Brave New World Vocabulary Words
Brave New World Vocabulary
In the futuristic World State created by Aldous Huxley, everybody is happy because all physical desires are fulfilled. However, the price of this happiness is the enjoyment of ones' servitude and lack of free will.
Here are the links to these lists for our novel: Chapters 1-6, Chapters 7-12, Chapters 13-18
- soliloquize
talk to oneself
Bent over their instruments, three hundred Fertilizers were plunged, as the Director of Hatcheries and Conditioning entered the room, in the scarcely breathing silence, the absent-minded, soliloquizing hum or whistle, of absorbed concentration. - callow
young and inexperienced
A troop of newly arrived students, very young, pink and callow, followed nervously, rather abjectly, at the Director’s heels. - burgeon
grow and flourish
Two, four, eight, the buds in their turn budded; and having budded were dosed almost to death with alcohol; consequently burgeonedagain and having budded—bud out of bud out of bud—were thereafter—further arrest being generally fatal—left to develop in peace. - centrifugal
tending to move away from a center
Described the artificial maternal circulation installed in every bottle at Metre 112; showed them the reservoir of blood-surrogate, thecentrifugal pump that kept the liquid moving over the placenta and drove it through the synthetic lung and waste product filter. - enumerate
specify individually
Hinted at the gravity of the so-called “trauma of decanting,” andenumerated the precautions taken to minimize, by a suitable training of the bottled embryo, that dangerous shock. - ingenuous
lacking in sophistication or worldliness
“But why do you want to keep the embryo below par?” asked aningenuous student. - mutation
any event that changes genetic structure
He became rather technical; spoke of the abnormal endocrine coordination which made men grow so slowly; postulated a germinalmutation to account for it. - predestined
established or prearranged unalterably
They were predestined to emigrate to the tropics, to be miners and acetate silk spinners and steel workers. - caustic
capable of destroying or eating away by chemical action
On Rack 10 rows of next generation’s chemical workers were being trained in the toleration of lead, caustic soda, tar, chlorine. - posthumous
occurring or coming into existence after a person's death
Thousands of petals, ripe-blown and silkily smooth, like the cheeks of innumerable little cherubs, but of cherubs, in that bright light, not exclusively pink and Aryan, but also luminously Chinese, also Mexican, also apoplectic with too much blowing of celestial trumpets, also pale as death, pale with the posthumous whiteness of marble. - spasmodic
occurring in spells and often abruptly
There was something desperate, almost insane, about the sharpspasmodic yelps to which they now gave utterance. - inculcate
teach and impress by frequent repetitions or admonitions
But wordless conditioning is crude and wholesale; cannot bring home the finer distinctions, cannot inculcate the more complex courses of behavior. - aperture
a usually small man-made opening
A ball thrown up so as to land on the platform at the top of the tower rolled down into the interior, fell on a rapidly revolving disk, was hurled through one or other of the numerous apertures pierced in the cylindrical casing, and had to be caught. - rudimentary
being in the earliest stages of development
In a little grassy bay between tall clumps of Mediterranean heather, two children, a little boy of about seven and a little girl who might have been a year older, were playing, very gravely and with all the focused attention of scientists intent on a labor of discovery, a rudimentarysexual game. - maudlin
effusively or insincerely emotional
“I always think,” the Director was continuing in the same rathermaudlin tone, when he was interrupted by a loud boo-hooing. - immoral
deliberately violating principles of right and wrong
For a very long period before the time of Our Ford, and even for some generations afterwards, erotic play between children had been regarded as abnormal (there was a roar of laughter); and not only abnormal, actually immoral (no!): and had therefore been rigorously suppressed. - effusive
extravagantly demonstrative
The D.H.C. had at that moment sat down on one of the steel and rubber benches conveniently scattered through the gardens; but at the sight of the stranger, he sprang to his feet and darted forward, his hand outstretched, smiling with all his teeth, effusive. - inscrutable
of an obscure nature
Our Ford—or Our Freud, as, for some inscrutable reason, he chose to call himself whenever he spoke of psychological matters—Our Freud had been the first to reveal the appalling dangers of family life. - incongruous
lacking in harmony or compatibility or appropriateness
Fanny’s kind, rather moon-like face took on an incongruousexpression of pained and disapproving astonishment. - axiomatic
evident without proof or argument
