"Everyday Use" by Alice Walker, List 1

Sandy (United States of America)
Mama Johnson has two daughters: Maggie, living with Mama and steeped every day in their heritage; and Dee (now Wangero Leewanika Kemanjo), who is college-educated, has moved away, and embraced a "new day" lifestyle. Which daughter shows more respect for their heritage: the one giving her handmade quilts "everyday use"; or, the one preserving Mama's old quilts, as if in a museum?

This list covers vocabulary from "I will wait…"—"...recompose herself."

Here are links to our lists for the book: List 1, List 2
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Full list of words from this list:

words only definitions & notes
  1. homely
    lacking in physical beauty or proportion
    Maggie will be nervous until after her sister goes: she will stand hopelessly in corners, homely and ashamed of the burn scars down her arms and legs, eying her sister with a mixture of envy and awe.
  2. totter
    move without being stable, as if threatening to fall
    You've no doubt seen those TV shows where the child who has "made it" is confronted, as a surprise, by her own mother and father, tottering in weakly from backstage.
  3. tacky
    tastelessly showy
    She pins on my dress a large orchid, even though she has told me once that she thinks orchids are tacky flowers.
  4. mercilessly
    without pity
    I can kill and clean a hog as mercilessly as a man.
  5. witty
    demonstrating striking cleverness and humor
    Johnny Carson has much to do to keep up with my quick and witty tongue.
  6. sidle
    move unobtrusively or furtively
    Have you ever seen a lame animal, perhaps a dog run over by some careless person rich enough to own a car, sidle up to someone who is ignorant enough to be kind to him?
  7. dingy
    thickly covered with ingrained dirt or soot
    I see her standing off under the sweet gum tree she used to dig gum out of; a look of concentration on her face as she watched the last dingy gray board of the house fall in toward the red-hot brick chimney.
  8. deliberately
    with intention; in an intentional manner
    I have deliberately turned my back on the house.
  9. porthole
    a window in a ship or airplane
    There are no real windows, just some holes cut in the sides, like the portholes in a ship, but not round and not square, with rawhide holding the shutters up on the outside.
  10. rawhide
    animal skin, especially of cattle, that has not been tanned
    There are no real windows, just some holes cut in the sides, like the portholes in a ship, but not round and not square, with rawhide holding the shutters up on the outside.
  11. furtive
    secret and sly
    Maggie and I thought about this and Maggie asked me, "Mama, when did Dee ever have any friends?"
    She had a few. Furtive boys in pink shirts hanging about on washday after school. Nervous girls who never laughed.
  12. scalding
    marked by harshly abusive criticism
    Impressed with her they worshiped the well-turned phrase, the cute shape, the scalding humor that erupted like bubbles in Iye.
  13. flashy
    tastelessly showy
    When she was courting Jimmy T she didn't have much time to pay to us, but turned all her faultfinding power on him. He flew to marry a cheap city girl from a family of ignorant flashy people. She hardly had time to recompose herself.
Created on Fri May 08 21:30:57 EDT 2026 (updated Sun May 10 15:54:05 EDT 2026)

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