Little Brother: Chapters 9–12

by Cory Doctorow
In this dystopian novel, San Francisco has become a police state controlled by the Department of Homeland Security — and 17-year-old Marcus is determined to take it down.

Here are links to our lists for the novel: Chapters 1–4, Chapters 5–8, Chapters 9–12, Chapters 13–17, Chapter 18–Epilogue
15 words 115 learners

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Full list of words from this list:

words only definitions & notes
  1. filial
    relating to or characteristic of or befitting an offspring
    She could use her spousular powers to nullify his rage in a way that was out of my reach as a mere filial unit.
  2. affinity
    a natural attraction or feeling of kinship
    Guys had some weird affinity for playing female characters.
  3. tractable
    easily managed
    “These guys may be fools, but they’re methodical fools. They’ll just keep throwing resources at this problem until they solve it. It’s tractable, you know. Mining all the data in the city, following up on every lead. They’ll catch the terrorists.”
  4. disconcerted
    having self-possession upset; thrown into confusion
    She got up and made herself a cup of tea, something she did whenever she was uncomfortable or disconcerted.
  5. erratic
    likely to perform unpredictably
    Let him follow you around and take all the notes he wants, but steam open the envelopes that he sends back to HQ and replace his account of your movements with a fictitious one. If you want, you can make him seem erratic and unreliable so they get rid of him.
  6. cliche
    a trite or obvious remark
    As the cliche goes, “With enough eyeballs, all bugs are shallow.”
  7. sere
    having lost all moisture
    All that’s left is a labyrinth of weathered stone set into the sere cliff face at Ocean Beach. It looks for all the world like a Roman ruin, crumbled and mysterious, and just beyond it is a set of caves that let out into the sea.
  8. discriminating
    showing or indicating careful judgment and discernment
    About three quarters were Jolu’s friends. I’d invited all the people I really trusted. Either I was more discriminating than Jolu or less popular. Now that he’d told me he was quitting, it made me think that he was less discriminating.
  9. anarchist
    an advocate of the abolition of governments
    There was an anarchist bookstore on Valencia that I sometimes passed on the way to school that had a poster of an old revolutionary named Emma Goldman with the caption “If I can’t dance, I don’t want to be a part of your revolution.”
  10. galvanize
    stimulate to action
    That galvanized the Free Speech Movement. That was the start of the hippies, but it was also where more radical student movements came from.
  11. conformity
    compliance with accepted standards, rules, or norms
    The war in Vietnam ended, and the kind of conformity and unquestioning obedience that people had called patriotism went out of style in a big way.
  12. vindicate
    show to be right by providing justification or proof
    Mom raised an eyebrow at the shirt, and Dad shook his head and lectured me about not looking for trouble. I felt a little vindicated by his reaction.
  13. truncheon
    a short stout club used primarily by police officers
    The police moved in in lines, carrying plastic shields, wearing Darth Vader helmets that covered their faces. Each one had a black truncheon and infrared goggles.
  14. emblazon
    decorate, adorn, or inscribe with a design
    The opening screen was emblazoned with a DHS logo and the title: WHAT EVERY AMERICAN SHOULD KNOW ABOUT HOMELAND SECURITY.
  15. postmortem
    a discussion of an event after it has occurred
    They were looking at the San Francisco Chronicle, which featured a full-page postmortem on the “youth riot” in Mission Dolores Park.
Created on Fri Aug 28 10:43:44 EDT 2020 (updated Thu Jul 31 20:13:05 EDT 2025)

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