Cat on a Hot Tin Roof: Act 1

by Tennessee Williams
This Pulitzer Prize-winning play dramatizes a single evening in the life of the Pollitts, a fractured Mississippi family.

Here are links to our lists for the play: Notes for the Designer, Act 1, Act 2, Act 3
15 words 469 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. intersperse
    introduce into one's writing or speech (certain expressions)
    Sometimes she intersperses the lines with a little wordless singing, such as "Da-da-daaaa!”
  2. feigned
    not genuine
    A tone of politely feigned interest, masking indifference, or worse, is characteristic of his speech with Margaret.
  3. innuendo
    an indirect and usually malicious implication
    It goes on all the time, along with constant little remarks and innuendos about the fact that you and I have not produced any children, are totally childless and therefore totally useless!
  4. allusion
    passing reference or indirect mention
    That more than likely explains why their usual summer migration to the coolness of the Great Smokies was passed up this summer in favor of — hustlin’ down here ev’ry whipstitch with their whole screamin’ tribe! And why so many allusions have been made to Rainbow Hill lately.
  5. abet
    assist or encourage, usually in some wrongdoing
    Well, you’ve been doin’ just about ev’rything in your power to bring it about, you’ve just been doin’ ev’rything you can think of to aid and abet them in this scheme of theirs!
  6. antipathetic
    characterized by hostility or dislike
    [A speech of this kind would be antipathetic from almost anybody but Margaret; she makes it oddly funny, because her eyes constantly twinkle and her voice shakes with laughter which is basically indulgent.]
  7. contemptuous
    expressing extreme scorn
    He is watching her with a look that is not quite definable — Amused? shocked? contemptuous? — part of those and part of something else?
  8. manipulation
    exerting shrewd or devious influence for one's own advantage
    Why, y’know ole Papa Flynn, he barely escaped doing time in the Federal pen for shady manipulations on th’ stock market when his chain stores crashed...
  9. banshee
    a female spirit who wails to warn of impending death
    Susie didn’t think so. Had hysterics. Screamed like a banshee.
  10. malignant
    dangerous to health
    It grows and festers in silence, becomes malignant....
  11. proscenium
    the part of a stage between the curtain and the orchestra
    [She crosses to the proscenium.]
  12. semblance
    the outward or apparent appearance or form of something
    My daddy loved his liquor, he fell in love with his liquor the way you've fallen in love with Echo Spring! — And my poor Mama, having to maintain some semblance of social position, to keep appearances up, on an income of one hundred and fifty dollars a month on those old government bonds!
  13. ineffectual
    not producing an intended consequence
    When I came to his room that night, with a little scratch like a shy little mouse at his door, he made that pitiful, ineffectual little attempt to prove that what I had said wasn’t true....
  14. precocious
    appearing or developing early
    DIXIE [with a precocious instinct for the crudest thing]: You’re jealous! — You’re just jealous because you can’t have babies!
  15. sashay
    walk with a lofty proud gait, often to impress others
    She sticks out her tongue at Margaret as she sashays past her with her stomach stuck out, to the gallery.
Created on Fri Nov 15 14:56:12 EST 2019 (updated Tue Jul 29 09:55:24 EDT 2025)

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.