All the Light We Cannot See: Parts Ten–Thirteen

by Anthony Doerr
Marie-Laure is a blind French girl who flees the Nazi occupation of Paris. Werner Pfennig is a young orphan living in a German mining town. In this Pulitzer Prize-winning novel, their lives intertwine in unexpected ways as they try to survive the havoc of war.

Here are links to our lists for the novel: Parts Zero–Two, Parts Three–Four, Parts Five–Six, Parts Seven–Nine, Parts Ten–Thirteen
15 words 428 learners

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Full list of words from this list:

words only definitions & notes
  1. inveigle
    influence or urge by gentle urging, caressing, or flattering
    The Sea of Flames could have been in the Paris Museum all along—that simpering mineralogist and the assistant director laughing as he slunk away, duped, fooled, inveigled.
  2. filigree
    delicate and intricate ornamentation
    What mazes there are in this world. The branches of trees, the filigree of roots, the matrix of crystals, the streets her father recreated in his models.
  3. penitent
    a person who repents for wrongdoing
    His greatgrandfather goes to his knees like a penitent, fits the saw into a groove in the bark, and begins to cut.
  4. lacerate
    cut or tear irregularly
    The iron clangs and his hands lacerate and his six-day beard glows white with dust, but Werner can see that Volkheimer makes quick progress: the sliver of light becomes a violet wedge, wider across than two of Werner’s hands.
  5. breech
    opening in the barrel of a gun where bullets can be loaded
    Still on his back, the sergeant major takes the pistol in both hands and opens and closes the breech.
  6. transient
    lasting a very short time
    The slow sandy light of dawn permeates the room. Everything transient and aching; everything tentative.
  7. surfeit
    the state of being more than full
    To men like that, time was a surfeit, a barrel they watched slowly drain.
  8. pall
    a dark covering or cloud, as of smoke
    Through the open doors, he cannot see Saint-Malo, but he hears the airplanes, hundreds of them, and a great pall of smoke hangs over the horizon day and night.
  9. vindictive
    disposed to seek revenge or intended for revenge
    Always there is the sense of a tide behind them, rising, gathering mass, carrying with it a slow and vindictive rage.
  10. incessantly
    with unflagging resolve
    He buys the newspapers every day to scan the lists of released prisoners, and listens incessantly to one of three radios.
  11. deduce
    conclude by reasoning
    Marie-Laure deduces what she can from the sounds of their shoes: those are small, those weigh a ton, those hardly exist at all.
  12. intermittent
    stopping and starting at irregular intervals
    The small, secure weight of tools along his belt, the smell of intermittent rain, and the crystalline brilliance of the clouds at dusk: these are the only times when Volkheimer feels marginally whole.
  13. prodigious
    great in size, force, extent, or degree
    They met in graduate school; he flitted from lab to lab with a prodigious curiosity but little perseverance.
  14. revulsion
    intense aversion
    Marie-Laure still cannot wear shoes that are too large, or smell a boiled turnip, without experiencing revulsion.
  15. citation
    a short note recognizing a source of information
    Soccer team rosters, citations at the end of journals, introductions at faculty meetings
Created on Mon Jun 15 19:54:19 EDT 2015 (updated Fri Jul 11 21:32:43 EDT 2025)

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