The House No One Sees: List 3

by Adina King
This novel, told in both poetry and prose and alternating between the past and the present, follows teenager Penelope Ross as she confronts childhood memories of her past with her neglectful, struggling mother.

This list covers vocabulary from "Wrong"–"Narrative 1."

Here are links to our lists for the book:

List 1, List 2, List 3, List 4.
15 words 3 learners

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Full list of words from this list:

words only definitions & notes
  1. persecute
    cause to suffer
    As we walked, I asked how people who were persecuted for being different could turn on others who were different...
  2. land mine
    an explosive device hidden underground
    They joked I was a land mine, but it wasn’t funny.
  3. vitamin
    an organic substance essential to normal metabolism
    The doctor gave me a special vitamin that made my brain fuzzy.
  4. cursive
    handwriting in which letters are connected within words
    There were boxes next to the tree labeled X-Mas and Decorations and Lights in Grandpa’s thick slanted cursive.
  5. contradiction
    opposition between two conflicting forces or ideas
    I wait for the basement to hit me—the smell, the taste, the contradiction of fear and safety.
  6. vise
    something likened to a tool that clamps or holds tightly
    As Grandpa talked, your fingers gripped the table like a vise turning red and then white.
  7. loophole
    an ambiguity that makes it possible to evade an obligation
    You didn’t break the rules, you just found a loophole at the end.
  8. chronic
    long-lasting or characterized by long suffering
    They said addiction was a disease, chronic and haunting.
  9. exhale
    expel air
    When the house exhaled, I forgot how to breathe.
  10. musty
    stale and unclean smelling
    I could feel it watching you, studying me, and maybe hoping we would stay, so as you gathered the things you couldn’t live without I opened another door and descended, my head screaming dark basement molecules into the house’s musty, decaying heart, and I buried the little doll inside.
  11. impenetrable
    not admitting of passage into or through
    That night I snuck down into the apartment’s basement, certain I could find the thing Andy buried inside, but when I stepped onto the basement’s impenetrable cement floor, I knew I was never breaking through.
  12. psychiatrist
    a specialist in the treatment of mental disorders
    I went to psychiatrists.
  13. trauma
    an emotional wound or shock having long-lasting effects
    This is what happens when you’re stuck in your own trauma narrative.
  14. narrative
    an account that tells the particulars of an act or event
    This is what happens when you’re stuck in your own trauma narrative.
  15. shadowy
    lacking clarity or distinctness
    Sometimes the ingredients make harsh sounds, have shadowy shapes, painful textures, and you don’t know how to fish them out of the you-pot.
Created on Wed Mar 04 08:41:44 EST 2026 (updated Tue Apr 07 13:54:42 EDT 2026)

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