Vocab Words
Kerosene
A colorless flammable oil distilled from petroleum.
Part I-The Hearth and the Salamander:
Kerosene: (noun) 1. A colorless flammable oil distilled from petroleum. Use: fuel for jet engines, heating, cooking, and lighting.
-With the brass novel in his fists, with this great python spitting its venomous kerosene upon the world, the blood pounded in his head, and his hands were the hands of some amazing conductor playing all the symphonies of blazing and burning to bring down the tatters and charcoal ruins of history.
Luxuriously: (adjective) 1. Very comfortable, with high-quality, expensive furnishings or fabrics. 2. With a liking for luxury, or used to living in luxury.
-He hung up his black beetle-colored helmet and shined it; he hung his flameproof jacket neatly; he showered luxuriously, and then whistling, hands in pockets, walked across the upper floor of the fire station and fell down the hole.
Prior: (adjective) 1. Earlier in time or sequence, a prior engagement. 2. More important or basic.
-He had felt that a moment prior to his making the turn, someone had been there.
Compress: (verb) 1. To make something smaller by applying pressure of a similar process, or become smaller in this way. 2. To press things such as the lips together. 3. TO reduce the number of bits required to represent computer text, data, or images so as to save storage space or reduce transmission time.
-Or was the atmosphere compressed merely by someone standing very quietly there, waiting?
Hypnotize: (transitive verb) 1. To put somebody into a state of hypnosis. 2. To fascinate or charm somebody utterly.
-But he knew his mouth had only moved to say hello, and then when she seemed hypnotized by the salamander on his arm and the phoenix disk on his chest, he spoke again.
Miraculous: (adjective) 1. Apparently contrary to the laws of nature and caused by a supernatural power. 2. Unexpected, extraordinary, and marvelous. 3. Believed to have the power to perform miracles.
-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 catch and hold him intact.
Illumination: (noun) 1. The provision of light to make something visible or bright, or the fact of being lit up. 2. The amount of strength of light available in a place or for a purpose. 3. The process of making something easier to understand. 4. Intellectual or spiritual enlightenment.
-One time, as a child, in a power failure, his mother had found and lit a last candle and there had been a brief hour of rediscovery, of such illumination that space lost its vast dimensions and drew comfortably around them, and they, mother and sun, alone, transformed, hoping that the power might not come on again too soon…
Marionette: (noun) 1. A puppet operated by means of strings attached to it’s hands, legs, heads and body.
-What incredible power of identification the girl had; she was like the eager watcher of a marionette show, anticipating each flicker of an eyelid, each gesture of his hand, each flick of a finger, the moment before it began.
Thimble: (noun) 1. A small protective cap for a finger, used to push a needle through fabric. 2. A metal ring, concave on the outside, that fits into a loop in a rope or an eye to sail. 3. A small metal tube or sleeve used in machinery.
-And in her ears the little Seashells, the thimble radios tamped tight, and an electronic ocean of sound, of music and talk and music and talking coming in, coming in the shore of her unsleeping mind.
Distill: (verb) 1. To produce alcoholic spirits using the process of boiling liquid and condensing its vapor. 2. To purify a liquid by boiling it and then condensing its vapor, or undergo purification in this way. 3. To create something from the essential or most important parts of something larger or longer. 4. To be emitted slowly or in small quantities.
-Montag moved back to his own house, left the window wide, checked Mildred, tucked the covers about her carefully, and then lay down with the moonlight on his cheekbones and on the frowning ridges in his brow, with the moonlight distilled in each eye to form a silver cataract there.
Gush: (transitive and intransitive verb) 1. To flow out rapidly and in large quantities, or release large quantities of a liquid in a fast-flowing stream. 2. To express yourself, or say something, in an excessively enthusiastic, affectionate, or sentimental way.
(noun) 1. A fast or copious flow of liquid from somewhere. 2. An outburst of overenthusiastic or emotional speech or self-expression.
-The fire gushing up in a volcano.
Disposable: (adjective) 1. Designed to be thrown away after use. 2. Describes money or assets that are available for use.
(noun) 1. Something that is designed to be thrown away after use, e.g. a paper cup.
-Well, after all, this is the age of the disposable tissue. Blow your nose on a person, wad them, flush them away, reach for another, blow, wad, flush.
