A Snake Falls to Earth: List 4

by Darcie Little Badger
When she was a child, Nina heard stories about shape-shifters from her great-great-grandmother; at 16, Nina encounters a shape-shifter who has come to Earth seeking a cure for his companion's illness.

This list covers "Nina, Age 16"–"Cottonmouth Stars in an Action Movie."

Here are links to our lists for the novel: List 1, List 2, List 3, List 4, List 5
40 words 32 learners

Learn words with Flashcards and other activities

Definition First
Print Flashcards

Other learning activities

Answer a few questions about each word. Use this to prep for your next quiz! Compete with other teams in real time to see who answers the most questions correctly! Test your spelling acumen. Read the definition, listen to the word and try spelling it!

Teaching tools

Create and assign quizzes to your students to test their vocabulary. Assign learning activities including Practice, Vocabulary Jams and Spelling Bees to your students, and monitor their progress in real-time.

Full list of words from this list:

words only definitions & notes
  1. idyllic
    excellent and delightful in all respects
    We were living our dream. Of course I’d feel good. Even with the stress of debt and running a business, our life together was idyllic.
  2. muse
    reflect deeply on a subject
    “Do you ever wonder,” Nina mused, “if the doctors can’t help ’cause they don’t understand who you really are?”
  3. emblazon
    decorate, adorn, or inscribe with a design
    A square of bright red fabric emblazoned with a white patch, shaped like a starling in flight, hung from one branch.
  4. wicker
    flexible branches or twigs that can be woven together
    The children, who’d been kicking around a large wicker ball, stopped playing as I approached the message tree.
  5. gangly
    tall, thin, and awkward
    But gravity acted with swiftness, and although I could move fast in my snake form, my fake form was comparably gangly and slow.
  6. fluke
    a stroke of luck
    And Reign would just laugh and dance for me, as if proving that her grace wasn’t a one-time fluke.
  7. pronoun
    a function word that is used in place of a noun
    They—singular—hunted. They—plural—died. Their—plural—son. I need to explain it that way because the Lipan language doesn’t use gendered pronouns. There is no he hunted or she hunted. There’s only, like, they—singular—hunted. We do have pronouns that indicate whether the plural version of they means two people or more than two people, though.
  8. tedious
    so lacking in interest as to cause mental weariness
    Afterwards, I repeated the process using the Jicarilla dictionary, and...uh...that’s been tedious.
  9. tome
    a large and scholarly book
    Nina patted her five-pound tome.
  10. painstaking
    characterized by extreme care and great effort
    There were spinning chairs on seesaw levers, a tower of metal bars they painstakingly pieced together rung by rung, gigantic wheels you could run inside without actually moving an inch, and the big attraction: single-person railcars on a train track that circled the whole clearing.
  11. deviation
    a turning aside
    The path was so narrow, any deviation to the left or to the right would send us into the shrubs.
  12. medley
    a collection containing a variety of kinds of things
    I tasted the air, my tongue capturing a medley of earthy, floral, and metallic scents.
  13. culminate
    end, especially to reach a final or climactic stage
    Taking the stairs two at a time, she was nearly at ground level when the THUD, THUD, THUD culminated in a thunk! of the door swinging open and hitting the wall.
  14. fleeting
    lasting for a markedly brief time
    The silhouette dropped into fleeting vertical dive and then zipped upward again, as if pulled by an invisible elastic string.
  15. materialize
    come into being; become reality
    “If Brightest doesn’t materialize soon, do we wait for them?”
  16. nonplussed
    filled with bewilderment
    “Yep,” Reign answered, nonplussed. “Why not believe him?”
  17. grandstand
    behave or perform in a showy way to impress an audience
    Because if our great-uncle habitually transformed trailer homes into skyscrapers, or lassoed tornadoes, his grandstanding would attract the King so fast.
  18. outcropping
    part of a rock formation that juts above surrounding land
    Reign helped me out of the truck, since my legs were wobbly with vehicle sickness, and walked me toward an outcropping of stone.
  19. resonant
    characterized by a loud deep sound
