Not Nothing: List 5

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 "Not Enough"–"Not Nothing."

Here are links to our lists for the book: List 1, List 2, List 3, List 4, List 5
15 words 12 learners

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Full list of words from this list:

words only definitions & notes
  1. indistinguishable
    exactly alike; incapable of being perceived as different
    His throat was closing up with shame and sadness about what had happened with his mom, indistinguishable from the shame and sadness about what he’d done to Toby.
  2. gallows
    an instrument from which a person is executed by hanging
    In the center of the camp stood a gallows, where prisoners were frequently hanged for the slightest infraction.
  3. deprivation
    act of withholding food or money or rights
    Beyond the gallows was a large mass grave where they would dump the bodies that piled up each day as the soldiers used prisoners for target practice, or as the men died of “natural causes,” if you could call starvation and deprivation natural causes.
  4. sidle
    move unobtrusively or furtively
    One morning he sidled up next to me after roll call and tucked a hunk of bread into my hand, imploring, “Eat. You’re wasting away.”
  5. squander
    spend thoughtlessly; throw away
    Even Adek was rising to the occasion of his life, while I’d squandered the opportunity to save my parents, to save myself.
  6. commandant
    an officer in charge of a military unit
    The most dangerous thing in the camp was not the guards, the selections, the commandant’s bullets, the disease. It was hope. There is a certain comfort to giving in. But with Olka alive, I could not give in, no matter how badly I wanted to.
  7. epaulet
    an ornamental cloth pad worn on the shoulder
    Here I cut trousers, pieced together a shirt, emblazoned the jacket with the gold-and-silver braid of an Oberst epaulet, using nothing but a needle and thread and the ten fingers on my hands — because, as I told you before, you don’t sew with your eyes, you sew with your hands — over a period of six weeks.
  8. fabricate
    put together out of artificial or natural components
    She thrust at me the uniform I had fabricated, now pressed like new, along with a pair of regulation shoes.
  9. demeanor
    the way a person behaves toward other people
    The soldier hurried to lift the gate, his demeanor that of a dog who had just been beaten, trying to please the master who had beaten it.
  10. malevolent
    wishing or appearing to wish evil to others
    “Because,” Toby began, tired of this weird kid and his malevolent presence. He had worked so hard to make people like him, and it got exhausting.
  11. tragedy
    an event resulting in great loss and misfortune
    Encircled in his family’s embrace, Frank thought of the boy. Some of the cases he worked with were children neglected and unloved from the start, and that was a tragedy. But other times, the children had known love and lost it, and as the boy himself had attested, that hole where love had once lived was immense.
  12. rabbi
    spiritual leader of a Jewish congregation
    “Our law is God’s law,” I said. “Let the mountain be our rabbi. The birds will be our witnesses,” I told her. “In God’s eyes, is that not enough?”
  13. derelict
    forsaken by owner or inhabitants
    From the outside, the small barn Babci had used as a studio appeared derelict, boarded up, but you pried off the wood and inside was a small pallet, a jug of water, an entire loaf of bread, and the cherry jam Babci had jarred with the ten fingers on her hands.
  14. next of kin
    the person who is most closely related to a given person
    I died an hour after I dictated my letter to Etta. She contacted the undertaker and called Adek’s children, who were my next of kin, and then called Frank to tell him the news.
  15. begrudgingly
    in an unwilling manner
    The judge will rule against sending Alex to a reform school. Instead he will continue living with his Aunt Lisa and Uncle Morris, who will, only a little begrudgingly, trade in the lumpy couch for a bed, over which your portrait will hang.
Created on Wed Aug 20 20:20:00 EDT 2025 (updated Fri Sep 19 12:26:05 EDT 2025)

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