East of Eden: Part One

by John Steinbeck
Inspired by the biblical story of Cain and Abel, this novel tells the interlinked stories of the Trask and Hamilton families.

Here are links to our lists for the novel: Part One, Part Two, Part Three, Part Four

Here are links to our lists for other works by John Steinbeck: Of Mice and Men, The Pearl, Cannery Row, The Grapes of Wrath, Travels with Charley
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Full list of words from this list:

words only definitions & notes
  1. listless
    marked by low spirits; showing no enthusiasm
    The land cracked and the springs dried up and the cattle listlessly nibbled dry twigs.
  2. scrupulously
    with careful attention and effort to do something correctly
    He was never a political man, so it is not likely a charge of rebellion drove him out, and he was scrupulously honest, which eliminates the police as prime movers.
  3. pique
    a sudden outburst of anger
    But whether it was too successful love or whether he left in pique at unsuccessful love, I do not know.
  4. dour
    harshly uninviting or formidable in manner or appearance
    She had a dour Presbyterian mind and a code of morals that pinned down and beat the brains out of nearly everything that was pleasant to do.
  5. lilt
    a jaunty rhythm in music or speech
    He had a rich deep voice, good both in song and in speech, and while he had no brogue there was a rise and a lilt and a cadence to his talk that made it sound sweet in the ears of the taciturn farmers from the valley bottom.
  6. repository
    a person to whom a secret is entrusted
    His slight strangeness set him apart and made him safe as a repository.
  7. sallow
    unhealthy looking
    Her eyes were pale, her complexion sallow, and her teeth crooked, but she was extremely healthy and never complained during her pregnancy.
  8. taciturnity
    the trait of being uncommunicative
    The youth, inexperience, and taciturnity of Alice Trask all turned out to be assets for Cyrus.
  9. ubiquitous
    being present everywhere at once
    Private Trask he began, and Private Trask he remained. In the total telling, it made him at once the most mobile and ubiquitous private in the history of warfare.
  10. dissent
    express opposition through action or words
    Alice and the boys had a complete picture of him: a private soldier, and proud of it, who not only happened to be where every spectacular and important action was taking place but who wandered freely into staff meetings and joined or dissented in the decisions of general officers.
  11. insinuation
    an indirect (and usually malicious) implication
    How Cyrus managed to make this understood without saying it was a triumph of insinuation.
  12. terse
    brief and to the point
    She was not a talker. A terse report was easiest for her.
  13. monotonous
    tediously repetitious or lacking in variety
    He walked on out of the woodlot, and his head hung down so that his chin rested on his chest, and the rise and fall of his hip when his wooden leg struck the ground was monotonous.
  14. noncommittal
    refusing to bind oneself to a particular course of action
    Rage came first and then a coldness, a possession; noncommittal eyes and a pleased smile and no voice at all, only a whisper.
  15. deft
    skillful in physical movements; especially of the hands
    When that happened murder was on the way, but cool, deft murder, and hands that worked precisely, delicately.
  16. meager
    deficient in amount or quality or extent
    He got out his tobacco sack with its meager jingle of silver and bought the men a drink to keep them talking.
  17. poultice
    a medical dressing spread on a cloth and applied to the skin
    He did it as a poultice to his own pride and also as a kind of prize for Adam.
  18. revulsion
    intense aversion
    He did not like fighting to start with, and far from learning to love it, as some men do, he felt an increasing revulsion for violence.
  19. malinger
    avoid responsibilities and duties, often by faking illness
    Several times his officers looked closely at him for malingering, but no charge was brought.
  20. inimical
    tending to obstruct or cause harm
    To inflict any hurt on anything for any purpose became inimical to him.
  21. pernicious
    exceedingly harmful
    In his middle
 life, at about the time such things were known about, it was discovered 
that, he had pernicious anemia.
  22. indefatigable
    showing sustained enthusiasm with unflagging vitality
    From childhood on he was a hard worker, if anyone would tell him what to work at, and once told he was indefatigable.
  23. despondent
    without or almost without hope
    As a young man, when two of his friends who ran a little store came to the point of despondent bankruptcy, Will was asked to lend them a little money to tide them over the quarter’s bills, and they gave him a one-third interest for a pittance.
  24. niggardly
    petty or reluctant in giving or spending
    He was not niggardly. He gave them what they asked for.
  25. stockade
    fortification consisting of a fence set firmly for defense
    His mind plunged like a colt in a happy pasture, and when later the world put up fences he plunged against the wire, and when the final stockade surrounded him, he plunged right through it and out.
  26. tortuous
    marked by repeated turns and bends
    The whole family laughed with affection when they thought of Joe trying to learn to plow; his tortuous first furrow wound about like a flatland stream, and his second furrow touched his first only once and then to cross it and wander off.
  27. intersperse
    place between or among
    Interspersed with the Hamilton boys were five girls
  28. torpor
    inactivity resulting from lethargy and lack of energy
    Coming in from his work, he gorged himself on fried food and went to bed and to sleep in the resulting torpor.
  29. vulpine
    resembling or characteristic of a fox
    His speech was slow and mellow, measured and unexcited, his gestures were wide, and new teeth gave him a vulpine smile out of all proportion to his emotion.
  30. interminable
    tiresomely long; seemingly without end
    It would be reasonable to suppose that a routine time or an event-less time would seem interminable. It should be so, but it is not. It is the dull event-less times that have no duration whatever.
  31. pilfer
    make off with belongings of others
    He wandered by the sea from the border north as far as San Luis Obispo, and he learned to pilfer the tide pools for abalones and eels and mussels and perch, to dig the sandbars for clams, and to trap a rabbit in the dunes with a noose of fish line.
  32. reprisal
    a retaliatory action against an enemy
    He rode the trains very infrequently, for there was a growing anger against tramps, based on the angry violence of the I.W.W. and aggravated by the fierce reprisals against them.
  33. tractable
    readily reacting to suggestions and influences
    She had always been tractable but now she became thoughtful too.
  34. gumption
    fortitude and determination
    I wouldn’t want a child that didn’t have some gumption. The way I see it, that’s just a kind of energy.
  35. corporeal
    having material or physical form or substance
    The volunteers began to dump water on the fire almost as though they might even so late save some corporeal part of the family.
  36. ostensibly
    from appearances alone
    Since the owner’s house was burned and the owner ostensibly burned with it, the employees of the tannery, out of respect, did not go to work.
  37. ruefully
    in a manner expressing pain or sorrow
    Adam said ruefully, “So we’re going to buy more land so we can do more work.”
  38. aperture
    a usually small man-made opening
    With a pipette and an alcohol flame he bent a glass tube to go through the aperture where a tooth was missing so that she could drink and take liquid food without moving her cracked jaw.
  39. vitality
    the property of being able to survive and grow
    Cathy’s vitality was great.
  40. convalescence
    gradual healing through rest after sickness or injury
    She began to recover very quickly. The swelling went out of her cheeks and the prettiness of convalescence came to her face.
Created on Sat Aug 27 19:53:03 EDT 2016 (updated Mon Sep 24 15:28:56 EDT 2018)

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