gatsby vocab words


  1. vacuous (adj.)

    • "A celebrated tenor had sung in Italian, and a notorious contralto had sung in jazz, and between the numbers people were doing "stunts" all over the garden, while happy, vacuous bursts of laughter rose toward the summer sky" (46).

    • having or showing a lack of thought or intelligence; mindless.

  2. euphemism (noun)

    • "...appalled by its raw vigor that chafed under the old euphemisms and by the too obtrusive fate that herded its inhabitants along a short-cut from nothing to nothing" (107).

    • a mild or indirect word or expression substituted for one considered to be too harsh or blunt when referring to something unpleasant or embarrassing.

  3. incessant (adj.)

    • "those gleaming, dazzling parties of his were with me so vividly that I could still hear the music and the laughter, faint and incessant, from his garden, and the cars going up and down his drive" (179).

    • (of something unpleasant) continuing without pause or interruption.

  4. interminable (adj)

    • "with their interminable inquisitions which spared only the children and the very old..." (176).

    • endless (often used hyperbolically).

  5. tangible (adj.)

    • "Tom and Miss Baker, with several feet of twilight between them strolled back into the library, as if to a vigil beside a perfectly tangible body, while trying to look pleasantly interested and a little deaf I followed Daisy around a chain of connecting verandas to the porch in front" (20).

    • perceptible by touch.

  6. dilatory (adj.) 

    • "Is Mr. Gatsby sick?"
      "Nope." After a pause he added "sir" in a dilatory, grudging way (113).

    • slow to act or intending to cause delay

  7. portentous (adj.)

    • "Before me stretched the portentous, menacing road of a new decade" (135).

    • A sign or warning that something, especially something momentous or calamitous, is likely to happen.

  8. tumultuous (adj.)

    • "The prolonged and tumultuous argument that ended by herding us into that room eludes me, though I have a sharp physical memory that, in the course of it, my underwear kept climbing like a damp snake around my legs and intermittent beads of sweat raced cool across my back" (126).

    • making a loud, confused noise; uproarious or disorderly.

  9. extemporize (verb)

    • "She was only extemporizing but a stirring warmth flowed from her as if her heart was trying to come out to you concealed in one of those breathless, thrilling words" (14).

    • Compose, perform, or produce something such as music or a speech without preparation; improvise.

  10. punctilious (adj.)

    • This quality was continually breaking through his punctilious manner in the shape of restlessness (64).

    • Coolly and patronizingly haughty.

  11. sumptuous (adj.)

    • "It had occurred to me that this shadow of a garage must be a blind, and that sumptuous and romantic apartments were concealed overhead" (25).

    • Splendid and expensive-looking.

  12. homogeneity (noun)

    • "Instead of rambling this party had preserved a dignified homogeneity" (44).

    • the quality or state of being all the same or all of the same kind.

  13. denizen (noun) 

    • "He's quite a character around New York - a denizen of Broadway" (73).

    • an inhabitant or occupant of a particular place.

  14.  meretricious (adj.)

    • "And he must be about his Father's business, the service of a vast, vulgar, and meretricious beauty" (98).

    • tastelessly showy and falsely attractive.

  15.  commensurate (adj.)

    • "Man must have held his breath in the presence of this continent... face to face for the last time in history with something commensurate to his capacity for wonder" (180).

    • Proportional in size, extent, amount, or degree