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  Fahrenheit 451 Vocabulary

These are some of the vocabulary words from, Fahrenheit.  Some will appear as multiple choice items--you will choose the best definition.  Others will appear within questions, quotations, or character descriptions. Knowing what the word means will help you respond to the item.

Part One: The Hearth and the Salamander, pp. 1-32
1. stolid: having or revealing little emotion

2. refracted: deflected from a straight path

3. imperceptible: impossible to detect by ordinary senses

4. pulverized: reduced to powder

5. melancholy: sadness; gloominess

6. capillary: fine; small in diameter

7. multifaceted: having many faces

8. ballistics: the study of the dynamics of projectiles
 
 

Part One: The Hearth and the Salamander, pp. 32-68
1. erected: set up; established

2. proclivities: predisposition; tendencies

3. odious: arousing strong dislike or displeasure

4. ravenous: extremely hungry; greedy for gratification

5. pratfall: humiliating failure; a fall on the backside

6. dictum: authoritative pronouncement

7. noncombustible: does not burn easily

8. tactile: relating to the sense of touch
 

Part Two: The Sieve and the Sand
1. cadenced: with a rhythmic flow

2. retaliation: returning like for like

3. receptacle: a container that holds matter

4. cowardice: ignoble fear in the face of danger

5. simultaneously: happening at the same time

6. manifested: showed; revealed

7. verbiage: wordiness
 

Part Three: Burning Bright
1. smoldering: burning with little smoke and no flame

2. indecisive: not able to make a decision

3. grotesque: bizarre; distorted

4. limned: described

5. juggernaut: overwhelming advancing sight crushing all in its path

6. cardamon:  Italian herb

7. pedants: those who flaunt their knowledge

8. pyre:   a pile of combustible materials for burning a corpse
 

  1. Fahrenheit 451 Vocabulary
  2. nozzle a projecting spout from which a fluid is discharged EXAMPLE SENTENCE: With the brass nozzle 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.



  1. conductor the person who leads a musical group EXAMPLE SENTENCE: With the brass nozzle 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.



  1. stolid having or revealing little emotion or sensibility; not easily aroused or excited EXAMPLE SENTENCE: With his symbolic helmet numbered 451 on his stolid head, and his eyes all orange flame with the thought of what came next, he flicked the igniter and the house jumped up in a gorging fire that burned the evening sky red and yellow and black.



  1. stride walk with long steps EXAMPLE SENTENCE: He strode in a swarm of fireflies.



  1. swarm a group of many things in the air or on the ground EXAMPLE SENTENCE: He strode in a swarm of fireflies.



  1. fiery like or suggestive of fire EXAMPLE SENTENCE: Later, going to sleep, he would feel the fiery smile still gripped by his face muscles, in the dark.



  1. halt an interruption in movement...STOP!   suspension of progress or movement EXAMPLE SENTENCE: He slid to a squeaking halt, the heels one inch from the concrete floor downstairs.



  1. propel cause to move forward with force EXAMPLE SENTENCE: He walked out of the fire station and along the midnight street toward the subway where the silent, air-propelled train slid soundlessly down its lubricated flue in the earth and let him out with a great puff of warm air an to the cream-tiled escalator rising to the suburb.



  1. vanish become invisible or unnoticeable EXAMPLE SENTENCE: Each time he made the turn, he saw only the white, unused, buckling sidewalk, with perhaps, on one night, something vanishing swiftly across a lawn before he could focus his eyes or speak.

  2. compress squeeze or press together EXAMPLE SENTENCE: Or was the atmosphere compressed merely by someone standing very quietly there, waiting?

  3. phoenix a legendary Arabian bird said to periodically burn itself to death and emerge from the ashes as a new phoenix; according to most versions only one phoenix lived at a time and it renewed itself every 500 years EXAMPLE SENTENCE: 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.

  4. awe an overwhelming feeling of wonder or admiration EXAMPLE SENTENCE: “No, you don't,” she said, in awe.
  5. \
  6. amber a hard yellowish to brownish translucent fossil resin...TREE SAP!!!
  7. ; used for jewelry EXAMPLE SENTENCE: 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 capture and hold him intact.