The students nodded, emphatically agreeing with a statement which upwards of sixty-two thousand repetitions in the dark had made them accept, not merely as true, but as axiomatic, self-evident, utterly indisputable. - primal
serving as an essential component
“Stability,” insisted the Controller, “stability. The primal and the ultimate need. Stability. Hence all this.” - suppression
withholding or withdrawing some writing from circulation
“Accompanied by a campaign against the Past; by the closing of museums, the blowing up of historical monuments (luckily most of them had already been destroyed during the Nine Years’ War); by thesuppression of all books published before A.F. 150.” - renounce
turn away from; give up
“Work, play—at sixty our powers and tastes are what they were at seventeen. Old men in the bad old days used to renounce, retire, take to religion, spend their time reading, thinking—thinking!” - simian
relating to or resembling an ape
The liftman was a small simian creature, dressed in the black tunic of an Epsilon-Minus Semi-Moron. - ruminate
chew the cuds
He put away the soma bottle, and taking out a packet of sex-hormone chewing-gum, stuffed a plug into his cheek and walked slowly away towards the hangars, ruminating. - incandescence
light emission by a body as its temperature is raised
The molten stone poured out in a stream of dazzling incandescenceacross the road; the asbestos rollers came and went; at the tail of an insulated watering cart the steam rose in white clouds. - corporeal
characteristic of the body as opposed to the mind or spirit
For Gammas, Deltas and Epsilons had been to some extent conditioned to associate corporeal mass with social superiority. - mockery
showing your contempt by derision
The mockery made him feel an outsider; and feeling an outsider he behaved like one, which increased the prejudice against him and intensified the contempt and hostility aroused by his physical defects. - asceticism
rigorous self-denial and active self-restraint
Mental excess could produce, for its own purposes, the voluntary blindness and deafness of deliberate solitude, the artificial impotence of asceticism. - caste
social status conferred by a system based on class
Every two and a half minutes a bell and the screech of whistles announced the departure of one of the light monorail trains which carried the lower caste golfers back from their separate course to the metropolis. - cremate
reduce to ashes
P2Os used to go right out of circulation every time they crematedsome one. Now they recover over ninety-eight per cent of it. More than a kilo and a half per adult corpse. - imminent
close in time; about to occur
“I drink to the imminence of His Coming,” he repeated, with a sincere attempt to feel that the coming was imminent; but the eyebrow continued to haunt him, and the Coming, so far as he was concerned, was horribly remote. - galvanic
affected by emotion as if by electricity; thrilling
The President switched off the music and, with the final note of the final stanza, there was absolute silence—the silence of stretched expectancy, quivering and creeping with a galvanic life. - satiety
being satisfactorily full and unable to take on more
Hers was the calm ecstasy of achieved consummation, the peace, not of mere vacant satiety and nothingness, but of balanced life, of energies at rest and in equilibrium. - abject
showing humiliation or submissiveness
He pencilled his initials—two small pale letters abject at the feet of Mustapha Mond—and was about to return the paper without a word of comment or genial Ford-speed, when his eye was caught by something written in the body of the permit. - solecism
a socially awkward or tactless act
A man so conventional, so scrupulously correct as the Director—and to commit so gross a solecism! - deplorable
bringing or deserving severe rebuke or censure
And his deplorable habit of being bold after the event, and full, in absence, of the most extraordinary presence of mind. - repulsive
offensive to the mind
... about sixty thousand Indians and half-breeds ... absolute savages . . . our inspectors occasionally visit. . . otherwise, no communication whatever with the civilized world . . . still preserve their repulsivehabits and customs ... marriage, if you know what that is, my dear young lady; families ... no conditioning ... monstrous superstitions. - stoicism
an indifference to pleasure or pain
Now that it looked as though the threats were really to be fulfilled, Bernard was appalled. Of that imagined stoicism, that theoretical courage, not a trace was left. - fulminate
cause to explode violently and with loud noise
And at its foot, here and there, a mosaic of white bones, a still unrotted carcass dark on the tawny ground marked the place where deer or steer, puma or porcupine or coyote, or the greedy turkey buzzards drawn down by the whiff of carrion and fulminated as though by a poetic justice, had come too close to the destroying wires.
