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Fahrenheit 451 Vocab pp 1-32

Vocabulary for pages 1-32 of Fahrenheit 451.
32 words 142 learners

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Full list of words from this list:

  1. conductor
    the person who leads a musical group
    With the brass nozzle in his fists, with this great python spitting its venomous kerosene upon the world, the blood pounded in his head, and his hands were the hands of some amazing conductor playing all the symphonies of blazing and burning to bring down the tatters and charcoal ruins of history.
  2. symbolic
    relating to or using arbitrary signs
    With his symbolic helmet numbered 451 on his stolid head, and his eyes all orange flame with the thought of what came next, he flicked the igniter and the house jumped up in a gorging fire that burned the evening sky red and yellow and black.
  3. stolid
    having or revealing little emotion or sensibility
    With his symbolic helmet numbered 451 on his stolid head, and his eyes all orange flame with the thought of what came next, he flicked the igniter and the house jumped up in a gorging fire that burned the evening sky red and yellow and black.
  4. stride
    walk with long steps
    He strode in a swarm of fireflies.
  5. concrete
    capable of being perceived by the senses
    He slid to a squeaking halt, the heels one inch from the concrete floor downstairs.
  6. propel
    cause to move forward with force
    He walked out of the fire station and along the midnight street toward the subway where the silent, air-propelled train slid soundlessly down its lubricated flue in the earth and let him out with a great puff of warm air an to the cream-tiled escalator rising to the suburb.
  7. suburb
    a residential district located on the outskirts of a city
    He walked out of the fire station and along the midnight street toward the subway where the silent, air-propelled train slid soundlessly down its lubricated flue in the earth and let him out with a great puff of warm air an to the cream-tiled escalator rising to the suburb.
  8. salamander
    terrestrial amphibian that resembles a lizard
    He pulled out his igniter, felt the salamander etched on its silver disc, gave it a flick....
  9. phoenix
    a legendary bird that burned to death and emerged reborn
    Only the man with the Captain's hat and the sign of the Phoenix on his hat, at last, curious, his playing cards in his thin hand, talked across the long room.
  10. miraculous
    peculiarly fortunate, as if by divine intervention
    He saw himself in her eyes, suspended in two shining drops of bright water, himself dark and tiny, in fine detail, the lines about his mouth, everything there, as if her eyes were two miraculous bits of violet amber that might capture and hold him intact.
  11. hysterical
    characterized by a state of violent mental agitation
    It was not the hysterical light of electricity but-what?
  12. dimension
    a construct distinguishing objects or individuals
    One time, when he was a child, in a power-failure, his mother had found and lit a last candle and there had been a brief hour of rediscovery, of such illumination that space lost its vast dimensions and drew comfortably around them, and they, mother and son, alone, transformed, hoping that the power might not come on again too soon ....
  13. transformed
    given a completely different form or appearance
    One time, when he was a child, in a power-failure, his mother had found and lit a last candle and there had been a brief hour of rediscovery, of such illumination that space lost its vast dimensions and drew comfortably around them, and they, mother and son, alone, transformed, hoping that the power might not come on again too soon ....
  14. slogan
    a favorite saying of a sect or political group
    That's our official slogan."
  15. pedestrian
    a person who travels by foot
    It's like being a pedestrian, only rarer.
  16. subconscious
    just below the level of awareness
    "What?" asked Montag of that other self, the subconscious idiot that ran babbling at times, quite independent of will, habit, and conscience.
  17. imperceptibly
    in a manner that is difficult to discern
    And if the muscles of his jaws stretched imperceptibly, she would yawn long before he would.
  18. mausoleum
    a large burial chamber, usually above ground
    It was like coming into the cold marbled room of a mausoleum after the moon had set.
  19. shriek
    sharp piercing cry
    He opened his own mouth and let their shriek come down and out between his bared teeth.
  20. pulverize
    make into a powder by breaking up or cause to become dust
    He felt that the stars had been pulverized by the sound of the black jets and that in the morning the earth would be thought as he stood shivering in the dark, and let his lips go on moving and moving.
  21. stratum
    one of several parallel layers of material
    The woman on the bed was no more than a hard stratum of marble they had reached.
  22. melancholy
    a constitutional tendency to be gloomy and depressed
    And the men with the cigarettes in their straight-lined mouths, the men with the eyes of puff-adders, took up their load of machine and tube, their case of liquid melancholy and the slow dark sludge of nameless stuff, and strolled out the door.
  23. conjure
    summon into action or bring into existence
    He tried to conjure up a face to fit the words, but there was no face.
  24. capillary
    a minute blood vessel connecting arterioles with venules
    Light flickered on bits of ruby glass and on sensitive capillary hairs in the nylon-brushed nostrils of the creature that quivered gently, gently, gently, its eight legs spidered under it on rubber-padded paws.
  25. olfactory
    of or relating to the sense of smell
    At night when things got dull, which was every night, the men slid down the brass poles, and set the ticking combinations of the olfactory system of the Hound and let loose rats in the firehouse area-way, and sometimes chickens, and sometimes cats that would have to be drowned anyway, and there would be betting to see which the Hound would seize first.
  26. proboscis
    a long flexible snout as of an elephant
    Three seconds later the game was done, the rat, cat, or chicken caught half across the areaway, gripped in gentling paws while a four-inch hollow steel needle plunged down from the proboscis of the Hound to inject massive jolts of morphine or procaine.
  27. bouquet
    an arrangement of flowers that is usually given as a present
    Once he saw her shaking a walnut tree, once he saw her sitting on the lawn knitting a blue sweater, three or four times he found a bouquet of late flowers on his porch, or a handful of chestnuts in a little sack, or some autumn leaves neatly pinned to a sheet of white paper and thumb- tacked to his door.
  28. transcription
    something written, copied from one medium to another
    An hour of TV class, an hour of basketball or baseball or running, another hour of transcription history or painting pictures, and more sports, but do you know, we never ask questions, or at least most don't; they just run the answers at you, bing, bing, bing, and us sitting there for four more hours of film-teacher.
  29. proclivity
    a natural inclination
    Were all firemen picked then for their looks as well as their proclivities?
  30. odious
    extremely repulsive or unpleasant
    Beatty, Stoneman, and Black ran up the sidewalk, suddenly odious and fat in the plump fireproof slickers.
  31. contempt
    lack of respect accompanied by a feeling of intense dislike
    The woman on the porch reached out with contempt for them all, and struck the kitchen match against the railing.
  32. heresy
    a belief that rejects the orthodox tenets of a religion
    "A man named Latimer said that to a man named Nicholas Ridley, as they were being burnt alive at Oxford, for heresy, on October 16, 1555."
Created on Wed Aug 21 18:43:42 EDT 2013

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