Winger: Chapter 85–Quiet Time

by Andrew Smith
Andrew Smith's hilarious and irreverent novel follows fourteen-year-old Ryan Dean West as he attempts to navigate friendship, love, and rugby while at boarding school.

Here are links to our lists for the novel: The Toilet World–Chapter 18, Chapters 19–41, Chapters 42–63, Chapters 64–84, Chapter 85–The End
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Full list of words from this list:

words only definitions & notes
  1. stall
    deliberately delay an event or action
    Then Kevin said, “Maybe we should have stalled her a little longer
    to give him a chance to finish chewing off his arm, then.”
  2. psychopath
    a person with an antisocial personality disorder
    Casey Palmer was a dangerous psychopath.
  3. dolt
    a person who is not very bright
    Casey Palmer was after something. What a...dolt.
  4. orchestrate
    plan and direct (a complex undertaking)
    ...who is going to be the one to orchestrate the ditching...?
  5. taboo
    a prejudice that prohibits the use or mention of something
    Very thick with the taboo of forbidden, unacted upon, and unrequited homosexual curios­ity, I think.
  6. generation
    all the people living at the same time or of the same age
    Sorry, Hemingway, but this old guy murdered some of your best chops for a generation of students.
  7. incarceration
    the state of being imprisoned
    A few of them wore school clothes, which, I guess, was a kind of costume in itself, because there wasn’t much sense in bother­ing to pack a Halloween costume for incarceration at Pine Mountain.
  8. incidental
    minor or casual or subordinate in significance or nature
    Still, I was glad for mine, especially when I’d get the incidental brush-up from a girl. It was by far the best costume there.
  9. pout
    be in a huff and display one's displeasure
    Seanie said, “JP isn’t here. He didn’t come. He stayed at home, pouting.”
  10. blare
    make a loud noise
    So I leaned closer to her ear, since the music was blaring, and I said, “I apologize for how I was sitting over there, Mrs. Kurtz. It was rude.”
  11. flail
    thrash about
    Mrs. Kurtz danced off, and I snaked through the flailing bodies.
  12. thermal
    relating to or associated with heat
    We got real close, and I held on to Megan’s hips, which, now that I think about it, was a huge mistake, because I suddenly forgot everything in the world except for how incredibly hot (and I don’t mean thermally hot) she was.
  13. dubious
    open to doubt or suspicion
    “You are a better person for it, Megan. You are beautiful and bril­liant, and nobody who sees that in you ever stopped for a minute to consider how you had beaten all the other girls at Pine Mountain to win the dubious prize of Chas Becker.”
  14. vaguely
    in an unclear way
    I figured this could officially count as an apology for making him drink my pee, too, if I worded it vaguely enough.
  15. glint
    a momentary flash of light
    Then, beyond Chas’s shoulder, at the edge of the dance floor, I caught a glimpse of green surgical scrubs and soft black hair draping over the glint of a stethoscope.
  16. discreet
    marked by prudence or modesty and wise self-restraint
    Kids get in trouble for kissing at Pine Mountain, so you have to be discreet.
  17. tirade
    a speech of violent denunciation
    Casey Palmer was on a tirade, no doubt.
  18. scrawny
    being very thin
    “My dad loves them. Sometimes he walks around with his shirt off, singing, acting like he’s Roger Daltrey, but he’s so my dad, and he looks like a scrawny lawyer from Boston,” I said.
  19. intrigue
    cause to be interested or curious
    He looked intrigued, but at the same time he kind of knew I was playing a joke on him.
  20. impersonation
    a representation that is exaggerated for comic effect
    So I jumped up in the air and gave my best howling impersonation of my scrawny-Boston-lawyer dad imitating Roger Daltrey.
  21. atmosphere
    a particular environment or surrounding influence
    That’s how these dorm rooms were: Everyone had his own—private—bedroom, and two or three of them would connect to a common living room and a bathroom, so it was a lot more private and a lot more like living at home than the prisonlike atmosphere of O-Hall’s barracks.
  22. barrack
    a building or group of buildings to house military personnel
    That’s how these dorm rooms were: Everyone had his own—private—bedroom, and two or three of them would connect to a common living room and a bathroom, so it was a lot more private and a lot more like living at home than the prisonlike atmosphere of O-Hall’s barracks.
  23. fatigues
    military uniform worn by personnel when doing menial labor
    Typical JP: His face was blacked, which was a good cover for the massive purple bruise around his eye, and he was dressed in combat fatigues with a camouflaged bucket hat that shaded his eyes.
  24. camouflage
    exploit the natural surroundings to disguise something
    Typical JP: His face was blacked, which was a good cover for the massive purple bruise around his eye, and he was dressed in combat fatigues with a camouflaged bucket hat that shaded his eyes.
  25. uneasy
    lacking a sense of security or affording no reassurance
    We shook hands again before we left, but it was an uneasy kind of peace between JP and me.
  26. dread
    be afraid or scared of
    I didn’t see anyone from O-Hall then, but I volunteered to walk Annie and Isabel back to the girls’ dorm, so I let Seanie off a serious hook, because I knew he was dreading how, exactly, to go about say­ing good night to his “date.”
  27. xylophone
    a bright-toned wooden bar instrument played with hard-headed mallets
    It sounded like a hundred xylophones inside a stone tomb.
  28. gasp
    a short labored intake of breath with the mouth open
    I actually breathed a relieved gasp at seeing him.
  29. hygiene
    a condition promoting sanitary practices
    I decided to skip the dental hygiene.
  30. manifestation
    an indication of the existence of some person or thing
    Then Mr. Wellins began talking about Halloween costumes, and how they were manifestations of suppressed sexuality...
  31. primal
    having existed from the beginning
    ...Ryan Dean West was in touch with his atavistic and primal man-drives, and, oh—let’s go around the room and talk about our Hemingway essays.
  32. atavism
    a reappearance of an earlier characteristic
    So, yeah, Annie and I pretty much shut it all out, scooted our desks close together, held hands on my lap— score one for atavism!—and whispered and mouthed our own unobserved conversation.
  33. stifle
    smother or suppress
    The class weakly attempted stifling their laughter.
  34. elucidate
    make clear and comprehensible
    “Please elucidate, Ryan Dean,” Mr. Wellins said.
  35. mocking
    expressing contempt or ridicule
    “Oh. Please do, young Mr. West,” JP whispered mockingly from the other side of Annie’s desk, without turning to look at me.
  36. ranger
    an official responsible for managing an area of forest
    But before I got to eat my breakfast, I saw what looked like about a hundred police officers, park rangers, and school staff, all gathered around the front gates to the school.
  37. culvert
    a transverse and enclosed drain under a road or railway
    There was a big drainage culvert halfway between O-Hall and the
    highway to Bannock.
  38. clump
    a compact mass
    It started to snow, a wet, Pacific Northwest snow that fell in clumps,
    soaking and unpleasant.
  39. prism
    optical device used to deviate a beam or invert an image
    They got excited when they saw us, and took out the photocopied pictures they’d been carrying of Joey’s school ID, holding the images between their eyes and us like they were some kind of prism...
  40. delusional
    suffering from or characterized by erroneous beliefs
    What an old, delusional idiot he is.
Created on Fri Jul 28 14:05:20 EDT 2017 (updated Tue Apr 09 15:22:53 EDT 2019)

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