East of Eden: Part Two

by John Steinbeck
Inspired by the biblical story of Cain and Abel, this novel tells the interlinked stories of the Trask and Hamilton families.

Here are links to our lists for the novel: Part One, Part Two, Part Three, Part Four

Here are links to our lists for other works by John Steinbeck: Of Mice and Men, The Pearl, Cannery Row, The Grapes of Wrath, Travels with Charley
40 words 640 learners

Learn words with Flashcards and other activities

Definition First
Print Flashcards

Other learning activities

Answer a few questions about each word. Use this to prep for your next quiz! Compete with other teams in real time to see who answers the most questions correctly! Test your spelling acumen. Read the definition, listen to the word and try spelling it!

Teaching tools

Create and assign quizzes to your students to test their vocabulary. Assign learning activities including Practice, Vocabulary Jams and Spelling Bees to your students, and monitor their progress in real-time.

Full list of words from this list:

words only definitions & notes
  1. disparagement
    a communication that belittles somebody or something
    By disparagement, by starvation, by repressions, forced direction, and the stunning hammerblows of conditioning, the free, roving mind is being pursued, roped, blunted, drugged.
  2. speculation
    an investment that is risky but could yield great profits
    It was not speculation with Adam. He was here to settle, to found a home, a family, perhaps a dynasty.
  3. exuberant
    joyously unrestrained
    Adam drove exuberantly from farm to farm, picked up dirt and crumbled it in his fingers, talked and planned and dreamed.
  4. derisive
    expressing contempt or ridicule
    Louis said half derisively and half with admiration, “He’s always thinking about how to change things. He’s never satisfied with the way they are.”
  5. paragon
    model of excellence or perfection of a kind
    And the teacher was not only an intellectual paragon and a social leader, but also the matrimonial catch of the countryside.
  6. rudimentary
    being or involving basic facts or principles
    Olive also had to practice a rudimentary medicine, for there were constant accidents.
  7. flighty
    guided by whim and fancy
    A man wanted his children to read, to figure, and that was enough. More might make them dissatisfied and flighty. And there were plenty of examples to prove that learning made a boy leave the farm to live in the city—to consider himself better than his father.
  8. vexation
    anger produced by some annoying irritation
    To have gone to both and then home would have entailed a sixty-mile horseback ride. This was a fact she could not blast with her disbelief, and so she cried with vexation and went to neither dance.
  9. slovenly
    negligent of neatness especially in dress and person
    Debt was an ugly word and an ugly concept to Olive. A bill unpaid past the fifteenth of the month was a debt. The word had connotations of dirt and slovenliness and dishonor.
  10. eminence
    high status importance owing to marked superiority
    Even vicariously this was an eminence we could hardly stand.
  11. contrary
    exact opposition
    But my poor mother—I must tell you that there are certain things in the existence of which my mother did not believe, against any possible evidence to the contrary. One was a bad Hamilton and another was the airplane.
  12. alluvial
    relating to deposits carried by rushing streams
    From the
 entrance to the little draw under a giant oak, which dipped its roots into underground water, he could look out over the acres lying away to
 the river and across to an alluvial flat and then up the rounded foothills 
on the western side.
  13. indolence
    inactivity resulting from a dislike of work
    A good servant has absolute security, not because of his master’s kindness, but because of habit and indolence.
  14. loam
    a rich soil consisting of sand, clay and organic materials
    Topsoil averages three and a half feet, sand on top and loam within plow reach. Think you could get water there?
  15. rapt
    feeling great delight and interest
    He glanced at Adam and saw that he was looking raptly at his wife. Whatever was strange was not strange to Adam. His face had happiness on it.
  16. impunity
    exemption from punishment or loss
    Only one person in the world could with impunity and without crime lie between her crisp ironed sheets after dawn, after sunup, even to the far reaches of mid-morning, and that was her youngest and last born, Joe.
  17. flout
    treat with contemptuous disregard
    Rolled-up sleeves at the table were not acceptable to Mrs. Hamilton. They indicated either an ignorance or a flouting of the niceties.
  18. assay
    a test of a substance to determine its components
