Student Name: British Literature
1984 Vocabulary-Part 1Hersker
Using context clues to help you, record the definitions for all of the target vocabulary words. You only have to look up definitions for the words you DO NOT already know.
Word / Definition1.
depict
(v) / “At one end of it a colored poster, too large for indoor display, had been tacked to the wall. It depicted simply an enormous face, more than a meter wide: the face of a man of about forty-five, with a heavy black moustache and ruggedly handsome features.” (Orwell 1)
2.
interminable (adj) / “For weeks past he had been making ready for this moment, and it had never crossed his mind that anything would be needed except courage. The actual writing would be easy. All he had to do was to transfer to paper the interminable restless monologue that had been running inside his head, literally for years. At this moment, however, even the monologue had dried up. (Orwell 4)
3.
unorthodox (adj) / “With those children, he thought, that wretched woman must lead a life of terror. Another year, two years, and they would be watching her night and day for symptoms of unorthodoxy. Nearly all children nowadays were horrible. What was worst of all was that by means of such organizations as the Spies they were systematically turned into ungovernable little savages, and yet this produced in them no tendency whatever to rebel against the discipline of the Party.” (Orwell 13)
4.
renegade
(n) / As usual, the face of Emmanuel Goldstein, the Enemy of the People, had flashed on to the screen… Goldstein was the renegade and backslider who once, long ago…had been one of the leading figures of the Party, almost on a level with Big Brother himself, and then had engaged in counterrevolutionary activities, had been condemned to death, and had mysteriously escaped and disappeared. The programs of the Two Minutes Hate varied from day to day, but there was none in which Goldstein was not the principal figure.” (Orwell 6)
5.
refute
(v) / “Goldstein was hated and despised by everybody, although every day and a thousand times a day, on platforms, on the telescreen, in newspapers, in books, his theories were refuted, smashed, ridiculed, held up to the general gaze for the pitiful rubbish that they were…” (Orwell 7)
6.
inscrutable (adj) / “[Winston’s] face remained completely inscrutable. Never show dismay! Never show resentment! A single flicker of the eyes could give you away.” (Orwell 20)
7.
gambol
(v) / “Suddenly they were both leaping round him, shouting ’Traitor!’ and ’Thought criminal!’ the little girl imitating her brother in every movement. It was somehow slightly frightening, like the gamboling of tiger cubs which will soon grow up into man-eaters. There was a sort of calculating ferocity in the boy’s eye, a quite evident desire to hit or kick Winston.” (Orwell 12)
8.
altercation (n) / “It was obviously some serious piece of news that they were reading. He was a few paces away from them when suddenly the group broke up and two of the men were in violent altercation. For a moment they seemed almost on the point of blows.” (Orwell 49)
9.
reproach (n), (v) / “[Winston] was out in the light and air while [his mother and sister] were being sucked down to death, and they were down there because he was up here. He knew it and they knew it, and he could see the knowledge in their faces. There was no reproach either in their faces or in their hearts, only the knowledge that they must die in order that he might remain alive, and that this was part of the unavoidable order of things.” (Orwell 16)
10.
fathom
(v) / Today there were fear, hatred, and pain, but no dignity of emotion, no deep or complex sorrows. All this he seemed to see in the large eyes of his mother and his sister, looking up at him through the green water, hundreds of fathoms down and still sinking.” (Orwell 17)
11.
disdain
(n), (v) / “The girl with dark hair was coming towards [Winston] across the field. With what seemed a single movement she tore off her clothes and flung them disdainfully aside… What overwhelmed him in that instant was admiration for the gesture with which she had thrown her clothes aside. With its grace and carelessness it seemed to annihilate a whole culture, a whole system of thought, as though Big Brother and the Party and the Thought Police could all be swept into nothingness by a single splendid movement of the arm.” (Orwell 17)
12.
repudiate (v) / “His mind slid away into the labyrinthine world of doublethink. To know and not to know, to be conscious of complete truthfulness while telling carefully constructed lies, to hold simultaneously two opinions which cancelled out, knowing them to be contradictory and believing in both of them, to use logic against logic, to repudiate morality while laying claim to it… Even to understand the word ’doublethink’ involved the use of doublethink.” (Orwell 19)
13.
cumbersome (adj) / “Under the window, and occupying nearly a quarter of the room, was an enormous bed with the mattress still on it. ‘We lived here till my wife died,’ said the old man half apologetically. ‘I’m selling the furniture off by little and little. Now that’s a beautiful mahogany bed, or at least it would be if you could get the bugs out of it. But I dare say you’d find it a little bit cumbersome.” (Orwell 55)
14.
collate
(v) / “As soon as all the corrections which happened to be necessary in any particular number of The Times had been assembled and collated, that number would be reprinted, the original copy destroyed, and the corrected copy placed on the files in its [place]. This process of continuous alteration was applied not only to newspapers, but to books, periodicals, pamphlets, posters, leaflets, films, sound-tracks, cartoons, photographs — to every kind of literature or documentation which might conceivably hold any political or ideological significance.” (Orwell 22)
15.
