The Old Man and the Sea: Pages 9–50

by Ernest Hemingway
Santiago is a luckless Cuban fisherman who struggles to land a giant marlin. In spare, searing prose, Hemingway transforms the story of one man's battle with nature into a heroic ordeal.

This list covers pages 9–50 in the Scribner 2003 edition.

Here are links to our lists for the novel: List 1, List 2
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Full list of words from this list:

words only definitions & notes
  1. skiff
    a small boat propelled by oars or by sails or by a motor
    He was an old man who fished alone in a skiff in the Gulf Stream and he had gone eighty-four days now without taking a fish.
  2. harpoon
    a spear with a barbed point for catching large fish
    It made the boy sad to see the old man come in each day with his skiff empty and he always went down to help him carry either the coiled lines or the gaff and harpoon and the sail that was furled around the mast.
  3. humility
    a lack of arrogance or false pride
    He was too simple to wonder when he had attained humility. He knew he had attained it and he knew it was not disgraceful and it carried no loss of true pride.
  4. fathom
    a linear unit of measurement for water depth
    He saw the phosphorescence of the Gulf weed in the water as he rowed over the part of the ocean that the fishermen called the great well because there was a sudden deep of seven hundred fathoms where all sorts of fish congregated because of the swirl the current made against the steep walls of the floor of the ocean.
  5. congregate
    come together, usually for a purpose
    He saw the phosphorescence of the Gulf weed in the water as he rowed over the part of the ocean that the fishermen called the great well because there was a sudden deep of seven hundred fathoms where all sorts of fish congregated because of the swirl the current made against the steep walls of the floor of the ocean.
  6. ineffectual
    not producing an intended consequence
    As he watched the bird dipped again slanting his wings for the dive and then swinging them wildly and ineffectually as he followed the flying fish.
  7. plankton
    aggregate of small organisms that float or drift in water
    He watched his lines to see them go straight down out of sight into the water and he was happy to see so much plankton because it meant fish.
  8. iridescent
    varying in color when seen in different lights
    But the bird was almost out of sight now and nothing showed on the surface of the water but some patches of yellow, sun-bleached Sargasso weed and the purple, formalized, iridescent, gelatinous bladder of a Portuguese man-of-war floating close beside the boat.
  9. mysticism
    obscure or irrational thought
    He had no mysticism about turtles although he had gone in turtle boats for many years.
  10. grippe
    an acute, febrile, highly contagious viral disease
    Most fishermen hated the taste. But it was no worse than getting up at the hours that they rose and it was very good against all colds and grippes and it was good for the eyes.
  11. myriad
    too numerous to be counted
    The myriad flecks of the plankton were annulled now by the high sun and it was only the great deep prisms in the blue water that the old man saw now with his lines going straight down into the water that was a mile deep.
  12. tentative
    hesitant or lacking confidence; unsettled in mind or opinion
    This time it was a tentative pull, not solid nor heavy, and he knew exactly what it was.
  13. imperceptible
    impossible or difficult to sense
    As it went down, slipping lightly through the old man’s fingers, he still could feel the great weight, though the pressure of his thumb and finger were almost imperceptible.
  14. intolerable
    incapable of being put up with
    The position actually was only somewhat less intolerable; but he thought of it as almost comfortable.
  15. phosphorescent
    emitting light without appreciable heat
    The line showed like a phosphorescent streak in the water straight out from his shoulders.
Created on Thu Oct 01 16:35:15 EDT 2015 (updated Fri Jun 27 14:32:42 EDT 2025)

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