Dissolve: (verb) 1. To become absorbed in a liquid solution, or make a solid to do this. 2. To fade away gradually and disappear, or make something to do this. 3. To break up into smaller or more basic parts, or make something do this. 4. To begin to laugh or cry uncontrollably. 5. To bring something such as a meeting or political assembly to a formal close. 6. To bring a legal relationship such a business partnership or a marriage formally to an end. 7. To fade out slowly as a second image fades in, briefly merging one with the other.
(noun) A change from one scene to another, with the first scene gradually fading out and the next one gradually fading in over it.
-"I don't know anything any more," he said, and let a sleep-lozenge dissolve on his tongue.
Drench: (transitive verb) 1. To make somebody or something completely wet. 2. To cover or surround somebody or something with a large amount of something. 3. To give an animal a large dose of medicine in liquid form by mouth.
(noun) 1. A large dose of medicine given to an animal in liquid form by mouth.
-Toast popped out of the silver toaster, was seized by a spidery metal hand that drenched it with melted butter.
Apprenticeship: (noun/verb) 1. A person who works for another in order to learn a trade. 2. A learner; novice; tyro.
-She was an expert at lip-reading from ten years of apprenticeship at Seashell ear-thimbles.
Obligate: (transitive verb) 1. To compel somebody to do something as a legal or moral duty.
- The other men lay a while, on the dawn edge of sleep, not yet ready to rise up and begin the day's obligations, its fires and foods, its thousand details of putting foot after foot and hand after hand.
Salamander: (noun) 1. An amphibian that resembles a lizard but has porous moist skin instead of scales, and that lives in water as a larva and on land as an adult. 2. A mythical lizard that can live in fire.
-But he knew his mouth had only moved to say hello, and then when she seemed hypnotized by the salamander on his arm and the phoenix-disc on his chest, he spoke again.
Exotic: (adjective) 1. Strikingly unusual and often very colorful and exciting or suggesting distant countries and unfamiliar cultures. 2. Introduced from another place or region.
-If we had a fourth wall, why it'd be just like this room wasn't ours at all, but all kinds of exotic people's rooms.
Capillary: (noun) 1. An extremely narrow thin-walled blood vessel that connects small arteries arterioles with small veins venules to form a network throughout the body.
-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.
Jolt: (verb) 1. To shake or jerk suddenly and violently, or make somebody or something shake or jerk suddenly and violently, especially as a result of a sudden movement. 2. To startle somebody out of a daydream, fantasy, or other state of semi awareness. 3. To bump up and down or shake from side to side while moving.
-The animals were turned loose. 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.
Phoenix: (noun) 1. In ancient mythology, a bird resembling an eagle that lived for 500 years and then burned itself to death on a pyre from whose ashes another phoenix arose. It commonly appears in literature as a symbol of death and resurrection. 2. a supremely beautiful, rare, or unique person or thing.
-Only the man with the Captain's hat and the sign of the Phoenix on his hat, at last, curious, his playing cards in his thin hand, talked across the long room.
Mourn: (verb) 1. To feel and show sadness because somebody has died. 2. To wear mourning clothes or other things that indicate grief over the death of somebody. 3. To feel and show sadness because something has been lost or no longer exists.
-". . .one forty-five..." The voice-clock mourned out the cold hour of a cold morning of a still colder year.
Glitter: (intransitive verb) 1. To sparkle or shimmer brightly. 2. To look bright or expressive with an emotion such as anger or love. 3. To exhibit liveliness and charm. 4. To be characterized by the presence of somebody or something glamorous.
-The police went first and adhesive-taped the victim's mouth and bandaged him off into their glittering beetle cars, so when you arrived you found an empty house.
Proclivity: (noun) 1. A natural tendency to behave in a particular way.
-Were all firemen picked then for their looks as well as their proclivities?
Cellophane: (noun) 1. A thin transparent waterproof material.
-Beatty opening a fresh tobacco packet, crumpling the cellophane into a sound of fire.
Ignite: (verb) 1. To set fire to something, or catch fire. 2. To heat a gas to the temperature at which it begins to burn, or be heated in this way. 3. To cause a strong emotion to arise or show itself in somebody.
-Beatty raised his hand in which was concealed the igniter.
