Megan-Vocabulary Builder Chapters 1 and 2

·         1)Word: Zaftig

Definition: full-bodied; well-proportioned.

Sentence: “Summer here comes on like a zaftig hippie chick, jazzed on chlorophyll and flinging fistfuls of butterflies to the sun” (1).

·         2)Word: Fecund

Definition: producing or capable of producing offspring, fruit, vegetation, etc., in abundance; prolific; fruitful

Sentence: “The swamps and wetlands, on the other hand, respect no such boundaries, and simply meander the lay of the land, spreading organically in fecund hundred acres stains” (1/2).

·         3)Word: Prefabs

·         Definition: something that is prefabricated, as a building or fixture

Sentence: “In the surrounding country side, farmsteads with little red barns have been pretty much kicked in the head, replaced with monster dairies, turkey sheds, and vinyl-sided prefabs” (2).

·         4)Word: Holism

Definition: the theory that whole entities, as fundamental components of reality, have an existence other than as the mere sum of their parts

5)Word: Paradigms

Definition: a display in fixed arrangement of such a set

6)Word: Trice

Definition: a very short time; an instant

Sentence: “It all began when I graduated from nursing school, and found myself frustrated by the fact that here I was, freshly armed with a bachelors degree in the caring arts, steeped in holism and paradigms and able, if need be, to catheterize you in a trice, but I knew nothing of how to extricate someone safely from a pancaked Yugo, or splint a dislocated elbow” (11).

·         7)Word: Vacuity

Definition: a time or state of dullness, lacking in mental or physical action or productivity

8)Word: Bloviating

Definition: to speak pompously

Sentence: “I imagine the board members met around town and did some dismissive bloviating, but you can here corollary expositions in the local café to this very day, when some local goes on at length and volume about the frivolous vacuity of satellite television or Indian casinos, then hurries home to watch Silk Stalkings before catching the courtesy bus to bingo night” (23).

·         9)Word: Gesticulating

Definition: to make or use gestures, esp. in an animated or excited manner with or instead of speech

Sentence: “ The driver is gesticulating and pointing back down the road” (31)

·         10)Word: Teetotal

Definition: of, relating to, or practicing abstinence from alcoholic drink

Sentence: “I’m a teetotal non-dancer, but I have come to love the nights under the Jamboree Days beer tent” (34).

All definitions found off Dictionary.com