Not Nothing: List 4

by Gayle Forman
Twelve-year-old Alex volunteers at a senior living facility and meets 107-year-old Josey, who tells Alex his story of surviving the Holocaust. From this, and with the help of a new friend, Maya-Jade, Alex begins to believe that he can "rise to the occasion" of his own life.

This list covers vocabulary from "The Romeo And Juliet Of Shady Glen"–"Operation Rise."

Here are links to our lists for the book: List 1, List 2, List 3, List 4, List 5
15 words 13 learners

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Full list of words from this list:

words only definitions & notes
  1. dementia
    mental deterioration of organic or functional origin
    “Wait a minute,” Jimmy’s wife, Marlene, said. “You claimed you moved your father because of dementia. Not because of his girlfriend.”
  2. cognitive
    relating to or involving the mental process of knowing
    “You remember how it was after your mom died,” she reminded Jimmy. “Your dad was lost without her. And he’s been so happy with Ginny. So what if they have their cognitive issues? The boy’s right. They’re happy together.”
  3. hyperbolic
    enlarged beyond truth or reasonableness
    “If you keep selling our plates, we’ll be eating off the floors,” Father complained when Olka carted off Mother’s twelve-serving Limoges china set. What he thought was a hyperbolic exaggeration would come true all too soon.
  4. assimilate
    become like one's environment
    Kazimierz was a lively if cramped neighborhood where Krakow’s less wealthy and less assimilated Jews lived, the type of people who didn’t sport the latest fashions from Paris but wore black hats and long peasant skirts, the type of people who didn’t speak Polish let alone French or German, but Yiddish, which Mother called a “peasant tongue.”
  5. gentile
    a Christian as contrasted with a Jew
    The Nazis had called all the professors — not just the Jewish ones but the gentiles like Professor Palansky, too — to a meeting as a trick.
  6. deport
    expel from a country
    Once assembled, the intellectuals were arrested, deported, or killed.
  7. mandate
    a formal statement of a command to do something
    But the bribes could not save us from the mandate that all able-bodied Jews work, not for payment but for the privilege of staying alive.
  8. munition
    weapons considered collectively
    Mother was sent to work in a munitions factory while I cleaned latrines at the railroad station.
  9. placate
    cause to be more favorably inclined
    Father had grown too frail for labor, so he joined the Jewish Council, a puppet organization meant to placate the Jews into thinking we had some modicum of control, even as the Nazis seized control of all aspects of our lives, our property, our businesses, our livelihoods, our dignity.
  10. modicum
    a small or moderate or token amount
    Father had grown too frail for labor, so he joined the Jewish Council, a puppet organization meant to placate the Jews into thinking we had some modicum of control, even as the Nazis seized control of all aspects of our lives, our property, our businesses, our livelihoods, our dignity.
  11. conspicuous
    obvious to the eye or mind
    We saw less of Olka then. A gentile was more conspicuous in Kazimierz than in the central part of the city we had lived in.
  12. contentious
    showing an inclination to disagree
    And whenever she did manage to stop in, the visits were contentious because she was lobbying for us to leave Poland.
  13. spartan
    marked by simplicity, frugality, or self-denial
    The flat we now shared with four other families made our spartan apartment in Kazimierz seem like a palace.
  14. nemesis
    a personal foe or rival that cannot be easily defeated
    If the ghetto reunited me with Olka, it also returned to me a less-welcome presence: my old nemesis, Adek, who had gotten himself a job at the Madritsch factory even though he did not know how to sew.
  15. squalid
    foul and run-down and repulsive
    Death became commonplace, whether from the rat-a-tat sound of gunfire signaling another execution or the disease that swept through the squalid ghetto like wildfire.
Created on Wed Aug 20 20:05:16 EDT 2025 (updated Fri Sep 19 12:14:09 EDT 2025)

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