Asylum: (noun) 1. protection and immunity from extradition granted by a government to somebody who has fled another country, e.g. because of political oppression. 2. Protection from danger or imminent harm provided by a sheltered place. 3. An offensive term for an institution for people with psychiatric disorders. 4. A place that once offered shelter to criminals and debtors, especially a church.
-"They took him screaming off to the asylum."
Odious: (adjective) 1. Inspiring hatred, contempt, or disgust.
-Beatty, Stoneman, and Black ran up the sidewalk, suddenly odious and fat in the plump fireproof slickers.
Flourish: (verb) 1. To be strong and healthy or grow well, especially because conditions are right. 2. To sustain continuous steady strong growth. 3. To wave something in a dramatic way that draws attention to it.
-His hand had done it all, his hand, with a brain of its own, with a conscience and a curiosity in each trembling finger, had turned thief.. Now, it plunged the book back under his arm, pressed it tight to sweating armpit, rushed out empty, with a magician's flourish!
Tamp: (transitive verb) 1. To pack or push something down, especially by tapping it repeatedly. 2. To pack a substance such as sand or dirt into a drill hole above an explosive.
-There was a tiny dance of melody in the air, her Seashell was tamped in her ear again and she was listening to far people in far places, her eyes wide and staring at the fathoms of blackness above her in the ceiling.
Cacophony: (noun) 1. An unpleasant combination of loud, often jarring, sounds. 2. The use of harsh unpleasant sounds in language, e.g. for literary effect.
-You drowned in music and pure cacophony.
Centrifuge: (noun) 1. A device that rotates rapidly and uses centrifugal force to separate substances of different densities. 2. A rotating apparatus used to simulate the effects of gravity or acceleration on humans or animals.
-Whirl man's mind around about so fast under the pumping hands of publishers, exploiters, broadcasters, that the centrifuge flings off all unnecessary, time-wasting thought!"
Pantomime: (noun) 1. Somebody who acts without speaking, using gesture and expression. 2. A style of British theater, or a play in this style, traditionally performed at Christmas, in which a folktale or children's story is told with jokes, songs, and dancing. 3. In ancient Rome, a theatrical performance by one masked actor who played all the characters, using only dance, gesture, and expression, and no words, while a chorus narrated the story.
-He could only pantomime, hoping she would turn his way and see him.
Cymbal: (noun) 1. A circular brass percussion instrument played with a stick or in pairs by striking them together.
- Behind her the walls of the room were flooded with green and yellow and orange fireworks sizzling and bursting to some music composed almost completely of trap?drums, tom?toms, and cymbals. iking them together.
Incinerator: (noun) 1. A furnace for destroying things by burning them, especially one used to burn waste.
-Better yet, into the incinerator.
Part II-The Sieve And The Sand:
Rationalize: (verb) 1. To attempt to justify behavior normally considered irrational or unacceptable by offering an apparently reasonable explanation. 2. To make something rational, logical, or consistent. 3. To interpret something from a rational or logical perspective.
-But my uncle says that was merely rationalizing it; the real reason, hidden underneath, might be they didn't want people sitting like that, doing nothing, rocking, talking; that was the wrong kind of social life.
Ventilator: (noun) 1. A machine that keeps air moving in and out of the lungs of a patient who cannot breathe unaided. 2. A device that circulates fresh air in an enclosed space.
-He was shivering and he wanted above all to shove the books up through the ventilator again, but he knew he could not face Beatty again.
Sieve: (noun) 1. A utensil consisting of a round frame surrounding a mesh and used to separate solids from liquids or large particles from small particles, or to purée foods.
-Once as a child he had sat upon a yellow dune by the sea in the middle of the blue and hot summer day, trying to fill a sieve with sand, because some cruel cousin had said, "Fill this sieve and you'll get a dime!"
Suffuse: (transitive verb) 1. To spread over or through something.
-In the hall Mildred's face was suffused with excitement.
Dentifrice: (noun) 1. A paste or similar compound for cleaning teeth.
-"Denham's Dentrifice."
Garment: (noun) 1. A piece of clothing.
-The magic is only in what books say, how they stitched the patches of the universe together into one garment for us.
Arsonist: (noun) 1. A person who commits arson.
