Chronicle of a Death Foretold: List 5

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 96–120 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. midwife
    a woman skilled in aiding the delivery of babies
    Aura Villeros, the midwife who had helped bring three generations into the world, suffered a spasm of the bladder when she heard the news and to the day of her death had to use a catheter in order to urinate.
  2. vitality
    a healthy capacity for vigorous activity
    Don Rogelio de la Flor, Clotilde Armenta’s good husband, who was a marvel of vitality at the age of eighty-six, got up for the last time to see how they had hewn Santiago Nasar to bits against the locked door of his own house, and he didn’t survive the shock.
  3. hew
    strike with an axe; cut down, strike
    Don Rogelio de la Flor, Clotilde Armenta’s good husband, who was a marvel of vitality at the age of eighty-six, got up for the last time to see how they had hewn Santiago Nasar to bits against the locked door of his own house, and he didn’t survive the shock.
  4. succumb
    give in, as to overwhelming force, influence, or pressure
    On the other hand, she never forgave herself for having mixed up the magnificent augury of trees with the unlucky one of birds, and she succumbed to the pernicious habit of her time of chewing pepper cress seeds.
  5. pernicious
    exceedingly harmful
    On the other hand, she never forgave herself for having mixed up the magnificent augury of trees with the unlucky one of birds, and she succumbed to the pernicious habit of her time of chewing pepper cress seeds.
  6. squalid
    foul and run-down and repulsive
    In the squalid wooden office in the town hall, drinking pot coffee laced with cane liquor against the mirages of the heat, he had to ask for troop reinforcements to control the crowd that was pouring in to testify without having been summoned, everyone eager to show off his own important role in the drama.
  7. decrepit
    worn and broken down by hard use
    There was no classification of files whatever, and more than a century of cases were piled up on the floor of the decrepit colonial building that had been Sir Francis Drake’s headquarters for two days.
  8. filch
    make off with belongings of others
    I searched many times with the water up to my ankles in that lagoon of lost causes, and after five years rummaging around only chance let me rescue some 322 pages filched from the more than 500 that the brief must have contained.
  9. enigma
    something that baffles understanding and cannot be explained
    He was so perplexed by the enigma that fate had touched him with, that he kept falling into lyrical distractions that ran contrary to the rigor of his profession.
  10. lyrical
    expressing deep emotion
    He was so perplexed by the enigma that fate had touched him with, that he kept falling into lyrical distractions that ran contrary to the rigor of his profession.
  11. untrammeled
    not confined or limited
    Most of all, he never thought it legitimate that life should make use of so many coincidences forbidden literature, so that there should be the untrammeled fulfillment of a death so clearly foretold.
  12. diligence
    persevering determination to perform a task
    Nevertheless, what had alarmed him most at the conclusion of his excessive diligence was not having found a single clue, not even the most improbable, that Santiago Nasar had been the cause of the wrong.
  13. impassive
    having or revealing little emotion or sensibility
    When the investigating magistrate asked her with his oblique style if she knew who the decedent Santiago Nasar was, she answered him impassively: “He was my perpetrator.”
  14. disillusionment
    freeing from false belief
    Such was the perplexity of the investigating magistrate over the lack of proof against Santiago Nasar that his good work at times seemed ruined by disillusionment.
  15. folio
    a sheet of any written or printed material
    On folio 416, in his own handwriting and with the druggist’s red ink, he wrote a marginal note: Give me a prejudice and I will move the world.
  16. impute
    attribute or credit to
    On the morning of his death, in fact, Santiago Nasar hadn’t had a moment of doubt, in spite of the fact that he knew very well what the price of the insult imputed to him was.
  17. worldly
    very sophisticated and experienced
    No one knew Bayardo San Román very well, but Santiago Nasar knew him well enough to know that underneath his worldly airs he was as subject as anyone else to his native prejudices.
  18. haggard
    showing the wearing effects of overwork or care or suffering
    Pedro Vicario was in the doorway, pale and haggard, his shirt open and his sleeves rolled up to the elbows, and with the naked knife in his hand.
  19. insolent
    marked by casual disrespect
    His manner was too insolent to be natural, and yet it wasn’t the only final or the most visible pose that he’d assumed in the last moments so they would stop him from committing the crime.
  20. hinder
    prevent the progress or accomplishment of
    He tried to run but was hindered by the revolver, which was clumsily stuck in his belt.
  21. utilitarian
    valuing or chosen for usefulness above all else
    Santiago Nasar accepted the engagement in the bloom of his adolescence, and he was determined to fulfill it, perhaps because he had the same utilitarian concept of matrimony as his father.
  22. caftan
    a long cloak with full sleeves
    The last to come was Nahir Miguel, the father, with his red beard and the Bedouin caftan he had brought from his homeland and which he always wore at home.
  23. penance
    voluntary self-punishment in order to atone for something
    “It looked like a penance,” they told me.
  24. viscera
    internal organs collectively
    Santiago Nasar was still for an instant, leaning against the door, until he saw his own viscera in the sunlight, clean and blue, and he fell on his knees.
  25. entrails
    internal organs collectively
    They were sitting down to breakfast when they saw Santiago Nasar enter, soaked in blood and carrying the roots of his entrails in his hands.
Created on Wed Oct 23 16:12:56 EDT 2019 (updated Wed Oct 23 16:55:02 EDT 2019)

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