Brave New World Vocabulary from Chapters 7-12
- precipitous
extremely steep
The channel wound between precipitous banks, and slanting from one wall to the other across the valley ran a streak of green—the river and its fields. - reciprocate
act, feel, or give mutually or in return
Her feeling was evidently reciprocated; the very back of the man, as he walked along before them, was hostile, sullenly contemptuous. - indefatigable
showing sustained enthusiasm with unflagging vitality
Suddenly it was as though the whole air had come alive and were pulsing, pulsing with the indefatigable movement of blood. - inaudible
impossible to hear; imperceptible by the ear
Sometimes the pulsing of the drums was all but inaudible, at others they seemed to be beating only just round the corner. - incredulity
doubt about the truth of something
“But how can they live like this?” she broke out in a voice of indignantincredulity. - obsidian
glass formed by the cooling of lava without crystallization
His face was profoundly wrinkled and black, like a mask of obsidian. - equilibrium
a stable situation in which forces cancel one another
We preserve them from diseases. We keep their internal secretions artificially balanced at a youthful equilibrium. - unorthodox
breaking with convention or tradition
Ashamed, now that the effects of the soma had worn off, of the weakness he had displayed that morning in the hotel, he went out of his way to show himself strong and unorthodox. - indignation
a feeling of righteous anger
“Bernard! How can you?” the passage of an old woman with ophthalmia and a disease of the skin distracted her from herindignation. - synthetic
not of natural origin; prepared or made artificially
It reminded her reassuringly of the synthetic noises made at Solidarity Services and Ford’s Day celebrations. - innocuous
not injurious to physical or mental health
But a little later it was reminding her a good deal less of thatinnocuous function. - multitudinous
too numerous to be counted
They could have had twice as much blood from me. Themultitudinous seas incarnadine. - aseptic
free of pathological microorganisms
I remember how it used to upset me, all that dirt, and nothing beingaseptic. - squeamish
excessively fastidious and easily disgusted
His conditioning had made him not so much pitiful as profoundlysqueamish. - blithe
carefree and happy and lighthearted
Blithe was the singing of the young girls over their test tubes, the Predestinators whistled as they worked, and in the Decanting Room what glorious jokes were cracked above the empty bottles! - heinous
extremely wicked, deeply criminal
Consider the matter dispassionately, Mr. Foster, and you will see that no offence is so heinous as unorthodoxy of behavior. - heretical
departing from accepted beliefs or standards
By his heretical views on sport and soma, by the scandalous unorthodoxy of his sex life, by his refusal to obey the teachings of Our Ford and behave out of office hours, ‘even as a little infant,’ ” (here the Director made the sign of the T), “he has proved himself an enemy of Society, a subverter, ladies and gentlemen, of all Order and Stability, a conspirator against Civilization itself. - ignominy
a state of dishonor
For this reason I propose to dismiss him, to dismiss him withignominy from the post he has held in this Centre - petrify
cause to become stonelike or stiff or dazed and stunned
She stood looking at him, her head on one side, still smiling, but with a smile that became progressively, in face of the Director’s expression ofpetrified disgust, less and less self-confident, that wavered and finally went out. - impropriety
the condition of being unsuitable
The word (for “father” was not so much obscene as—with its connotation of something at one remove from the loathsomeness and moral obliquity of child-bearing—merely gross, a scatological rather than a pornographic impropriety); the comically smutty word relieved what had become a quite intolerable tension. - rejuvenate
return to life; get or give new life or energy
No more breathing. Finished. And a good thing too. If we couldrejuvenate, of course it would be different. But we can’t. - carping
persistent petty and unjustified criticism
Before those who now, for the sake of the Savage, paid their court to him, Bernard would parade a carping unorthodoxy. - intoxicated
stupefied or excited by a chemical substance
Intoxicated, he was behaving as though, at the very least, he were a visiting World Controller. - aquiline
curved down like an eagle's beak
The fifty-six four-spindle chucking and turning machines were being manipulated by fifty-six aquiline and ginger Gammas. - provost
a high-ranking university administrator
Dr. Gaffney, the Provost, and Miss Keate, the Head Mistress, received them as they stepped out of the plane. - prostrate
lie face downward, as in submission
A click; the room was darkened; and suddenly, on the screen above the Master’s head, there were the Penitentes of Acoma prostratingthemselves before Our Lady, and wailing as John had heard them wail, confessing their sins before Jesus on the Cross, before the eagle image of Pookong. - stature
the height of a standing person
Crowds of lower-caste workers were queued up in front of the monorail station—seven or eight hundred Gamma, Delta and Epsilon men and women, with not more than a dozen faces and statures between them. - masticate
bite and grind with the teeth
“The day’s soma ration,” Bernard answered rather indistinctly; for he was masticating a piece of Benito Hoover’s chewing-gum. - discord
