Chronicle of a Death Foretold: List 4

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 72–95 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. magistrate
    a lay judge or civil authority who administers the law
    In the confusion of that absurd Monday, Colonel Aponte had had an urgent telegraphic conversation with the governor of the province, and the latter authorized him to take the preliminary steps while he sent an investigating magistrate.
  2. throes
    violent pangs of suffering
    They hadn’t stopped howling since I went into the house, when Santiago Nasar was still in his death throes in the kitchen and I found Divina Flor weeping in great howls and holding them off with a stick.
  3. seminary
    a school for training ministers or priests or rabbis
    The priest had studied medicine and surgery at Salamanca, but had entered the seminary before he was graduated, and even the mayor knew that his autopsy would have no legal standing.
  4. perforation
    a hole made in something
    He had six other, lesser perforations in the transverse colon and multiple wounds in the small intestine.
  5. transverse
    extending or lying across, in a crosswise direction
    He had six other, lesser perforations in the transverse colon and multiple wounds in the small intestine.
  6. indignation
    a feeling of righteous anger
    Dr. Dionisio Iguarán, who in fact had treated Santiago Nasar for hepatitis at the age of twelve, recalled that autopsy with indignation.
  7. repressive
    restricting action, freedom, or expression
    The last onlookers ranged about the schoolhouse windows lost their curiosity, the helper fainted, and Colonel Lázaro Aponte, who had seen and caused so many repressive massacres, became a vegetarian as well as a spiritualist.
  8. lucidity
    a clear state of mind
    That phrase made me think that what must have been most unbearable for them in jail was their lucidity.
  9. supposition
    a message expressing an opinion based on incomplete evidence
    But even that was too easy a supposition.
  10. rustic
    characteristic of rural life
    The older ones continued speaking the rustic Arabic they had brought from their homeland, and they maintained it intact in the family down to the second generation, but those of the third, with the exception of Santiago Nasar, listened to their parents in Arabic and answered them in Spanish.
  11. pastoral
    idyllically rustic
    So it was inconceivable that they would suddenly abandon their pastoral spirit to avenge a death for which we all could have been to blame.
  12. reprisal
    a retaliatory action against an enemy
    On the other hand, no one thought about reprisals from Plácida Linero’s family, who had been powerful and fighting people until their fortune ran out, and had bred more than two barroom killers who had been preserved by the salt of their name.
  13. matriarch
    a female head of a family or tribe
    Furthermore, it was Susana Abdala, the centenarian matriarch, who recommended the prodigious infusion of passion flowers and absinthe...
  14. prodigious
    great in size, force, extent, or degree
    Furthermore, it was Susana Abdala, the centenarian matriarch, who recommended the prodigious infusion of passion flowers and absinthe...
  15. expiate
    make amends for
    Santiago Nasar had expiated the insult, the brothers Vicario had proved their status as men, and the seduced sister was in possession of her honor once more.
  16. valise
    a small overnight bag for short trips
    Once we rescued the small valise that Angela Vicario had asked her mother for on her wedding night, but we didn’t pay any great attention to it.
  17. artifice
    the use of deception or trickery
    What we discovered inside seemed to be a woman’s natural items for hygiene and beauty, and I only learned their real use when Angela Vicario told me many years later which things were the old wives’ artifices she had been instructed in so as to deceive her husband.
  18. vigilance
    alert attentiveness
    Things had been disappearing little by little, despite Colonel Lázaro Aponte’s determined vigilance, even the full-length closet with six mirrors that the master craftsmen of Mompox had had to assemble inside the house because it wouldn’t fit through the door.
  19. posthumous
    occurring or coming into existence after a person's death
    At first the widower Xius was overjoyed, thinking that all those were the posthumous recourses of his wife in carrying off what was hers.
  20. idealize
    consider or render as the best or most appropriate type
    Of Angela Vicario, on the other hand, I was always receiving periodic news that inspired an idealized image in me.
  21. haughty
    having or showing arrogant superiority
    Santiago Nasar was too haughty to have noticed her: “Your cousin the booby,” he would say to me when he had to mention her.
  22. perverse
    deviating from what is considered moral or right or proper
    The most current version, perhaps because it was the most perverse, was that Angela Vicario was protecting someone who really loved her and she had chosen Santiago Nasar’s name because she thought her brothers would never dare go up against him.
  23. reticence
    the trait of being uncommunicative
    Everything else she told without reticence, even the disaster of her wedding night.
  24. missive
    a written message addressed to a person or organization
    It was a conventional missive, in which she told him that she’d seen him come out of the hotel, and that she would have liked it if he had seen her.
  25. oblique
    not direct, explicit, or straightforward
    At the end of two months, tired of waiting, she sent him another letter in the same oblique style as the previous one, whose only aim seemed to be to reproach him for his lack of courtesy.
  26. reciprocal
    something that has a mutual relation to something else
    Mistress of her fate for the first time, Angela Vicario then discovered that hate and love are reciprocal passions.
  27. rancor
    a feeling of deep and bitter anger and ill-will
    The more letters she sent the more the coals of her fever burned, but the happy rancor she felt for her mother also heated up.
  28. overbearing
    having or showing arrogant superiority
    She became lucid, overbearing, mistress of her own free will...
  29. complicity
    guilt as a confederate in a crime or offense
    Six times the postmistresses were changed and six times she wore their complicity.
  30. insensible
    unaware of or indifferent to
    Nevertheless, he seemed insensible to her delirium; it was like writing to nobody.
Created on Wed Oct 23 16:12:43 EDT 2019 (updated Wed Oct 23 16:54:49 EDT 2019)

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