Cat on a Hot Tin Roof: Act 2

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 196 learners

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Full list of words from this list:

words only definitions & notes
  1. interjection
    an action or remark that interrupts something
    Startled by this interjection, Reverend Tooker decides to laugh at the question almost as loud as he can.
  2. aviary
    a building where birds are kept
    The talk becomes so general that the room sounds like a great aviary of chattering birds.
  3. ominously
    in a manner suggesting something bad will happen
    BIG DADDY [ominously]:
    Quiet!
  4. scruples
    motivation deriving from ethical or moral principles
    I let many chances slip by because of scruples about it, scruples, convention — crap....All that stuff is bull, bull, bull! — It took the shadow of death to make me see it.
  5. dilatory
    wasting time
    Usually I hear it sooner than this, sometimes as early as — noon, but —
    —Today it’s — dilatory....
  6. mendacity
    the tendency to be untruthful
    Mendacity is one of them five dollar words that cheap politicians throw back and forth at each other.
  7. manifestation
    an appearance in bodily form
    It may be the root of his collapse. Or maybe it is only a single manifestation of it, not even the most important.
  8. evanescent
    short-lived; tending to vanish or disappear
    I’m trying to catch the true quality of experience in a group of people, that cloudy, flickering, evanescent — fiercely charged! — interplay of live human beings in the thundercloud of a common crisis.
  9. absolve
    excuse or free from blame
    This does not absolve the playwright of his duty to observe and probe as clearly and deeply as he legitimately can: but it should steer him away from "pat" conclusions, facile definitions which make a play just a play, not a snare for the truth of human experience.
  10. facile
    arrived at without due care or effort; lacking depth
    This does not absolve the playwright of his duty to observe and probe as clearly and deeply as he legitimately can: but it should steer him away from "pat" conclusions, facile definitions which make a play just a play, not a snare for the truth of human experience.
  11. palpable
    capable of being perceived
    [The following scene should be played with great concentration, with most of the power leashed but palpable in what is left unspoken.]
  12. incongruous
    lacking in harmony or compatibility or appropriateness
    [Big Daddy gasps a little at this perfectly timed, but incongruous, apparition.]
  13. mores
    the conventions embodying the fundamental values of a group
    [In his utterance of this word, we gauge the wide and profound reach of the conventional mores he got from the world that crowned him with early laurel.]
  14. disclosure
    the act of making something evident
    Brick suddenly catches his breath as he realized that he has made a shocking disclosure.
  15. revulsion
    intense aversion
    This is said slowly, slowly, with a fierce revulsion.
Created on Fri Nov 15 14:56:37 EST 2019 (updated Tue Jul 29 10:13:27 EDT 2025)

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