An Abundance of Katherines: Chapters 7-8

by John Green
After graduation, child prodigy Colin and his best friend Hassan go on a road trip and attempt to understand the nature of love.

Here are links to our lists for the novel: Chapters 1-6, Chapters 7-8, Chapters 9-14, Chapters 15-19

Here are links to our lists for other books by John Green: Paper Towns; Looking for Alaska; Will Grayson, Will Grayson; The Fault in Our Stars; Turtles All the Way Down
40 words 19 learners

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Full list of words from this list:

words only definitions & notes
  1. cadence
    a recurrent rhythmical series
    “This would be the last and final resting place of the Archduke Franz Ferdinand,” Lindsey Lee Wells said, her voice suddenly affected with a new cadence, that of the bored tour guide who long ago memorized her speech.
  2. obelisk
    a stone pillar tapering towards a pyramidal top
    Colin and Hassan followed her to a six-foot-tall obelisk—a kind of miniature Washington Monument—before which lay a plethora of not-new pink silk roses.
  3. plethora
    extreme excess
    Colin and Hassan followed her to a six-foot-tall obelisk—a kind of miniature Washington Monument—before which lay a plethora of not-new pink silk roses.
  4. tactless
    lacking what is considerate in dealing with others
    If he hadn't obsessed over love, hadn't been so tactless, so whiny, so nerdy—maybe if he hadn't been, Colin thought, so much like me...
  5. reverie
    an abstracted state of absorption
    From which reverie he was awoken by Hassan...
  6. appraise
    consider in a comprehensive way
    And he turns off the mower and looks up and appraises the situation for a bit and then calls out to me, 'Hollis!'
  7. billowing
    characterized by great swelling waves or surges
    It didn't look much like a factory—no towering steel silos or smokestacks billowing carbon monoxide, just a few buildings that vaguely reminded him of airplane hangars.
  8. lieu
    the post or function properly occupied or served by another
    In lieu of Colin's laugh came a period of unbreachable silence.
  9. precipitous
    extremely steep
    He followed Hollis's pink truck down a newly paved side street that sloped up precipitously, causing the Hearse's worn-out engine to rev for its very life.
  10. taper
    diminish gradually
    Her eyeliner was thick and stretched back toward her temples, her black jeans tight and tapered, her Doc Martens well-polished.
  11. outlier
    a person or thing that does not conform to a norm
    The majority of people fall somewhere close to the vertical dividing line with the occasional statistical outlier (e.g., me) representing a tiny percentage of overall individuals.
  12. ergo
    (used as a sentence connector) therefore or consequently
    Ergo, if the Great One was a 4 and I am a 0, total size of the Dumper/Dumpee differential = -4.
  13. extrude
    form or shape by forcing through an opening
    Naked from the waist up, his vertebrae extruded from his skinny back as he hunched over the desk, working.
  14. brevity
    the attribute of being short or fleeting
    It even captured the relationship's brevity.
  15. terse
    brief and to the point
    “That's it. We are a terse people. Terse, and also hungry.”
  16. render
    cause to become
    The Arabic seemed to render everyone uncomfortable or something, because no one talked for a few minutes except Hassan, who kept saying that the quail (it was quail, not tiny chicken) was excellent.
  17. repository
    a facility where things can be deposited for safekeeping
    But (a) summers were for smart-kid camp so that he could further his learning and (b) a real job would distract him from his real work, which was becoming an ever-larger repository of knowledge, and (c) Colin didn't really have any marketable skills.
  18. ether
    compound with an oxygen atom linking two hydrocarbon groups
    The sentence, if you're curious: Catfish always drink alcoholic ether if begged, for every catfish enjoys heightened intoxication; gross indulgence can be calamitous, however...
  19. indulgence
    the act of gratifying a desire
    The sentence, if you're curious: Catfish always drink alcoholic ether if begged, for every catfish enjoys heightened intoxication; gross indulgence can be calamitous, however...
  20. disparage
    express a negative opinion of
    ....however, blowfish jeer insightful garfish, disparaging inappropriately, doing damage, even insulting benevolent, charming, jovial garfish, hurting and frustrating deeply...
  21. dainty
    affectedly refined
    Colin shot a glance at his friend, who held a quail daintily in his hands, his teeth gnawing at the bone in a vain search for a half-decent meal.
  22. subtly
    in a manner difficult to detect or grasp
    Hassan nodded subtly; Colin’s lips pursed; Hassan rubbed at his five-o’clock shadow; Colin bit at the inside of his thumb; Hassan smiled; Colin nodded.
  23. incredulous
    not disposed or willing to believe; unbelieving
    Lindsey interrupted, incredulous.
  24. paisley
    a fabric with a colorful swirled pattern of curved shapes
    Lindsey Lee Wells was wearing paisley pajamas.
  25. cabal
    a clique that seeks power usually through intrigue
    I don't even know how ugly and pretty get decided—maybe there's like a secret cabal of boys who meet in the locker room and decide who's ugly and who's hot, because as far as I can remember, there was no such thing as a hot fourth-grader.
  26. incidentally
    by the way (used to introduce a new topic)
    Incidentally, did you know that the whole eight glasses a day...has no scientific basis?
  27. extraneous
    not belonging to that in which it is contained
    He knew he couldn't tell stories, that he always included extraneous details and tangents that interested only him.
  28. unprecedented
    novel; having no earlier occurrence
    But he found himself with an unprecedented problem.
  29. unadulterated
    not mixed with impurities
    Their three-minute relationship was the thing itself in its most unadulterated form.
  30. immutable
    not subject or susceptible to change or variation
    It was the immutable tango between the Dumper and the Dumpee: the coming and the seeing and the conquering and the returning home.
  31. apprehend
    understand or perceive the meaning of something
    When you spend your entire life in and around the city of Chicago, as it turns out, you fail to fully apprehend certain facets of rural life.
  32. facet
    a distinct feature or element in a problem
    When you spend your entire life in and around the city of Chicago, as it turns out, you fail to fully apprehend certain facets of rural life.
  33. dissonant
    lacking in harmony
    But the rooster cock-a-doodle-did, and by dawn, the crowing created a kind of weird dissonant symphony when mingled with the muffled sounds of a Muslim's morning prayers.
  34. glower
    look angry or sullen as if to signal disapproval
    Colin couldn't help but laugh; Hollis glowered.
  35. visceral
    coming from deep inward feelings rather than from reasoning
    And the smell brought him back so viscerally, to a time when she loved him—or he at least felt like she did—that his gut ached anew.
  36. fraught
    filled with or attended with
    He had a theory on this subject, actually, entitled the Rejection Minimization Theorem (RMT):
    The act of leaning in to kiss someone, or asking to kiss them, is fraught with the possibility of rejection, so the person least likely to get rejected should do the leaning in or the asking.
  37. fickle
    liable to sudden unpredictable change
    Whereas girls are very fickle about the business of kissing.
  38. dank
    unpleasantly cool and humid
    Floored with wavy linoleum tiles, the damp, dank place featured an old couch, no windows, and very low ceilings (they were 6’3" to Colin's 6’1”).
  39. cretin
    a person of subnormal intelligence
    “Um, okay. Her karate cretin—um, oh. I like this one: their arcane trek.”
  40. arcane
    requiring secret or mysterious knowledge
    “Practice, mostly. I've been doing it a long time. I see the letters and pull out a good word first—like, karate, or arcane—and then I try to use the remaining letters to make—oh God, this is boring,” he said, hoping it wasn't.
Created on Mon Apr 16 15:17:00 EDT 2018 (updated Tue Apr 17 13:19:29 EDT 2018)

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