  8. intact undamaged in any way EXAMPLE SENTENCE: 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 capture and hold him intact.

  9. fragile easily broken or damaged or destroyed EXAMPLE SENTENCE: Her face, turned to him now, was fragile milk crystal with a soft and constant light in it.

  10. vast unusually great in size or amount or degree or especially extent or scope EXAMPLE SENTENCE: “You must understand that our civilization is so vast that we can't have our minorities upset and stirred.

  11. abruptly quickly and without warning EXAMPLE SENTENCE: Montag laughed abruptly.

  12. pedestrian a person who travels by foot EXAMPLE SENTENCE: My uncle was arrested another time-did I tell you?-for being a pedestrian.

  13. subconscious just below the level of thought/consciousness EXAMPLE SENTENCE: “What?” asked Montag of that other self, the subconscious idiot that ran babbling at times, quite independent of will, habit, and conscience.

  14. conscience motivation deriving logically from ethical or moral principles that govern a person's thoughts and actions EXAMPLE SENTENCE: “What?” asked Montag of that other self, the subconscious idiot that ran babbling at times, quite independent of will, habit, and conscience.

  15. simile a figure of speech that expresses a resemblance between things of different kinds (usually formed with `like' or `as') EXAMPLE SENTENCE: People were more often-he searched for a simile, found one in his work-torches, blazing away until they whiffed out.

  16. mausoleum a large burial chamber, usually above ground EXAMPLE SENTENCE: It was like coming into the cold marbled room of a mausoleum after the moon had set.

  17. penetrate pass into or through, often by overcoming resistance EXAMPLE SENTENCE: Complete darkness, not a hint of the silver world outside, the windows tightly shut, the chamber a tomb-world where no sound from the great city could penetrate.

  18. pulverize make into a powder by breaking up or cause to become dust EXAMPLE SENTENCE: He felt that the stars had been pulverized by the sound of the black jets and that in the morning the earth would be thought as he stood shivering in the dark, and let his lips go on moving and moving.

  19. trench any long ditch cut in the ground EXAMPLE SENTENCE: The entire operation was not unlike the digging of a trench in one's yard.

  20. stratum one of several parallel layers of material arranged one on top of another (such as a layer of tissue or cells in an organism or a layer of sedimentary rock) EXAMPLE SENTENCE: The woman on the bed was no more than a hard stratum of marble they had reached.

  21. mallet a tool resembling a hammer but with a large head (usually wooden); used to drive wedges or ram down paving stones or for crushing or beating or flattening or smoothing EXAMPLE SENTENCE: Leave that stuff in the blood and the blood hits the brain like a mallet, bang, a couple of thousand times and the brain just gives up, just quits.”

  22. sedative tending to soothe or tranquilize EXAMPLE SENTENCE: We got a contra-sedative in her.

  23. melancholy a constitutional tendency to be gloomy and depressed EXAMPLE SENTENCE: And the men with the cigarettes in their straight-lined mouths, the men with the eyes of puff-adders, took up their load of machine and tube, their case of liquid melancholy and the slow dark sludge of nameless stuff, and strolled out the door.

  24. hearty showing warm and heartfelt friendliness EXAMPLE SENTENCE: Above all, their laughter was relaxed and hearty and not forced in any way, coming from the house that was so brightly lit this late at night while all the other houses were kept to themselves in darkness.

  25. cataract a large waterfall; violent rush of water over a precipice EXAMPLE SENTENCE: 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 cheek-bones and on the frowning ridges in his brow, with the moonlight distilled in each eye to form a silver cataract there.

  26. conjure summon into action or bring into existence, often as if by magic EXAMPLE SENTENCE: He tried to conjure up a face to fit the words, but there was no face.

  27. psychiatrist a physician who specializes in psychiatry EXAMPLE SENTENCE: “I've got to go to see my psychiatrist now.

  28. aggravate exasperate or irritate EXAMPLE SENTENCE: You're peculiar, you're aggravating, yet you're easy to forgive.

  29. illuminate make lighter or brighter EXAMPLE SENTENCE: The Mechanical Hound slept but did not sleep, lived but did not live in its gently humming, gently vibrating, softly illuminated kennel back in a dark corner of the firehouse.