-“…Now if you suggest that we print extra books and arrange to have them hidden in firemen's houses all over the country, so that seeds of suspicion would be sown among these arsonists, bravo, I'd say!"
Devour: (transitive verb) 1. To eat something quickly and hungrily. 2. To read, look at, watch, or listen to something eagerly. 3. to use up something unwisely or wastefully.
-The salamander devours his tail!
Gimmick: (noun) 1. A piece of trickery or manipulation intended to achieve a result dishonestly. 2. A piece of concealed information that, if known, would make an offer or opportunity less attractive. 3. Something that attracts attention or publicity, e.g. a new technique or device. 4. An ingenious device, mechanism, or ploy, especially one that works in a concealed way.
-Can you dance faster than the White Clown, shout louder than `Mr. Gimmick' and the parlour `families'?
Praetor: (noun) 1. In ancient Rome, any of several magistrates ranking immediately below the consuls and acting as the chief law officers of the state.
-They're Caesar's praetorian guard, whispering as the parade roars down the avenue, `Remember, Caesar, thou art mortal.'
Insidious: (adjective) 1. Slowly and subtly harmful or destructive.
-"It's an insidious plan, if I do say so myself."
Linguist: (noun) 1. A speaker or adept learner of several languages. 2. An expert in or student of linguistics.
-"Aren't there professors like yourself, former writers, historians, linguists . . .?"
Contemptible: (noun) 1. Deserving to be treated with contempt.
-“…See how safe I play it, how contemptible I am?"
Trifle: (noun) 1. Something that has little or no importance, significance, or value. 2. A small amount of something.
-The moon rose in the sky as Montag walked, his lips moving just a trifle.
Disperse: (noun) 1. To cause something to scatter in different directions, or scatter in this way. 2. To distribute something over a wide area, or become widespread. 3. to cause something to disappear, or disappear. 4. To distribute particles evenly throughout a medium, or become distributed in this way. 5. To separate white light into the component colors of the spectrum, or undergo this process.
-Some were missing and he knew that she had started on her own slow process of dispersing the dynamite in her house, stick by stick.
Part III-Burning Bright:
Simmer: (verb) 1. To cook something gently just below boiling point, usually with the occasional bubble breaking on the surface, or be cooked in this way. 2. To keep a liquid just below boiling point, or be kept at this point. 3. To have anger or another strong emotion building up inside. 4. To build up inside somebody, often without being expressed.
-He would be Montag-plus-Faber, fire plus water, and then, one day, after everything had mixed and simmered and worked away in silence, there would be neither fire nor water, but wine.
Reel: (noun) 1. A usually revolving wheel-shaped device around which something such as thread, film, or wire can be wound for storage. 2. The amount of a material that a reel can hold. 3. The amount of movie film stored on one reel. 4. A winding device attached to a fishing rod that holds the fishing line and enables it to be cast and wound back.
-Beatty struck him a blow on the head that sent him reeling back.
Fumble: (verb) 1. To grope clumsily in search of something. 2. To act clumsily, hesitantly, or unsuccessfully. 3. To do something clumsily or inefficiently. 4. In sports, to drop or fail to catch a ball.
-Why don't you belch Shakespeare at me, you fumbling snob?
Writhe: (verb) 1. To make violent twisting and rolling movements with the body, especially as a result of severe pain. 2. To move in a twisting squirming way, or cause the body to move in this way. 3. To feel a strong emotion, especially embarrassment or shame, and experience internal stress as a result of it.
-And then he was a shrieking blaze, a jumping, sprawling, gibbering mannikin, no longer human or known, all writhing flame on the lawn as Montag shot one continuous pulse of liquid fire on him.
Manikin: (noun) 1. Same as mannequin. 2. an anatomical model of the human body, used in teaching art or medicine. 3. An offensive term for a very short man.
Instinctive: (adjective) 1. Relating to, prompted by, or based on a strong natural impulse. 2. Having a particular quality or skill spontaneously and without effort or instruction.
-And then he realized that he was indeed, running toward Faber's house, instinctively.
Plummet: (transitive verb) 1. To drop steeply and suddenly downward. 2. To experience a sudden unexpected decrease in something such as value or price. 3. To decline suddenly, especially from a state of optimism to one of pessimism.
