When the Emperor Was Divine: List 3

by Julie Otsuka
This fictionalized version of the experiences of the author's family focuses on four nameless Japanese American characters during World War II, when they were forced to relocate to internment camps.

This list covers "When the Emperor Was Divine."

Here are links to our lists for the novel: List 1, List 2, List 3, List 4
40 words 291 learners

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Full list of words from this list:

words only definitions & notes
  1. inscrutable
    difficult or impossible to understand
    Black hair. Slanted eyes. High cheekbones. Thick glasses. Thin lips. Bad teeth. Unknowable. Inscrutable.
  2. scuff
    mar or wear away by rubbing or scraping
    The boy’s sister nudged him under the table, hard, with the scuffed toe of her Mary Jane.
  3. oasis
    a fertile tract in a desert
    It was not like any desert he had read about in books. There were no palm trees here, no oases, no caravans of camels slowly winding across the dunes. There was only the wind and the dust and the hot burning sand.
  4. whittle
    cut small bits or pare shavings from
    Old men sat outside on the long narrow benches, not talking, whittling away at pieces of wood as they waited for the hours to pass.
  5. transfixed
    having your attention fixated as though witchcraft
    His sister lay on her cot for hours, staring, transfixed, at white majorette boots and men in their bathrobes in the Sears, Roebuck catalog.
  6. darn
    repair a garment by weaving thread across a hole
    Their mother darned socks by the window.
  7. doily
    a small round piece of decorative linen or paper
    She learned to crochet—“It’s something to do”—and for one week there were doilies under everything.
  8. wicker
    flexible branches or twigs that can be woven together
    She wore a pink flowered housedress, and tiny white slippers, and she carried a cane, and in the evening, after supper, the boy often saw her standing in her doorway with a small wicker suitcase, trying to remember the way home.
  9. domestic
    a servant paid to perform tasks around the household
    The waitress had worked as a live-in domestic for a wealthy family in Atherton.
  10. vagrant
    a wanderer with no established residence or means of support
    The man standing in front of the latrines shouting out, "Hallelujah, Hallelujah,” had been a vagrant on the streets of Oakland.
  11. mirage
    optical illusion in which hot air distorts distant objects
    “Water," she said, “is just a mirage.”
    A mirage was not there at all.
  12. substantial
    providing abundant nourishment
    The food is fresh and substantial and my appetite is good.
  13. scrabble
    grope, scratch, or feel searchingly
    At night he covered the box with a lid and on top of the lid he placed a flat white stone so the tortoise could not escape. Sometimes, in his dreams, he could hear its claws scrabbling against the side of the box.
  14. morale
    a state of individual psychological well-being
    There were rules about language, too: Here we say Dining Hall and not Mess Hall; Safety Council, not Internal Police; Residents, not Evacuees; and last but not least, Mental Climate, not Morale.
  15. ideal
    conforming to an ultimate standard of perfection
    He believed that fruit juice was the ideal drink.
  16. forte
    an asset of special worth or utility
    He liked to doodle. He was especially fond of drawing a box and then making it into three dimensions. I guess you could say that's my forte.
  17. daub
    apply to a surface
    Every night before she went to bed she daubed cream on her face.
  18. tamp
    press down tightly
    He wondered if Gloria was still alive, down there, beneath all that dirt—“Tamp it down, hard,” his sister had said—and if she was, would she be able to make it to spring?
  19. sterilize
    make infertile
    The men and women would be put into separate camps. They would be sterilized. They would be stripped of their citizenship.
  20. bleak
    offering little or no hope
    The situation in Burma, she told the class, was bleak.
  21. canteen
    a room with food sold to personnel at an institution
    She said, “I won a nickel at bingo tonight. Tomorrow we'll go to the canteen and buy you a Coca-Cola.”
  22. divine
    being or having the nature of a god
    For the Emperor was holy and divine. A god.
  23. abacus
    a manual calculator with counters on rods or in grooves
    She smashed the abacus and tossed it into the flames. “From now on,” she said, “we’re counting on our fingers.”
  24. hobble
    walk unevenly due to pain, injury, or weakness
    In China the men wore their hair in long black pigtails and the ladies hobbled around on tiny broken feet.
  25. gritty
    composed of or covered with small particles
    In the morning, when he woke, the wet handkerchief was dry and in his mouth there was the gritty taste of chalk.
  26. contraband
    goods whose trade or possession is prohibited by law
    He worried that the FBI had returned to the house to search one more time for contraband.
  27. sluggish
    lacking energy, quickness, or alertness
    An ad for Dr. Fisher's tablets for intestinal sluggishness. “Folks,” a man asked, “do you feel headachy and pepless in the morning?”
  28. reconnaissance
    the act of scouting, especially to gain information
    He closed his eyes and imagined himself fighting with Hank and the Raiders down in the Solomon Islands. Or flying reconnaissance over Mindanao.
  29. rapture
    a state of elated bliss
    Jesus’ eyes were filled with a secret and flickering joy. With rapture.
  30. imperial
    befitting or belonging to an emperor or empress
    Salute to the Imperial Palace.
  31. rustle
    take illegally
    Maybe he'd rustled some cattle, or robbed a bank, or held up a stage coach, or—like the Dalton brothers—even a whole entire train, and now he was just doing his time with all of the other men.
  32. interval
    the distance between things
    All day long the men in each block planted the trees in front of the mess halls and at evenly spaced intervals along either side of the firebreaks.
  33. prompt
    performed with little or no delay
    He sent her a prompt thank you note and carried the knife with him in his pocket wherever he went.
  34. flushed
    reddened as if with blood from emotion or exertion
    Her cheeks were flushed from the cold.
  35. repatriate
    send someone back to his homeland against his will
    The following year they were repatriated to Japan on the U.S.S. Gripsholm.
  36. unqualified
    not limited or restricted
    Will you swear unqualified allegiance to the United States of America and faithfully defend the United States from any or all attack by foreign or domestic forces, and forswear any form of allegiance or obedience to the Japanese Emperor, or any other foreign government, power or organization?
  37. forswear
    formally reject or disavow
    “What allegiance?’’ asked the boy’s mother. She said she had nothing to forswear. She’d been in America for almost twenty years now.
  38. bask
    expose oneself to warmth and light, as for relaxation
    Lizards basked in the sun.
  39. strew
    spread by scattering
    The casket was strewn with hundreds of crepe-paper flowers.
  40. stricken
    grievously affected especially by disease
    In May the first group of army volunteers left the barracks for Fort Douglas, and a four-year-old girl in Block 31 was stricken with infantile paralysis.
Created on Mon Feb 06 10:12:00 EST 2023 (updated Mon Feb 06 20:10:20 EST 2023)

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