  30. capillary any of the minute blood vessels connecting arterioles with venules EXAMPLE SENTENCE: 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.

  31. quiver shake with fast, tremulous movements EXAMPLE SENTENCE: 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.
  32. nectar a sweet liquid secretion that is attractive to pollinators EXAMPLE SENTENCE: It was like a great bee come home from some field where the honey is full of poison wildness, of insanity and nightmare, its body crammed with that over-rich nectar and now it was sleeping the evil out of itself.
  33. olfactory of or relating to olfaction EXAMPLE SENTENCE: At night when things got dull, which was every night, the men slid down the brass poles, and set the ticking combinations of the olfactory 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 the Hound would seize first.
  34. massive consisting of great mass; containing a great quantity of matter EXAMPLE SENTENCE: 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.
  35. scurry to move about or proceed hurriedly EXAMPLE SENTENCE: But now at night he lay in his bunk, face turned to the wall, listening to whoops of laughter below and the piano-string scurry of rat feet, the violin squeaking of mice, and the great shadowing, motioned silence of the Hound leaping out like a moth in the raw light, finding, holding its victim, inserting the needle and going back to its kennel to die as if a switch had been turned.
  36. cog tooth on the rim of gear wheel EXAMPLE SENTENCE: It growled again, a strange rasping combination of electrical sizzle, a frying sound, a scraping of metal, a turning of cogs that seemed rusty and ancient with suspicion.
  37. trajectory the path followed by an object moving through space EXAMPLE SENTENCE: It has a trajectory we decide for it.
  38. abstract existing only in the mind; separated from embodiment EXAMPLE SENTENCE: And most of the time in the cafes they have the jokeboxes on and the same jokes most of the time, or the musical wall lit and all the coloured patterns running up and down, but it's only colour and all abstract.
  39. drone an unchanging intonation EXAMPLE SENTENCE: The flutter of cards, motion of hands, of eyelids, the drone of the time-voice in the firehouse ceiling “...one thirty-five.
  40. erect construct, build, or erect EXAMPLE SENTENCE: The tick of the playing-cards on the greasy table-top, all the sounds came to Montag, behind his closed eyes, behind the barrier he had momentarily erected.
  41. proclivity a natural inclination EXAMPLE SENTENCE: Were all firemen picked then for their looks as well as their proclivities?
  42. asylum a shelter from danger or hardship EXAMPLE SENTENCE: “They took him screaming off to the asylum”
  43. stoke stir up or tend; of a fire EXAMPLE SENTENCE: He opened his mouth and it was Clarisse McClellan saying, “Didn't firemen prevent fires rather than stoke them up and get them going?”
  44. odious unequivocally detestable EXAMPLE SENTENCE: Beatty, Stoneman, and Black ran up the sidewalk, suddenly odious and fat in the plump fireproof slickers.
  45. objectivity judgment based on observable phenomena and uninfluenced by emotions or personal prejudices EXAMPLE SENTENCE: He slapped her face with amazing objectivity and repeated the question.
  46. sheer very steep; having a prominent and almost vertical front EXAMPLE SENTENCE: A fountain of books sprang down upon Montag as he climbed shuddering up the sheer stair-well.
  47. adhesive tending to adhere EXAMPLE SENTENCE: 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.
  48. accusation an assertion that someone is guilty of a fault or offence EXAMPLE SENTENCE: She made the empty rooms roar with accusation and shake down a fine dust of guilt that was sucked in their nostrils as they plunged about.
  49. alight to come to rest, settle EXAMPLE SENTENCE: Books bombarded his shoulders, his arms, his upturned face A book alighted, almost obediently, like a white pigeon, in his hands, wings fluttering.
  50. devotion commitment to some purpose EXAMPLE SENTENCE: Montag's hand closed like a mouth, crushed the book with wild devotion, with an insanity of mindlessness to his chest.
  51. flourish a showy gesture EXAMPLE SENTENCE: Now, it plunged the book back under his arm, pressed it tight to sweating armpit, rushed out empty, with a magician's flourish!
  52. dignity the quality of being worthy of esteem or respect EXAMPLE SENTENCE: Captain Beatty, keeping his dignity, backed slowly through the front door, his pink face burnt and shiny from a thousand fires and night excitements.