    The resonant sound dispersed around us, echoing off the mountainside and then swallowed by the sky.
  20. imposing
    impressive in appearance
    A herd of bighorn sheep, all in their true forms, had been within sight the whole time. Except for a pair of tiny yearlings, the sheep were imposing. Their paired horns ranged from narrow, slightly bent points, to weighty curls spiraling out from either side of the head.
  21. frivolous
    not serious in content, attitude, or behavior
    “We only help wolves. No coyotes. Never again. In fact, those two”—he bowed his head to point at the sisters with his horns—“bear a striking resemblance to the rabid coyote man who exploited our hospitality to steal a monster truck. Frivolous creatures.”
  22. deferential
    showing courteous regard for people's feelings
    “Our friends want to ascend, Grandfather,” the leader of the herd explained. He spoke deferentially, but warmly, as if addressing an elder member of his family.
  23. haunch
    the upper part of the leg of an animal, often used for food
    Identical sagebrush bushes grew from either side of his front legs and his back haunches.
  24. disclose
    make known to the public information previously kept secret
    She couldn’t disclose the names of their Earth allies. Apparently, that’s confidential.
  25. tendril
    slender structure by which some plants attach to an object
    Tendrils of fine green vines, once part of the originator’s floral coat, curled around their hands and wrists, as if trying to steady them.
  26. leaden
    (of movement) slow and laborious
    My limbs were leaden, sluggish.
  27. threshold
    a region marking a boundary
    “There’s a threshold,” he says. “Below it, the gravity of Earth can’t touch you. That’s why we don’t attempt the journey on any other mountain in this range. They’re all just a little too small.”
  28. intently
    with strained or eager attention
    “Almost,” Brightest agreed, staring intently at the turtle disk.
  29. precarious
    fraught with danger
    My spectacles began to slip off my nose; in order to grab them, I switched to a precarious one-arm hang.
  30. streamline
    contour economically or efficiently
    In my peripheral vision, I saw their streamlined body dive toward the pseudosun.
  31. incontrovertible
    impossible to deny or disprove
    They’d develop sophisticated algorithms designed to identify animal features on humanlike bodies. To look for incontrovertible proof.
  32. colloquial
    characteristic of informal spoken language or conversation
    It took one minute and fifteen seconds to rattle off a list of Ami’s physical features and search for a matching species. Anaxyrus dallasensis, Nifty informed her. Colloquially known as the Dallas toad.
  33. bedraggled
    limp, untidy, and soiled
    It occurred to Nina that her guests were a bedraggled bunch. Hair frizzy or tangled after air-drying without a good brush. Pants and shoes muddy, eyes hollow or red-rimmed with exhaustion.
  34. coy
    showing marked and often playful evasiveness or reluctance
    “We have a real cave like that in the Reflecting World,” Risk said, smiling coyly. “It’s on our list of destinations to visit.”
  35. blase
    uninterested because of frequent exposure or indulgence
    For all she knew, conscious, communicative caves were commonplace in the Reflecting World. It still seemed bizarre that Risk was blasé about the subject, though.
  36. pithy
    concise and full of meaning
    “For all we know, the warnings could come from a pithy bat hiding behind a stalagmite. ‘Don’t stay awake too late! Be kind to the people you love!’ See? It’s easy.”
  37. copse
    a dense growth of trees, shrubs, or bushes
    The group followed a footpath down a hill and around a copse of juniper trees.
  38. respectively
    in the order given
    The moment their backpacks were unzipped, Brightest and Oli burst and slithered out, respectively, into the sunlight.
  39. feign
    give a false appearance of
    For a moment, she watched them practice their roles. Risk and Reign were still gasping and feigning surprise.
  40. wayward
    difficult to manage or keep in order
    I helped them into a sitting position, pushed their wayward arm into the right place, and carefully lowered the collar over their feathered head.
Created on Wed Dec 01 14:55:08 EST 2021 (updated Fri Dec 03 13:10:54 EST 2021)

Sign up now (it’s free!)

Whether you’re a teacher or a learner, Vocabulary.com can put you or your class on the path to systematic vocabulary improvement.