrink from social contacts and to become preoccupied with their own thoughts
EXAMPLE SENTENCE:
Oscar was a social introvert who trembled with fear during gym class and watched nerd British
shows like Doctor Who and Blakes 7, and could tell you the difference between a Veritech fighter
and a Zentraedi walker, and he used a lot of huge sounding nerd words like indefatigable and
ubiquitous when talking to niggers who would barely graduate from high school.
17.
indefatigable
showing sustained enthusiastic action with unflagging vitality
EXAMPLE SENTENCE:
18.
ubiquitous
being present everywhere at once
EXAMPLE SENTENCE:
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19.
iota
a tiny or scarcely detectable amount
EXAMPLE SENTENCE:
His adolescent nerdliness vaporizing any iota of a chance he had for young love.
20.
tutelage
teaching pupils individually (usually by a tutor hired privately)
EXAMPLE SENTENCE:
His ti Rudolfo (only recently released from his last and final bid in the Justice and now living in
their house on Main Street) was especially generous in his tutelage.
21.
blithely
in a joyous manner
EXAMPLE SENTENCE:
It wouldnt have been so bad if these chickies hadnt treated Oscar like some deaf-mute harem
guard, ordering him around, having him run their errands, making fun of his games and his looks; to
make shit even worse, they blithely went on about the particulars of their sex lives with no regard
for him, while he sat in the kitchen, clutching the latest issue of Dragon.
22.
proficiency
the quality of having great facility and competence
EXAMPLE SENTENCE:
In these apocalyptic daydreams he was always some kind of pltano Doc Savage, a supergenius
who combined world-class martial artistry with deadly firearms proficiency.
23.
dyspeptic
a person suffering from indigestion
EXAMPLE SENTENCE:
Senior year found him bloated, dyspeptic, and, most cruelly, alone in his lack of girlfriend.
24.
epiphany
a divine manifestation
EXAMPLE SENTENCE:
Right there he had an epiphany that echoed through his fat self: He realized his fucked-up comicbook-reading, role-playing-game-loving, no-sports-playing friends were embarrassed by him.
25.
pseudo
(often used in combination) not genuine but having the appearance of
EXAMPLE SENTENCE:
Changes, Oscar said pseudo-cryptically:
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26.
vortex
the shape of something rotating rapidly
EXAMPLE SENTENCE:
Without even realizing it hed fallen into one of those Lets-Be-Friends Vortexes, the bane of
nerdboys everywhere.
27.
annihilation
total destruction
EXAMPLE SENTENCE:
With Manny and his big cock around, Oscar was back to dreaming about nuclear annihilation,
how through some miraculous accident hed hear about the attack first and without pausing hed
steal his tos car, drive it to the stores, stock it full of supplies (maybe shoot a couple of looters en
route), and then fetch Ana.
28.
chisel
deprive somebody of something by deceit
EXAMPLE SENTENCE:
I just hope you aint trying to chisel in on my girl, guy.
29.
extricate
release from entanglement of difficulty
EXAMPLE SENTENCE:
He liked to kid himself that it was only cold anthropological interest that kept him around to see
how it would all end, but the truth was he couldnt extricate himself.
30.
prey
prey on or hunt for
EXAMPLE SENTENCE:
He saw his entire writing future flash before his eyes; hed only written one novel worth a damn,
about an Australian hunger spirit preying on a group of small-town friends, wouldnt get a chance
to write anything better career over.
31.
euphoria
a feeling of great (usually exaggerated) elation
EXAMPLE SENTENCE:
There was the initial euphoria of finding himself alone at college, free of everything, completely on
his fucking own, and with it an optimism that here among these thousands of young people he
would find someone like him.
32.
premonition
an early warning about a future event
EXAMPLE SENTENCE:
And at that moment, for reasons you will never quite understand, you are overcome by the feeling,
the premonition, that something in your life is about to change.
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33.
begrudge
wish ill or allow unwillingly
EXAMPLE SENTENCE:
For as long as youve been alive youve had bruja ways; even your mother will begrudge you that
much.
34.
callow
young and inexperienced
EXAMPLE SENTENCE:
