Vocabulary from the works of Gabriel Garcia Marquez (1927-2014)

Colombian author Gabriel Garcia Marquez died on April 17, 2014. A novelist, short story writer and poet of boundless imagination, he was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1982. Here is a list of 10 vocabulary words, focusing on Marquez's most famous novels, "One Hundred Years of Solitude" and "Love in the Time of Cholera." These words in context provide a sense of the rhythm of Marquez's prose and the use of imagery that made him unique.
10 words 679 learners

Learn words with Flashcards and other activities

Definition First
Print Flashcards

Other learning activities

Answer a few questions about each word. Use this to prep for your next quiz! Compete with other teams in real time to see who answers the most questions correctly! Test your spelling acumen. Read the definition, listen to the word and try spelling it!

Teaching tools

Create and assign quizzes to your students to test their vocabulary. Assign learning activities including Practice, Vocabulary Jams and Spelling Bees to your students, and monitor their progress in real-time.

Full list of words from this list:

words only definitions & notes
  1. sequester
    keep away from others
    He...declared to be public property any animals walking the streets after six in the evening, and made men who were overage wear red armbands. He sequestered Father Nicanor in the parish house under pain of execution and prohibited him from saying mass or ringing the bells unless it was for a Liberal victory. In order that no one would doubt the severity of his aims, he ordered a firing squad organized in the square and had it shoot a scarecrow- One Hundred Years of Solitude
  2. lucid
    transparently clear; easily understandable
    He repeated until his dying day that there was no one with more common sense, no stonecutter more obstinate, no manager more lucid or dangerous, than a poet.- Love in the Time of Cholera
  3. oblige
    force somebody to do something
    He allowed himself to be swayed by his conviction that human beings are not born once and for all on the day their mothers give birth to them, but that life obliges them over and over again to give birth to themselves.- Love in the Time of Cholera
  4. abject
    of the most contemptible kind
    He had not stopped desiring her for a single instant. He found her in the dark bedrooms of captured towns, especially in the most abject ones, and he would make her materialize in the smell of dry blood on the bandages of the wounded, in the instantaneous terror of the danger of death, at all times and in all places.-One Hundred Years of Solitude
  5. artifice
    the use of deception or trickery
    He was still too young to know that the heart's memory eliminates the bad and magnifies the good, and that thanks to this artifice we manage to endure the burden of the past.- Love in the Time of Cholera
  6. decrepitude
    a state of deterioration due to old age or long use
    He remained motionless for several days in the farthest corner of the courtyard, where no one would see him, and at the beginning of December some large, stiff feathers began to grow on his wings, the feathers of a scarecrow, which looked more like another misfortune of decrepitude.- A Very Old Man with Enormous Wings
  7. lethargy
    inactivity; showing an unusual lack of energy
    "Over the weekend the vultures got into the presidential palace by pecking through the screens on the balcony windows and the flapping of their wings stirred up the stagnant time inside, and at dawn on Monday the city awoke out of its lethargy of centuries with the warm, soft breeze of a great man dead and rotting grandeur- The Autumn of the Patriarch
    "Stagnant" here means "not flowing, without force or vitality"
  8. grandeur
    the quality of being magnificent or splendid
    Over the weekend the vultures got into the presidential palace by pecking through the screens on the balcony windows and the flapping of their wings stirred up the stagnant time inside, and at dawn on Monday the city awoke out of its lethargy of centuries with the warm, soft breeze of a great man dead and rotting grandeur.
    - The Autumn of the Patriarch
  9. ignominious
    deserving or bringing disgrace or shame
    as he discovered... that a lie is more comfortable than doubt, more useful than love, more lasting than truth, he had arrived without surprise at the ignominious fiction of commanding without power, of being exalted without glory and of being obeyed without authority...-The Autumn of the Patriarch
  10. luminous
    softly bright or radiant
    He recognized her despite the uproar, through his tears of unrepeatable sorrow at dying without her, and he looked at her for the last and final time with eyes more luminous, more grief-stricken, more grateful than she had ever seen them in half a century of a shared life, and he managed to say to her with his last breath: “Only God knows how much I loved you"-Love in the Time of Cholera
Created on Thu Apr 17 19:45:29 EDT 2014 (updated Thu Apr 17 22:38:56 EDT 2014)

Sign up now (it’s free!)

Whether you’re a teacher or a learner, Vocabulary.com can put you or your class on the path to systematic vocabulary improvement.