Fahrenheit 451 Section 1 Vocabulary

Front 1

Stolid

Back 1

having or revealing little emotion or sensibility; not easily aroused or excited. Can’t be moved to smile or show much sign of life. Something solid, like a giant boulder, that is immovable and expressionless.

Hint 1

EXAMPLE SENTENCE:

With his symbolic helmet numbered 451 on his stolid head, and his eyes all orange flame with the thought of what came next, he flicked the igniter and the house jumped up in a gorging fire that burned the evening sky red and yellow and black.

Front 2

Fringe

Back 2

the outside boundary or surface of something

Hint 2

EXAMPLE SENTENCE:

The breath coming out of the nostrils was so faint it stirred only the furthest fringes of life, a small leaf, a black feather, a single fibre of hair.

Front 3

Earnestly

Back 3

in a serious manner

Hint 3

EXAMPLE SENTENCE:

Laughter blew across the moon-coloured lawn from the house of Clarisse and her father and mother and the uncle who smiled so quietly and so earnestly.

Front 4

Capillary

Back 4

long and slender with a very small internal diameter

Hint 4

EXAMPLE SENTENCE:

Light flickered on bits of ruby glass and on sensitive capillary hairs in the nylon-brushed nostrils of the creature that quivered gently, gently, gently, its eight legs spidered under it on rubber-padded paws.

Front 5

Proclivity

Back 5

a natural tendency to like something or behave in a particular way

Hint 5

“Were all fireman picked then for their looks as well as their proclivities?”

Front 6

Flourish

Back 6

Be healthy or grow well

Hint 6

“Now it plunged the book back under his arm, pressed it tight to sweating armpit, rushed out empty, with a magician’s flourish!”

Front 7

Heresy

Back 7

any opinions or doctrines that disagree with the official position, a belief that doesn't agree with the official rules of a particular government

Hint 7

EXAMPLE SENTENCE:

“A man named Latimer said that to a man named Nicholas Ridley, as they were being burnt alive at Oxford, for heresy, on October 16, 1555.”

Front 8

Resume

Back 8

short descriptive summary (of events)

Hint 8

EXAMPLE SENTENCE:

“Classics cut to fit fifteen-minute radio shows, then cut again to fill a two-minute book column, winding up at last as a ten or twelve-line dictionary resume."

Front 9

Custodian

Back 9

one having charge of buildings or grounds or animals

Hint 9

EXAMPLE SENTENCE:

They were given the new job, as custodians of our peace of mind, the focus of our understandable and rightful dread of being inferior; official censors, judges, and executors.

Front 10

Torrent

Back 10

an overwhelming number or amount

Hint 10

EXAMPLE SENTENCE:

Don't let the torrent of melancholy and drear philosophy drown our world.

Front 11

Suspended

Back 11

supported or kept from sinking or falling without apparent attachment

Hint 11

EXAMPLE SENTENCE:

He saw himself in her eyes, suspended in two shining drops of bright water, himself dark and tiny, in fine detail, the lines about his mouth, everything there, as if her eyes were two miraculous bits of violet amber that might capture and hold him intact.

Front 12

Melancholy

Back 12

a feeling of thoughtful sadness, overcome in sorrow, wrapped up in sorrowful thoughts

Hint 12

EXAMPLE SENTENCE:

And the men with the cigarettes in their straight-lined mouths, the men with the eyes of puff-adders, took up their load of machine and tube, their case of liquid melancholy and the slow dark sludge of nameless stuff, and strolled out the door.

Front 13

Illuminate

Back 13

make lighter or brighter

Hint 13

EXAMPLE SENTENCE:

The Mechanical Hound slept but did not sleep, lived but did not live in its gently humming, gently vibrating, softly illuminated kennel back in a dark corner of the firehouse.

Front 14

Proboscis

Back 14

a long flexible snout as of an elephant

Hint 14

EXAMPLE SENTENCE:

Three seconds later the game was done, the rat, cat, or chicken caught half across the areaway, gripped in gentling paws while a four-inch hollow steel needle plunged down from the proboscis of the Hound to inject massive jolts of morphine or procaine.

Front 15

Alight

Back 15

to come to rest, settle

Hint 15

EXAMPLE SENTENCE:

Books bombarded his shoulders, his arms, his upturned face. A book alighted, almost obediently, like a white pigeon, in his hands, wings fluttering.

Front 16

Contempt

Back 16

lack of respect accompanied by a feeling of intense dislike

Hint 16

EXAMPLE SENTENCE:

The woman on the porch reached out with contempt for them all, and struck the kitchen match against the railing.

Front 17

Stagnant

Back 17

not circulating or flowing

Hint 17

EXAMPLE SENTENCE:

He tried to count how many times she swallowed and he thought of the visit from the two zinc-oxide-faced men with the cigarettes in their straight-lined mouths and the electronic-eyed snake winding down into the layer upon layer of night and stone and stagnant spring water, and he wanted to call out to her, how many have you taken TONIGHT! the capsules! how many will you take later and not know? and so on, every hour! or maybe not tonight, tomorrow night!

Front 18

Nomadic

Back 18

anything that involves moving around a lot, migratory

Hint 18

EXAMPLE SENTENCE:

Towns turn into motels, people in nomadic surges from place to place, following the moon tides, living tonight in the room where you slept this noon and I the night before.”

Front 19

Equate

Back 19

make equal, uniform, corresponding, or matching

Hint 19

EXAMPLE SENTENCE:

Any man who can take a TV wall apart and put it back together again, and most men can nowadays, is happier than any man who tries to slide-rule, measure, and equate the universe, which just won't be measured or equated without making man feel bestial and lonely.

Front 20

Vacant

Back 20

void of thought or knowledge

Hint 20

EXAMPLE SENTENCE:

The open door looked at him with its great vacant eye.