a harsh mixture of sounds
The secret organ was playing a delightfully refreshing Herbal Capriccio—rippling arpeggios of thyme and lavender, of rosemary, basil, myrtle, tarragon; a series of daring modulations through the spice keys into ambergris; and a slow return through sandalwood, camphor, cedar and new-mown hay (with occasional subtle touches of discord—a whiff of kidney pudding, the faintest suspicion of pig’s dung) back to the simple aromatics with which the piece began. - unwonted
out of the ordinary
Pale, her blue eyes clouded with an unwonted melancholy, she sat in a corner, cut off from those who surrounded her by an emotion which they did not share. - incoherent
unable to express yourself clearly or fluently
Pale, distraught, abject and agitated, he moved among his guests stammering incoherent apologies, assuring them that next time the Savage would certainly be there, begging them to sit down and take a carotene sandwich, a slice of vitamin A pate, a glass of champagne-surrogate. - memento
a reminder of past events
And she had shown Bernard the little golden zipper-fastening in the form of a T which the Arch-Songster had given her as a memento of the weekend she had spent at Lambeth. - dignitary
an important or influential person
“I’d so much hoped . . .” he stammeringly repeated, looking up at the great dignitary with pleading and distracted eyes. - subversive
in opposition to a civil authority or government
“The author’s mathematical treatment of the conception of purpose is novel and highly ingenious, but heretical and, so far as the present social order is concerned, dangerous and potentially subversive. Not to be published.” - discomfited
disappointingly unsuccessful
When, discomfited, he came and asked once more for the friendship which, in his prosperity, he had not thought it worth his while to preserve. - magnanimity
liberality in bestowing gifts
Touched, Bernard felt himself at the same time humiliated by thismagnanimity—a magnanimity the more extraordinary and therefore the more humiliating in that it owed nothing to soma and everything to Helmholtz’s character. - estrangement
separation resulting from hostility
At their first meeting after the estrangement, Bernard poured out the tale of his miseries and accepted consolation. - latent
potentially existing but not presently evident or realized
As though I were beginning to be able to use that power I feel I’ve got inside me—that extra, latent power. - harbinger
something indicating the approach of something or someone
At “sole Arabian tree” he started; at “thou shrieking harbinger” he smiled with sudden pleasure; at “every fowl of tyrant wing” the blood rushed up into his cheeks - mollify
cause to be more favorably inclined
“And yet,” said Helmholtz when, having recovered breath enough to apologize, he had mollified the Savage into listening to his explanations, “I know quite well that one needs ridiculous, mad situations like that
Brave New World Vocabulary from Chapters 13-18
- pallor
unnatural lack of color in the skin
Henry detected the weariness in those purple eyes, the pallor beneath that glaze of lupus, the sadness at the corners of the unsmiling crimson mouth. - adage
a condensed but memorable saying embodying an important fact
“A doctor a day keeps the jim-jams away,” he added heartily, driving home his hypnopaedic adage with a clap on the shoulder. - sanctimonious
excessively or hypocritically pious
“It’s like that in Shakespeare too. ‘If thou dost break her virgin knot before all sanctimonious ceremonies may with full and holy rite . . .’ ” - exasperation
a feeling of annoyance
“Then why on earth didn’t you say so?” she cried, and so intense was her exasperation that she drove her sharp nails into the skin of his wrist. - apothecary
a health professional trained in the art of preparing drugs
Give me an ounce of civet, good apothecary, to sweeten my imagination. - interminable
tiresomely long; seemingly without end
What seemed an interminable stream of identical eight-year-old male twins was pouring into the room. Twin after twin, twin after twin, they came—a nightmare. - crescendo
a gradual increase in loudness, in music
The Super-Vox-Wurlitzeriana had risen to a sobbing crescendo; and suddenly the verbena gave place, in the scent-circulating system, to an intense patchouli. - irresolute
uncertain how to act or proceed
The nurse stood irresolute, looking now at the kneeling figure by the bed (the scandalous exhibition!) and now (poor children!) at the twins who had stopped their hunting of the zipper and were staring from the other end of the ward, staring with all their eyes and nostrils at the shocking scene that was being enacted round Bed 20. - delirium
a usually brief state of excitement and mental confusion
He woke once more to external reality, looked round him, knew what he saw—knew it, with a sinking sense of horror and disgust, for the recurrent delirium of his days and nights, the nightmare of swarming indistinguishable sameness. - cynical
believing the worst of human nature and motives
They had mocked him through his misery and remorse, mocked him with how hideous a note of cynical derision! - carapace
hard outer covering or case of certain organisms
The insults bounced off their carapace of thick stupidity; they stared at him with a blank expression of dull and sullen resentment in their eyes. - sacrilege
blasphemous behavior
For a moment the khaki mob was silent, petrified, at the spectacle of this wanton sacrilege, with amazement and horror. - indistinguishable