multifarious (adj) / “And the Records Department, after all, was itself only a single branch of the Ministry of Truth, whose primary job was not to reconstruct the past but to supply the citizens of Oceania with newspapers, films, textbooks, telescreen programs, plays, novels… And the Ministry had not only to supply the multifarious needs of the party, but also to repeat the whole operation at a lower level for the benefit of the proletariat.” (Orwell 24)
16.
denounce (v) / “At the age of three Comrade Ogilvy had refused all toys except a drum, a sub-machine gun, and a model helicopter. At six — a year early, by a special relaxation of the rules — he had joined the Spies, at nine he had been a troop leader. At eleven he had denounced his uncle to the Thought Police after overhearing a conversation which appeared to him to have criminal tendencies.” (Orwell 26)
17.
implicate (v) / “Very occasionally some person whom you had believed dead long since would make a ghostly reappearance at some public trial where he would implicate hundreds of others by his testimony before vanishing, this time for ever. Withers, however, was already an unperson. He did not exist: he had never existed.” (Orwell 25)
18.
venerate
(v) / “Unquestionably Syme will be vaporized, Winston thought again…There was something subtly wrong with Syme. There was something that he lacked: discretion, aloofness, a sort of saving stupidity. You could not say that he was unorthodox. He believed in the principles of Ingsoc, he venerated Big Brother, he rejoiced over victories, he hated heretics, not merely with sincerity but with a sort of restless zeal, an up-to-dateness of information, which the ordinary Party member did not approach.” (Orwell 31)
19.
sordid (adj) / “The bomb had demolished a group of houses 200 meters up the street… There was a little pile of plaster lying on the pavement ahead of him, and in the middle of it he could see a bright red streak. When he got up to it he saw that it was a human hand severed at the wrist… He kicked the thing into the gutter, and then, to avoid the crowd, turned down a side-street to the right. Within three or four minutes he was out of the area which the bomb had affected, and the sordid swarming life of the streets was going on as though nothing had happened.” (Orwell 48)
20.
debauchery (n) / “The Party was even inclined to encourage prostitution, as an outlet for instincts which could not be altogether suppressed. Mere debauchery did not matter very much, so long as it was furtive and joyless and only involved the women of a submerged and despised class. The unforgivable crime was promiscuity between Party members.” (Orwell 37)
1984 Vocabulary-Part 2
Using context clues to help you, record the definitions for all of the target vocabulary words. You only have to look up definitions for the words you DO NOT already know.
Word / Definition1.
malignant
(adj) / “At this moment there was a tremendous crash. The little man was sprawling on all fours, his tray had gone flying, two streams of soup and coffee were flowing across the floor. He started to his feet with a malignant glance at Winston, whom he evidently suspected of having tripped him up.” (Orwell 64)
2.
guise
(n) / “Big Brother is the guise in which the Party chooses to exhibit itself to the world. His function is to act as a focusing point for love, fear, and reverence, emotions which are more easily felt towards an individual than towards an organization.”(Orwell 121)
3.
dapple
(n), (v) / “Winston picked his way up the lane through dappled light and shade, stepping out into pools of gold wherever the boughs parted. Under the trees to the left of him the ground was misty with bluebells. The air seemed to kiss one’s skin. It was the second of May. From somewhere deeper in the heart of the wood came the droning of ring doves.” (Orwell 67)
4.
stagnant
(adj) / “When they met in the church tower the gaps in their fragmentary conversation were filled up. It was a blazing afternoon. The air in the little square chamber above the bells was hot and stagnant, and smelt overpoweringly of pigeon dung..” (Orwell 74)
5.
eccentric
(adj) / “A Party member lives from birth to death under the eye of the Thought Police. Even when he is alone he can never be sure that he is alone...any eccentricity, however small, any change of habits, any nervous mannerism that could possibly be the symptom of an inner struggle, is certain to be detected.” (Orwell 123)
6.
effigy
(n) / “There were further angry demonstrations, Goldstein was burned in effigy, hundreds of copies of the poster of the Eurasian soldier were torn down and added to the flames, and a number of shops were looted in the turmoil.” (Orwell 87)
7.
indignation
(n) / “As though to harmonize with the general mood, the rocket bombs had been killing larger numbers of people than usual. One fell on a crowded film theatre in Stepney, burying several hundred victims among the ruins. The whole population of the neighborhood turned out for a long, trailing funeral which went on for hours and was in effect an indignation meeting.” (Orwell 87)
8.
mutability
(n) / The mutability of the past is the central tenet of Ingsoc. Past events, it is argued, have no objective existence, but survive only in written records and in human memories... It also follows that though the past is alterable, it never has been altered in any specific instance.” (Orwell 124)
9.
