The Woman All Spies Fear: Chapters 26–32

by Amy Butler Greenfield
In this biography, Amy Butler Greenfield tells the story of Elizebeth Smith Friedman, a Shakespeare enthusiast who became one of the most famous cryptologists in the world.

Here are links to our lists for the book: Chapters 1–5, Chapters 6–11, Chapters 12–18, Chapters 19–25, Chapters 26–32
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Full list of words from this list:

words only definitions & notes
  1. chagrin
    a feeling of annoyance or distress due to disappointment or failure
    But to their chagrin, the mysterious messages turned out not to be from the Nazis. Instead, they were harmless bulletins from the Swiss Army, written on a simple, commercial version of Enigma. It was nowhere near as complex as the top-secret Enigma machines the Nazis had developed.
  2. renounce
    turn away from; give up
    In January 1944, the country renounced its diplomatic ties with Germany, Japan, Italy, and their Axis allies.
  3. harried
    troubled persistently, especially with petty annoyances
    Hounded and harried by forces on the ground, the spy rings of Argentina collapsed.
  4. elusive
    skillful at evading capture
    Although the master spy Sargo remained elusive, his networks were quickly destroyed, and so were his radio stations and power bases.
  5. linchpin
    a central cohesive source of support and stability
    Sargo had been the linchpin in Nazi spy networks not only in Argentina, but also across all of South America. Once he was on the run, the Nazis’ influence over the continent dwindled.
  6. concede
    admit or acknowledge, often reluctantly
    It wasn’t until the fall of 1944 that Jones at last conceded that perhaps the team should be doing more on other fronts.
  7. mired
    entangled or hindered
    Mired in low-level tasks, Elizebeth must have longed to do something more to help win the war—especially since her own children were headed into harm’s way.
  8. bereft
    lacking or deprived of something
    When President Roosevelt succumbed to a stroke in April 1945, leaving the nation bereft of its leader, Elizebeth wrote to Barbara in Panama...
  9. ferment
    a state of agitation or turbulent change or development
    Perhaps worrying that her letter had become too sad, she ended by saying to Barbara, “I can imagine the ferment that world-conscious mind of yours is in. It is for us to fight all the more for a truly international post war world. A universe-full of love to you!”
  10. tedium
    the feeling of being bored by something
    After the war ended, Elizebeth’s work offered no more moments of nail-biting suspense, just endless tedium.
  11. ream
    a large quantity of written matter
    “Reams of ‘work-sheets’ were destroyed in the desire not to bury completely all posterity under a mammoth paper mausoleum,” she later joked.
  12. posterity
    all future generations
    “Reams of ‘work-sheets’ were destroyed in the desire not to bury completely all posterity under a mammoth paper mausoleum,” she later joked.
  13. reverent
    feeling or showing profound respect or veneration
    The remaining papers had to be “grouped, described, labeled, indexed, and reverently dispatched to their sealed tombs in the government vaults.”
  14. doggedness
    persistent determination
    Covering more than fifty encryption systems, the book testifies to the doggedness and ingenuity of Elizebeth and her team.
  15. speculator
    one who makes risky investments in the hopes of high profits
    When France needed to devalue its currency, for example, they told the IMF in advance. But if speculators got hold of that inside information, they could use it to enrich themselves—and, in the process, they might send France, and possibly the world, into financial free fall.
  16. induce
    cause to arise
    Known today as electroconvulsive therapy, this involved sending electrical current through the brain and inducing seizures.
  17. assuage
    provide physical relief, as from pain
    He was so well that Elizebeth left him on his own for three months while she traveled in Europe. She had “an itchy foot,” William joked, “and the cash to assuage the itch.”
  18. tome
    a large and scholarly book
    To outsiders, the library must have seemed a curious hodgepodge. It had a huge range, everything from serious academic tomes to a “Sky King Spy Detecto Writer,” found in a box of breakfast cereal.
  19. heady
    extremely exciting as if by alcohol or a narcotic
