Chronicle of a Death Foretold: List 3

by Gabriel García Márquez
When two brothers declare their intention to commit murder, no one in their town takes on the responsibility of preventing the crime.

This list covers pages 48–71 of the Vintage International edition, translated from the Spanish by Gregory Rabassa.

Here are links to our lists for the novella: List 1, List 2, List 3, List 4, List 5
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Full list of words from this list:

words only definitions & notes
  1. thesis
    an unproved statement advanced as a premise in an argument
    The lawyer stood by the thesis of homicide in legitimate defense of honor, which was upheld by the court in good faith, and the twins declared at the end of the trial that they would have done it again a thousand times over for the same reason.
  2. barbarous
    able or disposed to inflict pain or suffering
    Both were exhausted from the barbarous work of death, and their clothes and arms were soaked and their faces smeared with sweat and still living blood, but the priest recalled the surrender as an act of great dignity.
  3. feign
    give a false appearance of
    Furthermore, with the reconstruction of the facts, they had feigned a much more unforgiving bloodthirstiness than really was true, to such an extreme that it was necessary to use public funds to repair the main door of Plácida Linero’s house, which was all chipped with knife thrusts.
  4. panopticon
    an area or structure where everything is visible
    In the panopticon of Riohacha, where they spent three years awaiting trial because they couldn’t afford bail, the older prisoners remembered them for their good character and sociability, but they never noticed any indication of remorse in them.
  5. serenade
    a musical composition in several movements
    Actually, Santiago Nasar was no longer there at the time the twins said they went looking for him, because we’d left on a round of serenades, but in any case, it wasn’t certain that they’d gone.
  6. absolve
    excuse or free from blame
    “Sooner or later he would have to come out,” they told me, after they had been absolved.
  7. provisions
    a stock or supply of foods
    The shop sold milk at dawn and provisions during the day and became a bar after six o’clock in the evening.
  8. stolid
    having or revealing little emotion or sensibility
    They drank down the whole bottle in two long swigs, but they remained stolid.
  9. evoke
    call forth, as an emotion, feeling, or response
    Clotilde Armenta would always remember that Colonel Aponte’s chubby appearance evoked a certain pity in her, but on the other hand I remembered him as a happy man, although a little bit off due to the solitary spiritualist practices he had learned through the mails.
  10. venture
    put forward, of a guess, in spite of possible refutation
    The investigator had made sketches of them in the brief, perhaps because he had trouble describing them, and all he ventured to say was that this one looked like a miniature scimitar.
  11. scimitar
    a curved saber used in Eastern countries
    The investigator had made sketches of them in the brief, perhaps because he had trouble describing them, and all he ventured to say was that this one looked like a miniature scimitar.
  12. rudimentary
    being in the earliest stages of development
    It was with these knives that the crime was committed, and both were rudimentary and had seen a lot of use.
  13. resolute
    firm in purpose or belief
    Pablo Vicario was six minutes older than his brother, and he was the more imaginative and resolute until adolescence.
  14. authoritarian
    expecting unquestioning obedience
    Pedro Vicario always seemed more sentimental to me, and by the same token more authoritarian.
  15. fervor
    feelings of great warmth and intensity
    He even began to develop a kind of fervor over the great man’s blennorrhea that his brother wore like a war medal.
  16. machismo
    exaggerated masculinity
    Clotilde Armenta thought that was the height of machismo.
  17. pretext
    a fictitious reason that conceals the real reason
    During those last vacations she would send us off early with the pretext that she was tired, but she left the door unbarred and with a lamp lighted in the hall so that I could come in secretly.
  18. rifle
    go through in search of something
    He would rifle the wardrobe of some to disguise the others, so that they all ended up feeling different from themselves and like the ones they weren’t.
  19. precipice
    a very steep cliff
    Until then it hadn’t rained; on the contrary, the moon was high in the sky and the air was clear, and at the bottom of the precipice you could see the trickle of light from the Saint Elmo’s fire in the cemetery.
  20. phosphorescent
    emitting light without appreciable heat
    On the other side you could make out the groves of blue banana trees in the moonlight, the sad swamps, and the phosphorescent line of the Caribbean on the horizon.
  21. ephemeral
    lasting a very short time
    It wasn’t possible to think that his conscience was bothering him, although at that time he didn’t know that the ephemeral married life of Angela Vicario had come to an end two hours before.
  22. veranda
    a porch along the outside of a building
    I took leave of my brother, crossed the veranda where the mulatto girls’ cats were sleeping curled up among the tulips, and opened the bedroom door without knocking.
  23. vestment
    a gown worn by the clergy
    In the middle of the square he crossed paths with Father Amador, who was going to the dock in his vestments, followed by an acolyte ringing the bell and several helpers carrying the altar for the bishop’s field mass.
  24. acolyte
    a devoted follower or assistant
    In the middle of the square he crossed paths with Father Amador, who was going to the dock in his vestments, followed by an acolyte ringing the bell and several helpers carrying the altar for the bishop’s field mass.
  25. peremptory
    not allowing contradiction or refusal
    Nonetheless, Father Amador confessed to me many years later, retired from the world in the gloomy Calafell Rest Home, that he had in fact received Clotilde Armenta’s message and others more peremptory while he was getting ready to go the docks.
Created on Wed Oct 23 16:12:28 EDT 2019 (updated Wed Oct 23 16:54:35 EDT 2019)

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