"All The Light We Cannot See" Vocabulary List

Anthony Doerr's "All The Light We Cannot See" is a wide-ranging novel of Europe in World War II. As it switches between Paris and Germany, the reader senses that the sadness and helplessness these characters face are not only products of the war, but all-too-universal emotions. The novel was a finalist for the National Book Award and has now won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction. Here are 33 vocabulary words from an excerpt from the novel. The complete excerpt can be read here.
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Full list of words from this list:

words only definitions & notes
  1. rampart
    an embankment built around a space for defensive purposes
    They blow across the ramparts, turn cartwheels over rooftops, flutter into the ravines between houses.
  2. ravine
    a deep narrow steep-sided valley
    They blow across the ramparts, turn cartwheels over rooftops, flutter into the ravines between houses.
  3. incendiary
    capable of causing fires or catching fire spontaneously
    On the rooftops of beachfront hotels to the east, and in the gardens behind them, a half-dozen American artillery units drop incendiary rounds into the mouths of mortars.
  4. discern
    perceive, recognize, or detect
    Soon enough, the navigators can discern the low moonlit lumps of islands ranged along the horizon.
  5. abscess
    a localized collection of pus surrounded by inflamed tissue
    To the bombardiers, the walled city on its granite headland, drawing ever closer, looks like an unholy tooth, something black and dangerous, a final abscess to be lanced away.
  6. spire
    a tall tower that forms the superstructure of a building
    There’s the cathedral with its perforated spire, and the bulky old Château de Saint-Malo, and row after row of seaside mansions studded with chimneys.
  7. parapet
    a low wall along the edge of a roof or balcony
    Marie-Laure runs her fingertips along the centimeter-wide parapet crowning the ramparts, drawing an uneven star shape around the entire model.
  8. bastion
    projecting part of a rampart or other fortification
    “Bastion de la Hollande,” she whispers, and her fingers walk down a little staircase.
  9. drone
    make a monotonous low dull sound
    The drone of the airplanes grows.
  10. facade
    the front of a building
    Not so long ago, the Hotel of Bees was a cheerful address, with bright blue shutters on its facade and oysters on ice in its café and Breton waiters in bow ties polishing glasses behind its bar.
  11. emissary
    someone sent to represent another's interests
    Parisians on weekend holidays would drink aperitifs here, and before them the occasional emissary from the republic—ministers and vice ministers and abbots and admirals—and in the centuries before them, windburned corsairs: killers, plunderers, raiders, seamen.
  12. abbot
    the superior of a community of monks
    Parisians on weekend holidays would drink aperitifs here, and before them the occasional emissary from the republic—ministers and vice ministers and abbots and admirals—and in the centuries before them, windburned corsairs: killers, plunderers, raiders, seamen.
  13. fresco
    a mural done with watercolors on wet plaster
    Werner’s favorites are five faded frescoes on the ceilings of the grandest upper rooms, where bees as big as children float against blue backdrops, big lazy drones and workers with diaphanous wings—where, above a hexagonal bathtub, a single nine-foot-long queen, with multiple eyes and a golden-furred abdomen, curls across the ceiling.
  14. diaphanous
    so thin as to transmit light
    Werner’s favorites are five faded frescoes on the ceilings of the grandest upper rooms, where bees as big as children float against blue backdrops, big lazy drones and workers with diaphanous wings—where, above a hexagonal bathtub, a single nine-foot-long queen, with multiple eyes and a golden-furred abdomen, curls across the ceiling.
  15. reverberate
    ring or echo with sound
    The walls reverberate all the way down into the foundation, then back up.
  16. recede
    pull back or move away or backward
    Werner can hear the Austrians two floors up scrambling, reloading, and the receding screams of both shells as they hurtle above the ocean, already two or three miles away.
  17. torrent
    an overwhelming number or amount
    The big gun detonates a third time, and glass shatters somewhere close by, and torrents of soot rattle down the chimney, and the walls of the hotel toll like a struck bell.
  18. citadel
    a stronghold for shelter during a battle
    Not this last citadel at the edge of the continent, this final German strongpoint on the Breton coast.
  19. subterranean
    being or operating under the surface of the earth
    Here, people whisper, the Germans have renovated two kilometers of subterranean corridors under the medieval walls; they have built new defenses, new conduits, new escape routes, underground complexes of bewildering intricacy.
  20. conduit
    a passage through which water or electric wires can pass
    Here, people whisper, the Germans have renovated two kilometers of subterranean corridors under the medieval walls; they have built new defenses, new conduits, new escape routes, underground complexes of bewildering intricacy.
  21. bewilder
    cause to be confused emotionally
    Here, people whisper, the Germans have renovated two kilometers of subterranean corridors under the medieval walls; they have built new defenses, new conduits, new escape routes, underground complexes of bewildering intricacy.
  22. peninsular
    of a mass of land projecting into a body of water
    Beneath the peninsular fort of La Cité, across the river from the old city, there are rooms of bandages, rooms of ammunition, even an underground hospital, or so it is believed.
  23. ordnance
    military supplies
    There are flame-throwing booby traps, a net of pillboxes with periscopic sights; they have stockpiled enough ordnance to spray shells into the sea all day, every day, for a year.
  24. tenuous
    lacking substance or significance
    Its link to the rest of France is tenuous: a causeway, a bridge, a spit of sand.
  25. promontory
    a natural elevation
    For three thousand years, this little promontory has known sieges.
  26. siege
    an action of an armed force that surrounds a fortified place
    For three thousand years, this little promontory has known sieges.
  27. cataract
    disease that involves the clouding of the lens of the eye
    A dozen pigeons roosting on the cathedral spire cataract down its length and wheel out over the sea.
  28. derelict
    a person without a home, job, or property
    Number 4: the tall, derelict bird’s nest of a house owned by her great-uncle Etienne.
  29. garrison
    a fortified military post where troops are stationed
    It enables him to communicate with a matching transceiver upstairs, with two other anti-air batteries inside the walls of the city, and with the underground garrison command across the river mouth.
  30. confiscate
    take temporary possession of a security by legal authority
    Behind him, confiscated treasures are crammed to the ceiling: rolled tapestries, grandfather clocks, armoires, and giant landscape paintings crazed with cracks.
  31. stentorian
    very loud or booming
    A second anti-air battery fires from a distant corner of the city, and then the 88 upstairs goes again, stentorian, deadly, and Werner listens to the shell scream into the sky.
  32. dormer
    a gabled extension built out from a sloping roof
    Stars wheeling past a dormer window.
  33. breech
    opening in the barrel of a gun where bullets can be loaded
    Four stories up, the Austrians clap another shell into the smoking breech of the 88 and double-check the traverse and clamp their ears as the gun discharges, but down here Werner hears only the radio voices of his childhood.
Created on Mon Apr 20 17:33:36 EDT 2015 (updated Thu Apr 23 15:47:12 EDT 2015)

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