  53. heresy a belief that rejects the orthodox tenets of a religion EXAMPLE SENTENCE: “A man named Latimer said that to a man named Nicholas Ridley, as they were being burnt alive at Oxford, for heresy, on October 16, 1555.”
  54. abyss a bottomless gulf or pit; any unfathomable (or apparently unfathomable) cavity or chasm or void extending below (often used figuratively) EXAMPLE SENTENCE: He held his pants out into an abyss and let them fall into darkness.
  55. ravenous extremely hungry EXAMPLE SENTENCE: His hands were ravenous.
  56. jargon specialized technical terminology characteristic of a particular subject EXAMPLE SENTENCE: She talked to him for what seemed a long while and she talked about this and she talked about that and it was only words, like the words he had heard once in a nursery at a friend's house, a two-year-old child building word patterns, talking jargon, making pretty sounds in the air.
  57. clarify make clear and (more) comprehensible EXAMPLE SENTENCE: I hope I've clarified things.
  58. stagnant not circulating or flowing EXAMPLE SENTENCE: He tried to count how many times she swallowed and he thought of the visit from the two zinc-oxide-faced men with the cigarettes in their straight-lined mouths and the electronic-eyed snake winding down into the layer upon layer of night and stone and stagnant spring water, and he wanted to call out to her, how many have you taken TONIGHT! the capsules! how many will you take later and not know? and so on, every hour! or maybe not tonight, tomorrow night!
  59. plateau a relatively flat highland EXAMPLE SENTENCE: The most significant memory he had of Mildred, really, was of a little girl in a forest without trees (how odd!) or rather a little girl lost on a plateau where there used to be trees (you could feel the memory of their shapes all about) sitting in the centre of the “living-room.”
  60. centrifuge an apparatus that uses centrifugal force to separate particles from a suspension EXAMPLE SENTENCE: When it was all over he felt like a man who had been thrown from a cliff, whirled in a centrifuge and spat out over a waterfall that fell and fell into emptiness and emptiness and never-quite-touched-bottom-never-never-quite-no not quite-touched-bottom...and you fell so fast you didn't touch the sides either...never...quite... touched. anything.
  61. cacophony loud confusing disagreeable sounds EXAMPLE SENTENCE: You drowned in music and pure cacophony.
  62. pantomime act out without words but with gestures and bodily movements only EXAMPLE SENTENCE: He could only pantomime, hoping she would turn his way and see him.
  63. pout make a sad face and thrust out one's lower lip EXAMPLE SENTENCE: He felt her there, he saw her without opening his eyes, her hair burnt by chemicals to a brittle straw, her eyes with a kind of cataract unseen but suspect far behind the pupils, the reddened pouting lips, the body as thin as a praying mantis from dieting, and her flesh like white bacon.
  64. radical a person who has radical ideas or opinions EXAMPLE SENTENCE: “Wasn't he a radical?”
  65. feign make believe with the intent to deceive EXAMPLE SENTENCE: A child feigning illness, afraid to call because after a moment's discussion, the conversation would run so: “Yes, Captain, I feel better already."
  66. probe question or examine thoroughly and closely EXAMPLE SENTENCE: And then he shut up, for he remembered last week and the two white stones staring up at the ceiling and the pump-snake with the probing eye and the two soap-faced men with the cigarettes moving in their mouths when they talked.
  67. ruddy inclined to a healthy reddish color often associated with outdoor life EXAMPLE SENTENCE: Captain Beatty sat down in the most comfortable chair with a peaceful look on his ruddy face.
  68. appeal be attractive to EXAMPLE SENTENCE: “Once, books appealed to a few people, here, there, everywhere.
  69. intellectual of or associated with or requiring the use of the mind EXAMPLE SENTENCE: Out of the nursery into the college and back to the nursery; there's your intellectual pattern for the past five centuries or more.”
  70. arise move upward EXAMPLE SENTENCE: Mildred arose and began to move around the room, picking things up and putting them down.
  71. displace take the place of or have precedence over EXAMPLE SENTENCE: “The zipper displaces the button and a man lacks just that much time to think while dressing at. dawn, a philosophical hour, and thus a melancholy hour.”