    Tom, I’m going to make a guess and then I’m going to get an assay. Now hear my guess—and remember it. I think we’ll find nickel in it, and silver maybe, and carbon and manganese.
  19. dissemble
    hide under a false appearance
    Why don’t you boys ride along with me and we’ll give Mother a surprise so that she’ll cook the whole night and complain. That way she’ll dissemble her pleasure.
  20. irrational
    not consistent with or using reason
    “You know when a man lives alone as much as I do, his mind can go off on an irrational tangent just because his social world is out of kilter.”
  21. welter
    toss, roll, or rise and fall in an uncontrolled way
    I’m going to ask you one more question. If you don’t answer, if you put that snarling look on me, I’m going out and leave you to welter.
  22. caterwaul
    make a shrill and unpleasant screeching sound
    For three days Samuel lay in bed, fighting the fever phantoms and putting names to them too, before his great strength broke down the infection and drove it caterwauling away.
  23. lummox
    an awkward, foolish person
    “Those great lummoxes would chew a little thing like you to the bone.”
  24. lackadaisical
    idle or indolent especially in a dreamy way
    Quiet, lackadaisical, like most rich Eastern women (Liza had never known a rich Eastern woman), but on the other hand docile and respectful.
  25. sardonic
    disdainfully or ironically humorous
    The corners of his mouth were turned slightly up in a sardonic smile.
  26. seething
    in constant agitation
    It was true that the sheriff represented armed force in the county, but in a community seething with individuals a harsh or stupid sheriff did not last long.
  27. doctrine
    a belief accepted as authoritative by some group or school
    The sects fought evil, true enough, but they also fought each other with a fine lustiness. They fought at the turn of a doctrine.
  28. bumptious
    offensively self-assertive
    Each happily believed all the others were bound for hell in a basket. And each for all its bumptiousness brought with it the same thing: the Scripture on which our ethics, our art and poetry, and our relationships are built.
  29. libertine
    a dissolute person
    True enough, the Reverend Billing, when they caught up with him, turned out to be a thief, an adulterer, a libertine, and a zoophilist, but that didn’t change the fact that he had communicated some good things to a great number of receptive people.
  30. animosity
    a feeling of ill will arousing active hostility
    When Faye came down from Sacramento and opened her house there was a flurry of animosity from the two incumbents.
  31. demure
    shy or modest, often in a playful or provocative way
    At first she put on her slightly stupid demure look, but after a few of his words she gave that up and bored into him with her eyes, trying to read his thoughts.
  32. irreproachable
    free of guilt; not subject to blame
    “All my worldly goods without exception to Kate Albey because I regard her as my daughter.”
    It was simple, direct, and legally irreproachable.
  33. disintegration
    separation into component parts
    He had been out in the Alisal presiding at the disintegration of old, old lady German.
  34. terminate
    bring to an end or halt
    She had not been able to terminate her life neatly.
  35. codicil
    a supplement to a will
    There were codicils. Even now Dr. Wilde wondered whether the tough, dry, stringy life was completely gone out of her.
  36. alchemy
    a pseudoscientific forerunner of chemistry in medieval times
    Dr. Wilde said, “Yes—and the older I get, the fewer I use. I got some of those when I started to practice. Never used them. That’s a beginner’s stock. I was going to experiment—alchemy.”
  37. stupor
    a state of being half-awake
    From violence she went into a gloomy stupor.
  38. verity
    an enduring or necessary ethical or aesthetic truth
    Will and George were doing well in business, and Joe was writing letters home in rhymed verse and making as smart an attack on all the accepted verities as was healthful.
  39. forbearance
    good-natured tolerance of delay or incompetence
    He thought of the virtues of courage and forbearance, which become flabby when there is nothing to use them on.
  40. vagabond
    a wanderer with no established residence or means of support
    And now art thou cursed from the earth, which hath opened her mouth to receive thy brother’s blood from thy hand. When thou tillest the ground it shall not henceforth yield unto thee her strength; a fugitive and a vagabond shalt thou be in the earth.
Created on Sat Aug 27 20:11:29 EDT 2016 (updated Mon Sep 24 15:29:32 EDT 2018)

Sign up now (it’s free!)

Whether you’re a teacher or a learner, Vocabulary.com can put you or your class on the path to systematic vocabulary improvement.