The Nickel Boys: Prologue and Part One, Chapters 1–3

by Colson Whitehead
This Pulitzer Prize-winning novel, based on historical events, traces the harrowing story of two boys sent to a Florida reformatory school in the 1960s.

Here are links to our lists for the novel: Prologue and Part One, Chapters 1–3; Part Two, Chapters 4–7; Part Two, Chapters 8–10; Part Three, Chapters 11–12; Part Three, Chapters 13–16 and Epilogue
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Full list of words from this list:

words only definitions & notes
  1. earmark
    give or assign a resource to a particular person or cause
    The developers of the office park had earmarked the field for a lunch plaza, with four water features and a concrete bandstand for the occasional event.
  2. inscrutable
    difficult or impossible to understand
    After sifting the soil, bones and belt buckles and soda bottles lay scattered on their trays in an inscrutable exhibit.
  3. haphazard
    marked by great carelessness
    The school records, though incomplete and haphazard, narrowed down who WILLIE 1954 had been.
  4. crotchety
    having a difficult and contrary disposition
    The boys reminded them of crotchety uncles and flinty characters from their old neighborhoods, men who might soften once you got to know them but never lost that hard center.
  5. apprise
    inform somebody of something
    He kept the others apprised on the petition for another investigation and how the statement of apology from the government was coming along.
  6. licentious
    lacking moral discipline
    His grandmother Harriet had a few gospel records, which she only played when the world discovered a new mean way to work on her, and Elwood wasn’t allowed to listen to the Motown groups or popular songs like that on account of their licentious nature.
  7. threadbare
    thin and tattered with age
    “I’ll get in free every day for a month, easy,” he told his grandmother, lying on the front-room rug and tracing a threadbare patch with his thumb.
  8. gamely
    in a plucky or sporting manner
    Elwood didn’t understand what the older men talked about most of the time, but he nodded gamely before returning to his adventure stories.
  9. impart
    transmit, as knowledge or a skill
    The new men in the kitchen had different kinds of lessons to impart to a young mind.
  10. bravado
    a swaggering show of courage
    While not prone to bravado, Elwood had never lost a dish-drying contest in four years, and wore his confidence on his face.
  11. dapper
    marked by up-to-dateness in dress and manners
    Sooner or later, though, the door would swing wide to reveal a brown face—a dapper businessman in Tallahassee for business or a fancy lady in town to see the sights—enjoying the fine-smelling fare the cooks put out.
  12. fare
    the food and drink regularly served or consumed
    Sooner or later, though, the door would swing wide to reveal a brown face—a dapper businessman in Tallahassee for business or a fancy lady in town to see the sights—enjoying the fine-smelling fare the cooks put out.
  13. mulish
    unreasonably stubborn or rigid
    Whether his opponent in this game was his own foolishness or the mulish constancy of the world was unclear.
  14. pompadour
    a hair style in which the hair is swept up from the forehead
    Squat and perspiring, with a low pompadour and a thin black mustache, he was inevitably disheveled by evening.
  15. genteel
    marked by refinement in taste and manners
    He didn’t need an employee, but his wife liked telling people that he had an employee, and he imagined it made the store more approachable to a genteel segment of black Frenchtown.
  16. inkling
    a slight suggestion or vague understanding
    He’d mentioned going to college the summer prior, casually, with no inkling of the momentousness of his words.
  17. misgiving
    painful expectation
    Any misgivings over the tobacco shop collapsed before such a notion.
  18. convey
    take something or somebody with oneself somewhere
    Life’s photo essays conveyed him to the front lines, to bus boycotts in Baton Rouge, to counter sit-ins in Greensboro, where young people not much older than him took up the movement.
  19. tableau
    any dramatic scene
    They were beaten with metal bars, blasted by fire hoses, spat on by white housewives with angry faces, and frozen by the camera in tableaus of noble resistance.
  20. shiftless
    lacking ambition or initiative
    His grandmother had long steered him from hanging out with the local kids, whom she regarded as shiftless, clambering into rambunction.
  21. insolent
    marked by casual disrespect
    Before he worked at Marconi’s, his friends gloated over their candy heists, cackling and blowing insolent pink bubbles of Bazooka once they got a good distance from the store.
  22. livid
    discolored by coagulation of blood beneath the skin
    By morning the livid bump underneath was a bubble of blood.
  23. inalienable
    incapable of being repudiated or transferred to another
    The way the man said it, crackle and all: an inalienable strength.
  24. transgression
    the violation of a law or a duty or moral principle
    How to tell them that their transgressions against Mr. Marconi were insults to Elwood himself, whether it was a sucker candy or a comic book?
  25. epithet
    a defamatory or abusive word or phrase
    September was a tutorial in the latest epithets of Tallahassee’s white youth, which, like hemlines and haircuts, varied year to year.
  26. wily
    marked by skill in deception
    “You know those white kids are wily.”
  27. wry
    humorously sarcastic or mocking
    Mr. Hill caught on that Elwood had a fascination with the rights struggle and gave the boy a wry smile when he chimed in.
  28. inflection
    the patterns of stress and intonation in a language
    Every year Elwood concocted new inflections and gestures, the speeches losing their stiffness as his own convictions enlivened the portrait.
  29. yoke
    an oppressive power
    “It is my pleasure to inform you fine gentlemen and ladies that the time has come to throw off the yoke of slavery and take our places as true Americans—at long last!”
  30. marquee
    a structure, often with a signboard, over an entrance
    The A&M students marched in snaky loops in front of the Florida, hoisting signs and rotating slogans under the marquee.
  31. resiliency
    an occurrence of rebounding or springing back
    She instituted a ban on the record player and, recognizing the resiliency of this younger generation of colored youth, moved it into her bedroom and weighed it down with bricks.
  32. bashful
    self-consciously timid
    Bashful, he didn’t tell anyone and wrote under a pseudonym: Archer Montgomery.
  33. facet
    a distinct feature or element in a problem
    In June Mr. Marconi became a grandfather, a milestone that exposed new facets in the Italian.
  34. avuncular
    resembling an uncle in kindness or indulgence
    He turned the shop into a showcase for avuncular enthusiasm.
  35. rivet
    a heavy metal pin used to fasten two pieces of metal
    Two rivets in his bike chain broke the night he got that black eye, and ever since it tended to snap when he took it out for long rides.
Created on Wed Jul 01 13:38:05 EDT 2020 (updated Wed Jul 01 14:00:37 EDT 2020)

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