Normajean Gonzalez - "Brave New World" by Aldous Huxley - Chapter 17

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Full list of words from this list:

words only definitions & notes
  1. soma
    alternate name for the body of a human being
    What need have we of repose when our minds
    and bodies continue to delight in activity? of consolation, when we have soma?
    of something immovable, when there is the social order?”
  2. neurasthenia
    nervous breakdown (not in technical use)
    “But chastity means passion, chastity means neurasthenia.
  3. pneumatic
    relating to or using air or a similar gas
    Sitting in a pneumatic chair, with
    his arm round a girl’s waist, sucking away at his sex- hormone chewing-gum
    and looking at the feelies.
  4. smut
    a black colloidal substance consisting wholly or principally of amorphous carbon and used to make pigments and ink
    They’re smut.
  5. bobbin
    a spool around which thread or other material can be wound
    He pointed with a laugh to his avowed library-to the shelves of books,
    the rack full of reading-machine bobbins and sound-track rolls.
  6. listlessness
    inactivity resulting from lethargy and lack of vigor or energy
    “Take this, for
    example,” he said, and in his deep voice once more began to read: “’A man
    grows old; he feels in himself that radical sense of weakness, of listlessness, of
    discomfort, which accompanies the advance of age; and, feeling thus, imagines
    himself merely sick, lulling his fears with the notion that this distressing condition
    is due to some particular cause, from which, as from an illness, he hopes to
    recover.
  7. surrogate
    someone or something that takes the place of another
    “Violent Passion Surrogate.
  8. centrifugal
    tending to move away from the middle
    You can’t play Electro-magnetic Golf according to the
    rules of Centrifugal Bumble-puppy.”
  9. derisive
    expressing contempt or ridicule
    And Tomakin, ex-Director of Hatcheries
    and Conditioning, Tomakin was still on holiday-on holiday from humiliation
    and pain, in a world where he could not hear those words, that derisive laughter,
    could not see that hideous face, feel those moist and flabby arms round his
    neck, in a beautiful world.
  10. superfluous
    more than is needed, desired, or required
    But there
    aren’t any losses for us to compensate; religious sentiment is superfluous.
Created on Wed Aug 17 19:12:15 EDT 2011 (updated Wed Aug 17 19:13:45 EDT 2011)

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