Joy Luck Cub- Vocabulary

Question 1

shabby

And when I arrived, I realized how shabby my dreams were, how poor my thoughts.

Answer 1

of substandard quality

Question 2

scurried

When the sirens cried out to warn us of bombers, my neighbors and I jumped to our feet and scurried to the deep caves to hide like wild animals.

Answer 2

scampered; went quickly with light steps

Question 3

meager

“What fine food we treated ourselves to with our meager allowances!”

Answer 3

small or deficient in quantity

Question 4

somber

What was worse, we asked among ourselves, to sit and wait for our own deaths with proper somber faces?

Answer 4

serious

Question 5

unanimously

After everybody votes unanimously for the Canada gold stock, I go into the kitchen to ask Auntie An-mei why the Joy Luck Club started investing in stocks.

Answer 5

completely in agreement

Question 6

translucent

The white chenille bedspreads are so worn they are almost translucent.

Answer 6

allowing some light to pass through

Question 7

cultivate

At first my mother tried to cultivate some hidden genius in me.

Answer 7

grow; encourage; promote

Question 8

generosity

And I am embarrassed by the end-of-the-year-banquet lie my aunties have told to mask their generosity.

Answer 8

willingness to give; giving

Question 9

bowels

Many times Popo said aloud to all who could hear that my brother and I had fallen out of the bowels of a stupid goose, two eggs that nobody wanted, not even good enough to crack over rice porridge.

Answer 9

intestines; insides; guts

Question 10

precious

So you see, to Popo we were also very precious.

Answer 10

cherished; having value; beloved

Question 11

vigorously

One day this bad girl shook her head so vigorously to refuse her auntie’s simple request that a little white ball fell from her ear and out poured all her brains, as clear as chicken broth.

Answer 11

done with force or energy

Question 12

dowry

So when my brother gave her a sour look, Auntie said our mother was so thoughtless she had fled north in a big hurry, without taking the dowry furniture from her marriage to my father, without bringing her ten pairs of silver chopsticks, without paying respect to my father’s grave and those of our ancestors.

Answer 12

money or property brought by a bride to her husband

Question 13

concubines

When my brother accused Auntie of frightening our mother away, Auntie shouted that our mother had married a man named Wu Tsing who already had a wife, two concubines, and other bad children.

Answer 13

secondary wives

Question 14

insolent

She looked strange, too, like the missionary ladies at our school who were insolent and bossy in their too-tall shoes, foreign clothes, and short hair

Answer 14

arrogant; presumptuous and insulting

Question 15

bloated

That she seemed to float back and forth like a ghost, dipping cool cloths to lay on Popo’s bloated face

Answer 15

swelled up

Question 16

mute

And because I remember Popo told me not to speak her name, I stood there, mute

Answer 16

speechless

Question 17

membranes

In the morning, Popo would use her sharp fingernails like tweezers and peel off the dead membranes.

Answer 17

thin layer of tissue

Question 18

genuine

She is crying with a genuine feeling and he says, “Promise! Promise! Honey-sweetheart, my promise is as good as gold.”

Answer 18

real

Question 19

cicadas

It was summertime, very hot and dusty outside, and I could hear cicadas crying in the yard.

Answer 19

insects that make high-pitched, droning sound

Question 20

penetrate

And this is when Huang Taitai looked down at me with a cloudy face as though she could penetrate my thoughts and see my future intentions.

Answer 20

pierce; force into

Question 21

pretense

Inside, the house held a different kind of pretense.

Answer 21

false appearance

Question 22

felicitous

She had even commissioned someone to write felicitous messages on red banners, as if my parents themselves had draped these decorations to congratulate me on my good luck.

Answer 22

suitable; appropriate

Question 23

invaded

They invaded Shansi province, as well as the provinces bordering us.

Answer 23

entered by force to conquer

Question 24

declaration

The next morning the matchmaker made her proud declaration in front of Tyan-yu, his parents, and myself.

Answer 24

statement

Question 25

remorseful “They knew you would not believe me,” I said in a remorseful tone, “because they know I do not want to leave the comforts of my marriage.”

Answer 25

regretful; sorrowful

Question 26

extracted By mid-morning they had dragged the matchmaker’s servant over to our house and extracted her terrible confession.

Answer 26

pulled out

Question 27

simmering Everything in the room smelled of wet grass simmering in the heat.