He was like all boys: beautiful and callow, and like an insect he couldnt sit still.
35.
utopian
characterized by or aspiring to impracticable perfection
EXAMPLE SENTENCE:
On my days off I would drink with Aldo, or I would sit in the sand dressed in all black and try to
write in my journal, which I was sure would form the foundation for a utopian society after we blew
ourselves into radioactive kibble.
36.
bereft
sorrowful through loss or deprivation
EXAMPLE SENTENCE:
I stayed out as much as I could and waited for the feelings to come back to me, to tell me what I
should do next, but I was bone-dry, bereft, no visions whatsoever.
37.
putrid
in an advanced state of decomposition and having a foul odor
EXAMPLE SENTENCE:
I would sit there with Aldo and his putrid father and the old shows would come on the TV, the ones
me and my brother used to watch when we were kids, Threes Company, Whats Happening, The
Jeffersons, and my disappointment would grind against some organ that was very soft and tender.
38.
delude
be false to; be dishonest with
EXAMPLE SENTENCE:
Thats how deluded I was by then.
39.
frenzied
excessively agitated; distraught with fear or other violent emotion
EXAMPLE SENTENCE:
Not the frenzied Ban of right now, supported by an endless supply of DoYos whove laid claim to
most of Boston, Providence, New Hampshire.
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40.
tranquility
an untroubled state; free from disturbances
EXAMPLE SENTENCE:
It was here that Beli lived with her mother-aunt, if not exactly content, then certainly in a state of
relative tranquility.
41.
inclination
an attitude of mind especially one that favors one alternative over others
EXAMPLE SENTENCE:
Almost any other Third World girl would have thanked Dios Santsimo for the blessed life she led:
after all, she had a madre who didnt beat her, who (out of guilt or inclination) spoiled her rotten,
bought her flash clothes and paid her bakery wages, peanuts, Ill admit, but thats more than what
ninety-nine percent of other kids in similar situations earned, which was nathan.
42.
enumerate
determine the number or amount of
EXAMPLE SENTENCE:
From what was easy to enumerate: the bakery, her school, dull-ass Ban, sharing a bed with her
madre, the inability to buy the dresses she wanted, having to wait until fifteen to straighten her hair,
the impossible expectations of La Inca, the fact that her long-gone parents had died when she was
one, the whispers that Trujillo had done it, those first years of her life when shed been an orphan,
the horrible scars from that time, her own despised black skin.
43.
lineage
the kinship relation between an individual and the individual's progenitors
EXAMPLE SENTENCE:
But despite the girls admirable lineage, Beli herself had not grown up in her parents upper-class
milieu.
44.
milieu
the environmental condition
EXAMPLE SENTENCE:
But despite the girls admirable lineage, Beli herself had not grown up in her parents upper-class
milieu.
45.
punctilious
marked by precise accordance with details
EXAMPLE SENTENCE:
In these last seven years, meticulous punctilious La Inca had undone a lot of the damage that life
in Outer Azua had inflicted, but the girl was still crazy rough around the edges.
46.
infamous
known widely and usually unfavorably
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EXAMPLE SENTENCE:
For those of you who missed your mandatory two seconds of Dominican history: Trujillo, one of the
twentieth centurys most infamous dictators, ruled the Dominican Republic between 1930 and
1961 with an implacable ruthless brutality.
47.
meticulous
marked by precise accordance with details
EXAMPLE SENTENCE:
In these last seven years, meticulous punctilious La Inca had undone a lot of the damage that life
in Outer Azua had inflicted, but the girl was still crazy rough around the edges.
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22/11/2014

VOCABULARY LISTS > LITERATURE

47 Great Words from "The Brief and

Find more Summer Reading Vocabulary Lists here.

something causing misery or death

Im not entirely sure Oscar would have liked this designation.

Changes, Oscar said pseudo-cryptically:

I just hope you aint trying to chisel in on my girl, guy.

Thats how deluded I was by then.

Copyright 2014 Vocabulary.com All Rights Reserved.

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