Love Medicine: List 2

by Louise Erdrich
This award-winning novels traces the lives of several Native American families over six decades.

This list covers "The Island"–"Flesh and Blood."

Here are links to our lists for the novel: List 1, List 2, List 3, List 4
35 words 36 learners

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Full list of words from this list:

words only definitions & notes
  1. indignant
    angered at something unjust or wrong
    She came home one Sunday after church, reached out to thump my ears, but I danced off and climbed a tree, buzzed my tongue down at her, indignant as a squirrel.
  2. arbor
    a framework that supports climbing plants
    One summer long ago, when I was a little girl, he came to Nanapush and the two sat beneath the arbor, talking only in the old language, arguing the medicine ways, throwing painted bones and muttering over what they had lost or gained.
  3. outcrop
    the part of a rock formation that appears above the surface
    Cats were lounging, sprinting, hunting, dozing on every warm log, on each heated outcrop.
  4. mortar
    plaster with a bond in masonry or for covering a wall
    The front was fitted of mortared stones set with jeweled windows, jagged shards of gleaming mica.
  5. niche
    a small concavity
    His drums were set in a niche in the stones and his hearth was a chipped-out, blackened square with a fireplace fitted directly into the wall.
  6. wheedle
    influence or urge by gentle urging, caressing, or flattering
    “He was working in the potato fields," the old drunk one wheedled.
  7. gaunt
    very thin, especially from disease or hunger or cold
    He was red-eyed, gaunt, and he was drunk.
  8. sodden
    wet through and through; thoroughly wet
    She thought of everything so hard that her mind felt warped and sodden as a door that swells up in spring.
  9. insignia
    a distinguishing mark or symbol
    Beverly had shaken out the trophy flag. He’d let it go in the air, and the wind seemed to suck it down, the black arms of the insignia whirling like a spider.
  10. pallbearer
    one of the mourners carrying the coffin at a funeral
    Lulu plunged heavily down with the trophy flag, and the ropes burned out of the pallbearers’ hands.
  11. indict
    accuse formally of a crime
    But most of her life Lulu had been known as a flirt. And that was putting it mildly. Tongues less kind had more indicting things to say.
  12. abound
    exist in large quantities
    Red hair and blond abounded; there was some brown.
  13. inculcate
    teach and impress by frequent repetitions or admonitions
    They looked forward to seeing the higher qualities, which they could not afford, inculcated in their own children.
  14. earnest
    devout or heartfelt
    Beverly’s territory was a small-town world of earnest dreamers.
  15. embroider
    add details to
    With every picture Beverly grew more familiar with his son and more inspired in the invention of tales he embroidered, day after day, on front porches that were to him the innocent stages for his routine.
  16. wistful
    showing pensive sadness
    Henry Junior cleared the hurdles of class and intellect with an ease astonishing to Beverly, who noted to his wistful customers how swiftly the young surpass the older generation.
  17. fledgling
    young bird that has just become capable of flying
    The sound of the ruffled paper was like the panic of fledglings before they learn how to glide.
  18. incessantly
    without interruption
    She was a typist who changed jobs incessantly.
  19. tawdry
    tastelessly showy
    Groomed with exquisite tawdriness, she’d fashioned for Bev the image of a modern woman living the ideal career life.
  20. fluctuate
    be unstable
    Her salary only fluctuated by pennies from firm to firm, but her importance and value as a knower-of-ropes swelled.
  21. indistinguishable
    exactly alike; incapable of being perceived as different
    In a child's world strange grownups are indistinguishable as trees in a forest.
  22. manipulation
    exerting shrewd or devious influence for one's own advantage
    During a moment of adjustment, however, he decided to go through whatever set of manipulations were necessary.
  23. implicit
    suggested though not directly expressed
    He set the blue slipper between them without addressing her implicit question on his status—girl friend, married, or just looking around.
  24. chide
    scold or reprimand severely or angrily
    “Oh, you men.” She laughed chidingly.
  25. dote
    shower with love; show excessive affection for
    She had the grace to put a hand to her lips as they uncurved, hiding the little gap-toothed smile he’d doted over at the time of that game.
  26. dispatch
    kill without delay
    In that book there was a queen protected by bloodthirsty warriors who smoothly dispatched all of her enemies.
  27. rangy
    tall and thin and having long slender limbs
    Handsome, rangy, wildly various, they were bound in total loyalty, not by oath but by the simple, unquestioning belongingness of part of one organism.
  28. apprehension
    the cognitive condition of someone who understands
    Slowly, as he watched, Beverly’s uneasy sense of menace gave way to some sweet apprehension of their kinship.
  29. abate
    become less in amount or intensity
    His sad dazzlement abated and he tried to avoid thinking of Elsa.
  30. retrench
    tighten one's belt; use resources carefully
    Retrench, he told himself, as the boys turned heavily and mumbled in their invisible cots and all along the floors around him.
  31. trundle
    a low bed to be slid under a higher bed
    There was a long spell of quiet, awful quiet, before the babies showed up everywhere again. They were all over in the house once they started. In the bottoms of cupboards, in the dresser, in trundles.
  32. wrangle
    quarrel noisily, angrily, or disruptively
    I am standing there wrangling with the drivers, who want to dump the butter, when Lulu drives by.
  33. alight
    come down
    And yet when she alights I cannot help notice an interesting feature of her dress.
  34. flounder
    have difficulties; behave awkwardly
    But Zelda still floundered, even with her advantages, and sometimes I found her staring in a quiet mood across the field.
  35. measly
    contemptibly small in amount
    “You’re the one. So proud of shredding your feet! Getting worshipped as a saint! While all the time you’re measly and stingy to the sick at your door. I heard!”
Created on Thu Mar 18 11:32:49 EDT 2021 (updated Mon Mar 22 14:33:21 EDT 2021)

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