Answer 27

cooking just below boiling point

Question 28

acrid And so the stale heat still remained in the shadows behind the curtains, heating up the acrid smells of my chamber pot, seeping into my pillow, chafing the back of my neck and puffing up my cheeks, so that I awoke that morning with a restless complaint.

Answer 28

unpleasant to the taste or smell

Question 29

posterity “The third word in the next line,” explained Baba, “was worn off the slab, its meaning washed away by centuries of rain, almost lost to posterity forever.”

Answer 29

future generations

Question 30

transparent Suddenly I saw a dragonfly with a large crimson body and transparent wings.

Answer 30

clear

Question 31

presumptuous I climbed into the rickshaw with my mother in it, which displeased Amah, because this was presumptuous behavior on my part and also because Amah loved me better than her own.

Answer 31

excessively forward

Question 32

pavilion Mama and the other ladies were already seated on benches around the pavilion, fanning themselves furiously and slapping the sides of each other’s heads when mosquitoes landed.

Answer 32

a shelter open to the air

Question 33

waned But the excitement soon waned, and the afternoon seemed to pass like any other at home

Answer 33

decreased

Question 34

erupted And loud clanks and hissing sounds erupted as once again the boat began to move.

Answer 34

became violently active; exploded

Question 35

illusion Both of these things seemed an illusion to me, a wish granted that could not be trusted.

Answer 35

false perception of reality

Question 36

strategy It was a strategy for winning arguments, respect from others, and eventually, though neither of us knew it at the time, chess games.

Answer 36

plan

Question 37

eluded It was said that he once cured a woman dying of an ancestral curse that had eluded the best of American doctors.

Answer 37

escaped the understanding of

Question 38

deftly Inside, the butchers with their bloodstained white smocks deftly gutted the fish while customers cried out their orders and shouted, “Give me your freshest,” to which the butchers always protested, “All are freshest.”

Answer 38

skillfully

Question 39

benefactor My mother graciously thanked the unknown benefactor, saying, “Too good. Cost too much.”

Answer 39

one who gives aid, esp. financial aid

Question 40

distract “Throw sand from the East to distract him.”

Answer 40

divert

Question 41

touted I was still some 429 points away from grand-master status, but I was touted as the Great American Hope, a child prodigy and a girl to boot

Answer 41

publicly praised

Question 42

phlegmy I was playing in a large high school auditorium that echoed with phlegmy coughs and the squeaky rubber knobs of chair legs sliding across freshly waxed wooden floors.

Answer 42

full of mucus

Question 43

malodorous He wore a dark, malodorous suit.

Answer 43

bad-smelling

Question 44

concessions My parents made many concessions to allow me to practice.

Answer 44

compromises

Question 45

chasm And it became so mysterious that I spent all my energies unraveling this door, until the day I was finally able to pry it open with my small fingers, only to immediately fall headlong into the dark chasm.

Answer 45

abyss; gorge; steep-sided hole

Question 46

Caucasian My father said they didn’t have rules for dealing with the Chinese wife of a Caucasian citizen

Answer 46

ght-skinned; often a person of European descent

Question 47

jauntily In fact, as I watched her, she seemed quite happy, her two brown braids bouncing jauntily in rhythm to her walk.

Answer 47

having a buoyant or self-confident attitude

Question 48

pardon And then she looked at me, in a strange way, as if she were begging me for her life, as if I could pardon her.

Answer 48

forgive

Question 49

cautiously I opened the door cautiously, then swung it wide open with surprise.

Answer 49

carefully

Question 50

stagnant Maybe she had listened through the wall and heard nothing, the stagnant silence of our unhappy house.

Answer 50

motionless

Question 51

stunned I was stunned.

Answer 51

astounded; dazed

Question 52

babbling I would watch my mother lying in her bed, babbling to herself as she sat on the sofa

Answer 52

talking in nonsense

Question 53

ironic I think it’s ironic that my mother wants me to fight the divorce.

Answer 53

contrary to what is expected

Question 54

chagrined Seventeen years ago she was chagrined when I started dating Ted.

Answer 54

distressed; put out; ill at ease

Question 55

verbatim When he pressed me, I told him what his mother had said, verbatim, without comment

Answer 55

word for word

Question 56

obsessing I preferred to ignore the world around me, obsessing only over what was in front of me: my T-square, my X-acto knife, my blue pencil.

Answer 56

thinking continually about something

Question 57

trivial He asked me to decide on the most trivial matters, as if he were baiting me.