    Then, just as they had done during the first heady days of their courtship at Riverbank, they both discussed what they saw in Shakespeare’s work—and what they didn’t see.
  20. treatise
    a formal text that treats a particular topic systematically
    They finished their thousand-page treatise just in time—and it won the prize.
  21. glyph
    a symbolic character, especially one carved or incised
    For years, they had both been fascinated by the Mayan glyphs, the script of the ancient Maya of Mesoamerica. Plenty of other experts were also intrigued by the potent drawings and had tried to decipher them, without success.
  22. enigmatic
    not clear to the understanding
    There were other code-breaking mysteries that called to them as well. One was the enigmatic Voynich Manuscript, written in a language no one could read.
  23. fraught
    marked by distress
    In retirement, William had completed secret missions for the NSA, but even so, his ties with the agency had become fraught. Although he was highly valued by the NSA’s first director, William had little common ground with the blunt general who succeeded him in 1956.
  24. abhor
    feel hatred or disgust toward
    They abhorred McCarthy’s witch hunts for communists and his attacks on civil liberties.
  25. flout
    treat with contemptuous disregard
    In their eyes, he was a danger to democracy—“a man who flouted the authority of the Senate, who overrode the Constitution while his followers cheered.”
  26. privy
    informed about something secret or not generally known
    During his long career as a code breaker, he had been privy to many secrets.
  27. covert
    secret or hidden
    As early as the 1930s, for example, his unit covertly read the telegrams of private citizens.
  28. rampant
    occurring or increasing in an unrestrained way
    But at the NSA, he had seen secrecy running rampant, and it troubled him.
    Secrecy is a form of power, and power corrupts.
  29. jaunt
    a journey taken for pleasure
    For her, the European trips were simply pleasure jaunts, during which her husband took the chance to catch up with old friends. For William, they were high-stakes, high-stress encounters.
  30. reconciled
    made compatible or consistent
    He soon would start to ask whether “the collection of secret intelligence” could be reconciled “with the democratic ideals of a free and open society.”
  31. brooding
    deeply or seriously thoughtful
    Brooding, he became convinced, at times, that “the NSA considers me their greatest security risk.”
  32. natty
    marked by up-to-dateness in dress and manners
    Now and then, they dressed up for these gatherings and took photos. Leaning on his cane, William would sport a bow tie and a natty black beret.
  33. pall
    become less interesting or attractive
    At one end of the garden, William had planted a Talisman rose. Now it bloomed for each anniversary, cascading in a shower of pink and gold. And when the garden palled, Elizebeth and William had another retreat to sustain them—their library.
  34. solace
    comfort offered to one who is disappointed or miserable
    For the Friedmans, their library was a place of solace, an escape from a world that was not always kind.
  35. higgledy-piggledy
    in a disordered manner
    On a visit there, Elizebeth was shocked to find an important collection of papers “scattered higgledy-piggledy over those iron shelves....I went home and told my husband. We sort of cried on each other's shoulders.”
  36. collate
    assemble in proper sequence
    Their personal papers were even harder to collate.
  37. trawl
    search or sift through in order to find something
    But the next month, before most of the boxes had even been opened, NSA agents went to the Marshall Library to trawl through the Friedmans’ papers. At some point, either then or later, the agency quietly removed items from the collection.
  38. terse
    brief and to the point
    Her comments could be terse, and sometimes funny.
  39. epitome
    a standard or typical example
    A lively letter from a friend described William as “the epitome of the dapper and dangerous man.”
  40. self-effacing
    reluctant to draw attention to yourself
    Having worked in intelligence himself, he marveled at the thought of this “wispy, gentle, self-effacing woman knocking off, one by one, some of the nastiest pieces of business then existing.”
Created on Tue May 03 15:06:50 EDT 2022 (updated Fri May 06 14:55:59 EDT 2022)

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