  72. nomadic migratory EXAMPLE SENTENCE: Towns turn into motels, people in nomadic surges from place to place, following the moon tides, living tonight in the room where you slept this noon and I the night before.”
  73. surge rise and move, as in waves or billows EXAMPLE SENTENCE: Towns turn into motels, people in nomadic surges from place to place, following the moon tides, living tonight in the room where you slept this noon and I the night before.”
  74. cartographer a person who makes maps EXAMPLE SENTENCE: The people in this book, this play, this TV serial are not meant to represent any actual painters, cartographers, mechanics anywhere.
  75. dictum an authoritative declaration EXAMPLE SENTENCE: There was no dictum, no declaration, no censorship, to start with, no!
  76. exploitation an act that exploits or victimizes someone (treats them unfairly) EXAMPLE SENTENCE: Technology, mass exploitation, and minority pressure carried the trick, thank God.
  77. dread fearful expectation or anticipation EXAMPLE SENTENCE: You always dread the unfamiliar.
  78. recite repeat aloud from memory EXAMPLE SENTENCE: Surely you remember the boy in your own school class who was exceptionally ‘bright,’ did most of the reciting and answering while the others sat like so many leaden idols, hating him.
  79. constitution law determining the fundamental political principles of a government EXAMPLE SENTENCE: Not everyone born free and equal, as the Constitution says, but everyone made equal.
  80. cower show submission or fear EXAMPLE SENTENCE: Each man the image of every other; then all are happy, for there are no mountains to make them cower, to judge themselves against.
  81. censor someone who censures or condemns EXAMPLE SENTENCE: They were given the new job, as custodians of our peace of mind, the focus of our understandable and rightful dread of being inferior; official censors, judges, and executors.
  82. diagnose determine or distinguish the nature of a problem or an illness through a diagnostic analysis EXAMPLE SENTENCE: Beatty knocked his pipe into the palm of his pink hand, studied the ashes as if they were a symbol to be diagnosed and searched for meaning.
  83. quibble evade the truth of a point or question by raising irrelevant objections EXAMPLE SENTENCE: Let's not quibble over individuals with memoriams.
  84. nip sever or remove by pinching or snipping EXAMPLE SENTENCE: We know how to nip most of them in the bud, early.
  85. combustible capable of igniting and burning EXAMPLE SENTENCE: Cram them full of non-combustible data, chock them so damned full of ‘facts’ they feel stuffed, but absolutely ‘brilliant’ with information.
  86. bestial resembling a beast; showing lack of human sensibility EXAMPLE SENTENCE: Any man who can take a TV wall apart and put it back together again, and most men can nowadays, is happier than any man who tries to slide?rule, measure, and equate the universe, which just won't be measured or equated without making man feel bestial and lonely.
  87. tactile of or relating to or proceeding from the sense of touch EXAMPLE SENTENCE: I'll think I'm responding to the play, when it's only a tactile reaction to vibration.
  88. torrent an overwhelming number or amount EXAMPLE SENTENCE: Don't let the torrent of melancholy and drear philosophy drown our world.
  89. figment a contrived or fantastic idea EXAMPLE SENTENCE: They're about non-existent people, figments of imagination, if they're fiction.
  90. extinguish put out, as of fires, flames, or lights EXAMPLE SENTENCE: All of them running about, putting out the stars and extinguishing the sun.
  91. rationalize defend, explain, clear away, or make excuses for by reasoning EXAMPLE SENTENCE: 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.
  92. anonymous having no known name or identity or known source EXAMPLE SENTENCE: The converter attachment, which had cost them one hundred dollars, automatically supplied her name whenever the announcer addressed his anonymous audience, leaving a blank where the proper syllables could be filled in.
  93. consonant a speech sound that is not a vowel EXAMPLE SENTENCE: A special spot/wavex/scrambler also caused his televised image, in the area immediately about his lips, to mouth the vowels and consonants beautifully.
  94. topple fall down, as if collapsing EXAMPLE SENTENCE: They turned to stare at the door and the books toppled everywhere, everywhere in heaps.