exactly alike; incapable of being perceived as different
“Free, free!” the Savage shouted, and with one hand continued to throw the soma into the area while, with the other, he punched theindistinguishable faces of his assailants. - deprecate
express strong disapproval of; deplore
But Bernard would not be cheered; without answering, without even looking at Helmholtz, he went and sat down on the most uncomfortable chair in the room, carefully chosen in the obscure hope of somehow deprecating the wrath of the higher powers. - impunity
exemption from punishment or loss
But as I make the laws here, I can also break them. With impunity, Mr. Marx,” he added, turning to Bernard. - ingenuity
the power of creative imagination
But that requires the most enormous ingenuity. You’re making flivvers out of the absolute minimum of steel—works of art out of practically nothing but pure sensation. - squalid
morally degraded
Actual happiness always looks pretty squalid in comparison with the overcompensations for misery. - gyroscope
rotating mechanism in the form of a mounted spinning wheel
They’re the gyroscope that stabilizes the rocket plane of state on its unswerving course. - gesticulate
show, express or direct through movement
The deep voice thrillingly vibrated; the gesticulating hand implied all space and the onrush of the irresistible machine. - propaganda
information that is spread to promote some cause
“And all the science propaganda we do at the College . . .” - illicit
contrary to or forbidden by law
I started doing a bit of cooking on my own. Unorthodox cooking, illicitcooking. A bit of real science, in fact. - paroxysm
a sudden uncontrollable attack
“And not to Iceland. Oh please, your fordship, please . . .” And in aparoxysm of abjection he threw himself on his knees before the Controller. - beneficent
doing or producing good
But truth’s a menace, science is a public danger. As dangerous as it’s been beneficent. It has given us the stablest equilibrium in history. - approbation
official approval
The Controller nodded his approbation. - rummage
search haphazardly
Rummaging in the darkness within, “It’s a subject,” he said, “that has always had a great interest for me.” - superfluous
serving no useful purpose; having no excuse for being
‘The religious sentiment will compensate us for all our losses.’ But there aren’t any losses for us to compensate; religious sentiment issuperfluous. - compatible
able to exist and perform in harmonious combination
God isn’t compatible with machinery and scientific medicine and universal happiness. - postulate
a proposition accepted as true to provide a logical basis
But you’ve got to stick to one set of postulates. You can’t play Electro magnetic Golf according to the rules of Centrifugal Bumble-puppy. - allegiance
the loyalty that citizens owe to their country
Where there are wars, where there are divided allegiances, where there are temptations to be resisted, objects of love to be fought for or defended—there, obviously, nobility and heroism have some sense. - derisive
expressing contempt or ridicule
And Tomakin, ex-Director of Hatcheries and Conditioning, Tomakin was still on holiday—on holiday from humiliation and pain, in a world where he could not hear those words, that derisive laughter, could not see that hideous face, feel those moist and flabby arms round his neck, in a beautiful world. - excruciating
extremely painful
From time to time he stretched out his arms as though he were on the Cross, and held them thus through long minutes of an ache that gradually increased till it became a tremulous and excruciatingagony - compunction
a feeling of deep regret, usually for some misdeed
“I beg your pardon,” said the reporter, with genuine compunction. - disconcerting
causing an emotional disturbance
The Savage obeyed with a disconcerting literalness. - vermin
any of various small animals or insects that are pests
Ignoring their tiresome humming (he likened himself in his imagination to one of the suitors of the Maiden of Matsaki, unmoved and persistent among the winged vermin), the Savage dug at what was to be his garden. - tangible
perceptible by the senses especially the sense of touch
And suddenly the thought of Lenina was a real presence, naked andtangible, saying “Sweet!” and “Put your arms round me!”—in shoes and socks, perfumed. - unanimity
everyone being of one mind
They were all crying together; and, intoxicated by the noise, theunanimity, the sense of rhythmical atonement, they might, it seemed, have gone on for hours—almost indefinitely. - monotone
an unchanging intonation
“We—want—the whip; we—want—the whip,” broke out again in the same loud, insistent monotone. - reiterate
to say, state, or perform again
Her lips moved, she was saying something; but the sound of her voice was covered by the loud reiterated refrain of the sightseers. - convergent
tending to come together from different directions
With a whoop of delighted excitement the line broke; there was aconvergent stampede towards that magnetic centre of attraction. - turpitude
a corrupt or depraved or degenerate act or practice
Drawn by the fascination of the horror of pain and, from within, impelled by that habit of cooperation, that desire for unanimity and atonement, which their conditioning had so ineradicably implanted in them, they began to mime the frenzy of his gestures, striking at one another as the Savage struck at his own rebellious flesh, or at that plump incarnation of turpitude writhing in the heather at his feet.