-Two dozen of them flurried, wavering, indecisive, three miles off, like butterflies puzzled by autumn, and then they were plummeting down to land, one by one, here, there, softly kneading the streets where, turned back to beetles, they shrieked along the boulevards or, as suddenly, leapt back into the sir, continuing their search.
Flail: (verb) 1. To thrash or swing something around violently or uncontrollably, or move in this way. 2. To strike or hit something.
-He dropped a book, broke pace, almost turned, changed his mind, plunged on, yelling in concrete emptiness, the beetle scuttling after its running food, two hundred, one hundred feet away, ninety, eighty, seventy, Montag gasping, flailing his hands, legs up down out, up down out, closer, closer, hooting, calling, his eyes burnt white now as his head jerked about to confront the flashing glare, now the beetle was swallowed in its own light, now it was nothing but a torch hurtling upon him; all sound, all blare.
Phantom: (noun) 1. Something that can be seen or heard or whose presence can be felt, but that is not physically present. 2. A ghost or apparition. 3. Somebody or something that does not exist, or whose existence is difficult to prove. 4. An imaginary embodiment in threatening form of an abstract thing or quality.
-He saw Faber stop up his own breath for fear of drawing that ghost into his own body, perhaps, being contaminated with the phantom exhalations and odours of a running man.
Exhalation: (noun) 1. a breath exhaled from the lungs. 2. The act of breathing out. 3. A scent, a vapor, or fumes given off by something
-He saw Faber stop up his own breath for fear of drawing that ghost into his own body, perhaps, being contaminated with the phantom exhalations and odours of a running man.
Contaminate: (transitive verb) 1. To make something impure, unclean, or polluted, especially by mixing harmful impurities into it or by putting it into contact with something harmful. 2. To make something such as soil unfit for use or exploitation as a result of contact with polluting or harmful substances.
-He saw Faber stop up his own breath for fear of drawing that ghost into his own body, perhaps, being contaminated with the phantom exhalations and odours of a running man.
Hover: (verb) 1. To float or flutter in the air without moving very far from the same spot. 2. To wait near a person or place, usually in a nervous, inquisitive, or expectant way. 3. To be unable to decide between alternatives. 4. To be in a condition that is neither one of two alternatives nor the other. 5. To stay near a particular point, changing only slightly. 6. To position the cursor over an icon on a computer screen to get pop-up information without clicking, or be positioned in this way
-The Hound was on its way, followed by hovering helicopter cameras, silently, silently, sniffing the great night wind.
Meteor: (noun) 1. A mass of rock from space that burns up after entering the Earth's atmosphere. 2. The brief streak of light that a meteor creates, visible in the night sky.
Musk: (noun) 1. a pungent and greasy secretion from a gland in the male musk deer. 2. a secretion similar to musk from other animals such as the civet or otter, or a synthetic substance with similar properties. 3. A plant that has a musky scent, especially the musk plant. 4. The smell of musk, or a similar smell.
-He smelled the heavy musk-like perfume mingled with blood and the gummed exhalation of the animal's breath, all cardamon and moss and ragweed odour in this huge night where the trees ran at him, pulled away, ran, pulled away, to the pulse of the heart behind his eyes.
Wary: (adjective) 1. Cautious and alert for problems. 2. Showing watchfulness or suspicion.
-But the fire was there and he approached warily, from a long way off.
Simultaneous: (adjective) 1. Done, happening, or existing at the same time. 2. Describes equations that are satisfied by the same values of the variables.
-Both reached him simultaneously.
Convolution: (noun) 1. A curve, coil, or twist. 2. A ridged fold on the surface of the brain. 3. A complexity of intricacy, especially one of many.
-"Grandfather's been dead for all these years, but if you lifted my skull, by God, in the convolutions of my brain you'd find the big ridges of his thumbprint.
Desolation: (adjective) 1. Bare, uninhabited, and deserted. 2. solitary, joyless, and without hope. 3. Dismal and gloomy.
-And Faber was out; there in the deep valleys of the country somewhere the five a.m. bus was on its way from one desolation to another.
Ecclesiastes: (noun) 1. A book of the Bible that discusses the futility of life and how to be a God-fearing person.
-What is it? Yes, yes, part of the Ecclesiastes and Revelation.