The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Chapters 27–35

by Douglas Adams
When Earth is destroyed to make way for a freeway, Arthur Dent joins his friend Ford Prefect on a hilarious odyssey through space. Learn these words from the first book in Douglas Adams's popular science fiction series.

Here are links to our lists for the novel: Prologue–Chapter 4, Chapters 5–10, Chapters 11–17, Chapters 18–26, Chapters 27–35
15 words 101 learners

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Full list of words from this list:

words only definitions & notes
  1. pundit
    an expert who publicly gives opinions via mass media
    “O people who wait in the shadow of Deep Thought!” he cried out. “Honored Descendants of Vroomfondel and Majikthise, the Greatest and Most Truly Interesting Pundits the Universe has ever known, The Time of Waiting is over!”
  2. dais
    a platform raised above the surrounding level
    As the crowd erupted once again, Arthur found himself gliding through the air and down toward one of the large stately windows on the first floor of the building behind the dais from which the speaker was addressing the crowd.
  3. assimilate
    take up mentally
    The word was loonquawl, and it flashed a couple of times and then disappeared again. Before Arthur was able to assimilate this the other man spoke and the word PHOUCHG appeared by his neck.
  4. illusory
    having the nature of something unreal or deceptive
    The air was occasionally rent with the sounds of illusory beings murdering other illusory beings.
  5. baroque
    relating to an elaborately ornamented style of art and music
    “In this replacement Earth we’re building they’ve given me Africa to do and of course I’m doing it with all fjords again because I happen to like them, and I’m old-fashioned enough to think that they give a lovely baroque feel to a continent. And they tell me it’s not equatorial enough. Equatorial!”
  6. disheveled
    in disarray; extremely disorderly
    Arthur glanced around him once more, and then down at himself, at the sweaty disheveled clothes he had been lying in the mud in on Thursday morning.
  7. aback
    by surprise
    “What? Oh...er, very well,” said the old man, slightly taken aback, “I’ll just go and get on with some of my fjords then.”
  8. sacrilege
    blasphemous behavior
    It would be sacrilege to go skiing on high art!
  9. penultimate
    next to the last
    “So your brain was an organic part of the penultimate configuration of the computer program,” said Ford, rather lucidly he thought.
  10. seedy
    morally degraded
    I don’t go around gratuitously shooting people and then bragging about it afterward in seedy space-rangers bars, like some cops I could mention!
  11. fusillade
    rapid simultaneous discharge of firearms
    The fusillade continued for several seconds at unbearable intensity.
  12. barrage
    the heavy fire of artillery to saturate an area
    They let fly another electric barrage.
  13. rivulet
    a small stream
    The front had almost all melted away, and thick rivulets of molten metal were winding their way back toward where they were squatting.
  14. congeal
    solidify, thicken, or come together
    Ghastly gray light congealed on the land.
  15. bulbous
    rounded and bulging
    It was the Blagulon Kappa policecraft, a bulbous sharklike affair, slate-green in color and smothered with black stenciled letters of varying degrees of size and unfriendliness.
Created on Wed Nov 08 19:32:14 EST 2017 (updated Mon Aug 04 10:03:46 EDT 2025)

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