F451 Vocab

Tallow

Hard animal fat used for candles

“He felt his smile slide away, melt, fold over and down on itself like ____ skin, like the stuff of a fantastic candle burning too long and now collapsing and now blown out.”

Cacophony

Harsh, jarring sound; noise

“You drowned in music and pure ____”

Mausoleum

a large stately tomb or the building that house it

“It was like coming into the cold marbled room of a _____ after the moon has set.”

Olfactory

relating to the sense of smell

“Nights when things got dull, which was every night, the men slid down the brass poles, and set the ticking combinations of the ____ system of the Hound and let loose rats in the firehouse area way, and sometimes chickens, and sometimes cats that would have to be drowned anyway, and there would be betting to see which of the cats or chickens or rats the Hound would seize first.”

Pratfall

a comical fall on the behind; a humiliating mishap or error

“Life becomes one big ____, Montag; everything band, boff, and wow!”

Stratum

Layer

“the women on the bed was no more than a hard ___ of marble they had reached.”

Tamped

Packed won

“There was only the singing of the thimble-wasps in her ____-shut ears, and her eyes all glass, and breath going in and out, softly, faintly, in and out her nostrils, and her no caring whether it came or went, went or came.”

Insidious

Spreading harm slowly and secretly; treacherous

“It’s an __ plan, if I do say so myself.”

Perfunctorily

in a routine manner

“He glanced ___ at it, and showed it in his pocket.”

Strew

to spread; to scatter

“Behind him, the door to a bedroom stood open, and in that room a litter of machinery and steel tools were ___ upon a desktop.”

Certitude

certainty, confidence

“Nor ___, nor peace, nor help for pain…”

Verbiage

excess words; wordiness

“I summer my side up with a rare serenity in, “The folly of mistaking a metaphor for proof, a torrent of ___ for a spring of capital truths, and oneself as an oracle, is in born in us, Mr. Varley once said.’”

Filigree

delicate ornamental work made from twisted wire of gold or silver

“It was good listening of the beetle hum, the sleepy mosquito buzz and delicate ___ murmur of the old man’s voice…”

Moor

an area of poorly drained open land

“Others can use them, too, and there you are, lost in the middle of the ___ , in the great welter of nouns and verbs and adjectives.”

Scythe

a bladed tool with a long bent handle, used for cutting or mowing

“The bombardment was all intents and purposes finished, once the jets had sighted their target, alerted their bombardier at five thousand miles and hour; ad quick as the whisper of a ___ the war was finished.”

Convolution

a coiled shape or part

“Grandfather’s been dead for all these years, but if you lifted my skull, by God, in the ___ of my brain you’d find the big ridges of his thumbprint.”

Liquefaction

the act of turning to liquid

“There was a hiss like a great mouthful of spittle banging a red-hot stove, a bubbling and frothing as if salt had been poured over a monstrous black snail to cause a terrible ___ a a boiling over of yellow foam.”

Pedant

Someone who over emphasizes of shows off his or her learning; someone who focuses unduly on minutiae

“The most important single thing we had to pound into ourselves is that we were not important, we mustn’t be ___; we were not to feel superior to anyone else in the world.”

Smoldering

burning with little smoke, and no flame

“The other fireman waited behind him, in the darkness, their faces illumined faintly by the ___ foundation.”

Guild

an association of people in the same trade

“Now the ___ of asbestos-wearer must open the shop very soon.”