Answer 57

of little importance

Question 58

regal Her hair, her clothes, they were all heavy with the cold water, but she stood quietly, calm and regal as a mermaid queen who had just arrived out of the sea.

Answer 58

royal

Question 59

sentinel And she would stand straight as a sentinel, until three times her eyesight failed her and Bing turned into a dark spot of churning seaweed.

Answer 59

guard

Question 60

taut The line became taut and she strained to hold on tight.

Answer 60

tight

Question 61

prodigy We didn’t immediately pick the right kind of prodigy.

Answer 61

exceptional talents or person with exceptional talents

Question 62

bellows I got so bored I started counting the bellows of the foghorns out on the bay while my mother drilled me in other areas.

Answer 62

very loud, deep sounds

Question 63

mesmerizing She seemed entranced by the music, a little frenzied piano piece with this mesmerizing quality, sort of quick passages and then teasing lilting ones before it returned to the quick playful parts.

Answer 63

hypnotizing

Question 64

sauciness The girl had the sauciness of a Shirley Temple.

Answer 64

quality of being impossible to control or repress

Question 65

encore The little Chinese girl sat down also to play an encore of “Anitra’s Dance” by Grieg.

Answer 65

additional performance in response to the demand of the audience

Question 66

inevitable So I never found a way to ask her why she had hoped for something so large that failure was inevitable.

Answer 66

unavoidable; bound to happen

Question 67

laments But now she laments that she never did anything to stop them.

Answer 67

regrets

Question 68

remorse This would have been a funny incident to remember from my childhood, but it is actually a memory I recall from time to time with a mixture of nausea and remorse.

Answer 68

feeling of regret for one’s misdeeds or sins

Question 69

vehemence Their faces were covered with every kind of misery I could imagine: pits and pustules, cracks and bumps, and fissures that I was sure erupted with the same vehemence as snails writhing in a bed of salt.

Answer 69

intensity

Question 70

podiatrist He had just been accepted to Cal State Hayward and was planning to become a podiatrist.

Answer 70

foot doctor

Question 71

retching And later, for several hours after that, I sat hunched on the fire escape landing outside my bedroom, retching back into the ice cream container.

Answer 71

vomiting

Question 72

exasperated Harold puts his magazine down, now wearing his open-mouthed exasperated look.

Answer 72

at the end of patience; irritated

Question 73

radically It was fashionable, yet not radically so.

Answer 73

departing from the norm; extremely

Question 74

disparaging “Nothing is wrong with my heart,” she huffed as she kept a disparaging eye on the waiter

Answer 74

belittling

Question 75

pristine And so I watched her, seeing her reaction to the changes in my apartment-from the pristine habitat I maintained after the divorce, when all of a sudden I had too much time to keep my life in order-to this present chaos, a home full of life and love.

Answer 75

in perfect condition

Question 76

irrevocable

Answer 76

can’t be changed back

Question 77

benevolent Because the sponsors and the benevolent associations would start calling her, asking, shouting, pleading to make me play again

Answer 77

characterized by being or doing good

Question 78

sonorous He made everyone laugh and his own laugh was deep, sonorous, masculinely sexy.

Answer 78

full, deep or rich in sound

Question 79

vulnerable So that with him I was completely naked, and when I was feeling the most vulnerable when the wrong word would have sent me flying out the door forever-he always said exactly the right thing at the right moment.

Answer 79

able to be hurt

Question 80

inventory I had started to inventory the bookshelves when I got a letter from Ted, a note actually, written hurriedly in ballpoint on his prescription notepad.

Answer 80

take a count of

Question 81

version And in almost every case, the American version was much better.

Answer 81

description or account from one point of view

Question 82

foyer The big oak door that opens into a foyer filled with stained-glass windows

Answer 82

entrance hall

Question 83

irrational And I knew he had done that, not out of any concern for me, but because when he wants something, he gets impatient and irrational about people who make him wait.

Answer 83

not reasonable

Question 84

despicable And then without missing a beat, he proceeded to say what he really wanted, which was more despicable than all the terrible things I had imagined.

Answer 84

deserving strong dislike; vile

Question 85

surveyed Ted was shivering in his sports jacket as he surveyed the damage to the garden

Answer 85

looked over

Question 86

anchored Others had anchored on the side of the house.

