"The Woman Warrior"--Vocabulary from "No Name Woman"

This visual image of the protruding stomach both literally and symbolically represents the aunt's crime. The actual pregnancy is evidence of the aunt's adultery; the idea of "extending out above or beyond a boundary" emphasizes that the aunt is stretching beyond herself and the tight social controls of the village.

Another definition of "acrid" is "harsh and corrosive in tone"--this also fits the example sentence because it could describe the message that the villagers are sending with their destruction of the aunt's family's food supplies during a time of hunger.

The lead-in to "eccentricity" with the words "reap" and "reputation" almost makes it sound like a good thing, but in a community where wholeness is important, another definition ("a circularity that deviates from a circular path") could be used to justify punishing eccentric behavior.

Singularity does not sound like a quality that should be punished (Kingston emphasizes this throughout the chapter by showing her sympathy for and similarities with her aunt), but in the aunt's village and time, it was a quality that can cause one to be seen as dangerously eccentric.

The definition is for "inexorable" as an adjective, but the example sentence is using it as a noun to refer to the spiritual forces that would punish the entire village for the aunt's crime. Although these forces cannot be appeased by pleas or reason, the village did try to lessen both their own and the inexorable's anger by punishing the aunt.