invariably (adv) / “Winston’s mother was quite ready to give him more than his share. She took it for granted that he, ‘the boy’, should have the biggest portion; but however much she gave him he invariably demanded more. At every meal she would beseech him not to be selfish and to remember that his little sister was sick and also needed food, but it was no use.” (Orwell 95)
10.
infallible (adj) / “Given this background, one could infer, if one did not know it already, the general structure of Oceanic society. At the apex of the pyramid comes Big Brother. Big Brother is infallible and all-powerful. Every success, every achievement, every victory, every scientific discovery, all knowledge, all wisdom, all happiness, all virtue, are held to issue directly from his leadership and inspiration.” (Orwell 121)
11.
intermittent (adj) / “Winston whined and grizzled, made futile demands for food, fretted about the room pulling everything out of place and kicking the wainscoting until the neighbors banged on the wall, while the younger child wailed intermittently. In the end his mother said, ’Now be good, and I’ll buy you a toy. A lovely toy — you’ll love it” (Orwell 171)
12.
pathos
(n) / “Above all he remembered his continuous hunger, and the fierce sordid battles at mealtimes. He would ask his mother naggingly, over and over again, why there was not more food, he would shout and storm at her … or he would attempt a sniveling note of pathos in his efforts to get more than his share. His mother was quite ready to give him more than his share.” (Orwell 95)
13.
salutation
(n) / “Exactly as they had done at the front door, the little man’s dark eyes flickered over their faces. There was not a trace of friendliness in his manner. He was memorizing their appearance, but he felt no interest in them, or appeared to feel none... Without speaking or giving any kind of salutation, Martin went out, closing the door silently behind him.”(Orwell 102)
14.
allusion
(n) / ‘There are a couple of minutes before you need go,’ said O’Brien. ’We shall meet again — if we do meet again-’ Winston looked up at him. ’In the place where there is no darkness?’ he said hesitantly. O’Brien nodded without appearance of surprise. ’In the place where there is no darkness,’ he said, as though he had recognized the allusion. ’And in the meantime, is there anything that you wish to say before you leave?” (Orwell 105)
15.
fecundity
(n) / “They are too evenly matched, and their natural defenses are too formidable. Eurasia is protected by its vast land spaces. Oceania by the width of the Atlantic and the Pacific, Eastasia by the fecundity and industriousness of its inhabitants. Secondly, there is no longer, in a material sense, anything to fightabout.” (Orwell 110)
16.
austere
(adj) / By the standards of the early twentieth century, even a member of the Inner Party lives an austere, laborious kind of life. Nevertheless, the few luxuries that he does enjoy his large, well-appointed flat, the better texture of his clothes, the better quality of his food and drink and tobacco, his two or three servants, his private motor-car or helicopter—set him in a different world from a member of the Outer Party, and the members of the Outer Party have a similar advantage in comparison with the submerged masses whom we call ’the proles’(Orwell 112)
17.
spurious
(adj) / “In his capacity as an administrator, it is often necessary for a member of the Inner Party to know that this or that item of war news is untruthful, and he may often be aware that the entire war is spurious and is either not happening or is being waged for purposes quite other than the declared ones: but such knowledge is easily neutralized by the technique of doublethink.” (Orwell 113)
18.
tacit
(adj) / “Under this lies a fact never mentioned aloud, but tacitly understood and acted upon: namely, that the conditions of life in all three super-states are very much the same” (Orwell 115)
19. irrevocable (adj) / “Even after enormous upheavals and seemingly irrevocable changes, the same pattern has always reasserted itself, just as a gyroscope will always return to equilibrium, however far it is pushed one way or the other.” (Orwell 118)
20.
dissipate
(v) / “The discontents produced by his bare, unsatisfying life are deliberately turned outwards and dissipated by such devices as the Two Minutes Hate, and the speculations which might possibly induce a skeptical or rebellious attitude are killed in advance by his early acquired inner discipline.” (Orwell 123)
1984 Vocabulary-Part 3
Using context clues to help you, record the definitions for all of the target vocabulary words. You only have to look up definitions for the words you DO NOT already know.
Word / Context and Definition1.
Gnaw
(v) / There was a dull aching in his belly. It had been there ever since they had bundled him into the closed van and driven him away. But he was also hungry, with a gnawing, unwholesome kind of hunger. (Orwell 131)
2.
peddler
(n) / There was a constant come-and-go of prisoners of every description: drug-peddlers, thieves, bandits, black-marketers, drunks, prostitutes. Some of the drunks were so violent that the other prisoners had to combine to suppress them. (Orwell 132)
3.
timorously
(adv) / Opposite Winston there sat a man with a chinless, toothy face exactly like that of some large, harmless rodent. His fat, mottled cheeks were so pouched at the bottom that it was difficult notto believe that he had little stores of food tucked away there. His pale-greyeyes flitted timorously from face to face and turned quickly away again when he caught anyone’s eye. (Orwell 136)