Answer 86

attached; held on to

Question 87

covenant It’s as though we were all sworn to the same secret covenant, so secret we don’t even know what we belong to.

Answer 87

agreement

Question 88

evict Two years ago, she had tried to evict them on the pretext that relatives from China were coming to live there.

Answer 88

to put out, throw out or expel

Question 89

ruse But the couple saw through her ruse to get around rent control.

Answer 89

a crafty strategy or plan

Question 90

preamble Judging by his preamble of snorts and leg slaps, I figured he must have practiced this joke many times: “I tell my daughter, Hey, why be poor? Marry rich!”

Answer 90

introductory occurrence or statement

Question 91

paranoid Maybe I’m being paranoid, being a mother, but you just can’t be too safe these days.”

Answer 91

characterized by extreme fear or distrust of others

Question 92

remnants My father poked at the remnants of his crab.

Answer 92

left-over

Question 93

chastise I waited for her to chastise me

Answer 93

criticize; punish; reprimand

Question 94

bazaars She told me about narrow streets with crowded bazaars.

Answer 94

street markets

Question 95

porter My mother gave quick instructions to our porter, pointed to our two small trunks and handed him money, as if she had done this every day of her life.

Answer 95

person who carries baggage

Question 96

canopy

Answer 96

roof-like covering

Question 97

extravagant This was a wonderful clock to see, but after I heard it that first hour, then the next, and then always, this clock became an extravagant nuisance.

Answer 97

beyond necessary; luxurious

Question 98

simpering She was looking behind at everyone with a simpering smile, as if they were there to honor her

Answer 98

silly or self-conscious

Question 99

nirvana And two delicate slippers with the softest leather soles and two giant pearls on each toe, to light her way to nirvana.

Answer 99

place of perfect happiness

Question 100

revere He promised to revere her as if she had been First Wife, his only wife

Answer 100

treat with respect

Question 101

smirk I wore a smirk on my face.

Answer 101

offensively self-satisfied smile

Question 102

chided “His mother will treat you like a servant” chided one half-sister upon hearing the other’s choice.

Answer 102

scold mildly to correct or improve

Question 103

vain But I was too vain to think any one boy was good enough for me.

Answer 103

conceited; proud

Question 104

tapered He had long tapered fingers, fat earlobes, and slick hair that rose high to reveal a large forehead

Answer 104

gradually smaller from one end to the other

Question 105

loathing Later still, when I overcame my grief and came to have nothing in my heart but loathing despair, my youngest aunt told me of others.

Answer 105

great dislike

Question 106

abandoned That I became abandoned goods

Answer 106

deserted; left

Question 107

cunning The black side stands still with cunning hiding its gold between trees, seeing and not being seen, waiting patiently for things to come.

Answer 107

deceitful cleverness

Question 108

uncanny Then he says something to my daughter that really displeases her: “It’s uncanny how much you two look alike!”

Answer 108

mysteriously strange

Question 109

longevity Our longevity will be adequate, not cut off too soon, not so long we become a burden.

Answer 109

length of life

Question 110

theology And next to the word OCCUPATION, I wrote student of theology.

Answer 110

study of religion

Question 111

pagodas I saw two pagodas, one on each side of the street, as though they were the entrance to a great Buddha temple.

Answer 111

tall towers erected as a memorial or shrine

Question 112

spouse It said, “A house is not home when a spouse is not at home.”

Answer 112

wife or husband

Question 113

devious “What is this word, ‘devious,’” I ask.

Answer 113

sneaky

Question 114

prospect I don’t know whether it’s the prospect of seeing his aunt or if it’s because he’s back in China, but now he looks like he’s a young boy, so innocent and happy I want to button his sweater and pat his head.

Answer 114

something expected

Question 115

scheming One minute she was talking to my father, complaining about the tenants upstairs, scheming how to evict them under the pretense that relatives from China were moving in.

Answer 115

plotting to achieve an evil or illegal end

Question 116

reviving And so they couldn’t help but think of some miracle, some possible way of reviving her from the dead, so my mother could fulfill her dream.

Answer 116

bringing back to life

Question 117

engulfed “Oh, that must be Mama, no?” one of my sisters would whisper excitedly, pointing to another small woman completely engulfed in a tower of presents.

Answer 117

surrounded by something almost to the point of being lost in it

Question 118

drab I see platforms crowded with people wearing drab Western clothes, with spots of bright colors: little children wearing pink and yellow, red and peach.

Answer 118

dull