Turtles All the Way Down: Chapters 10–13

by John Green
Sixteen-year-old Aza investigates the disappearance of a local billionaire and navigates complicated relationships with her mom, best friend, and a new romantic interest, all while trying to manage obsessive-compulsive disorder.

Here are links to our lists for the novel: Chapters 1–5, Chapters 6–9, Chapters 10–13, Chapters 14–19, Chapters 20–24

Here are links to our lists for other books by John Green: Looking for Alaska; Will Grayson, Will Grayson; The Fault in Our Stars; Paper Towns, An Abundance of Katherines
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Full list of words from this list:

words only definitions & notes
  1. experiential
    of or relating to direct observation or participation
    It was a long, seemingly random list—everything from book titles to quotes.
    Over time, markets will always seek to become more free.
    Experiential value.
    Floor five Stairway one
    Disgrace—Coetzee
  2. inscrutable
    difficult or impossible to understand
    It went on like that for pages, just little memos to himself that were inscrutable to anyone else.
  3. extradition
    surrender of an accused by one state or country to another
    A quick search told me that Kosovo, Cambodia, and the Maldives were all nations that had no extradition treaty with the United States, meaning that Pickett might be allowed to stay in them without having to face criminal charges at home.
  4. inevitably
    in such a manner as could not be otherwise
    The pictures were inevitably crooked, part of us out of the frame, but you could always see me at least, curling into Mom—I was a mama’s girl.
  5. taut
    pulled or drawn tight
    She looked so young in those pictures—her skin taut, her face thin.
  6. incongruous
    lacking in harmony or compatibility or appropriateness
    She asked if he was breathing, and I asked Mom, and she said no, and the whole time this totally incongruous soul song was crooning tinnily through his earbuds.
  7. croon
    sing softly
    She asked if he was breathing, and I asked Mom, and she said no, and the whole time this totally incongruous soul song was crooning tinnily through his earbuds.
  8. exploit
    use or manipulate to one's advantage
    I told her about Davis calling it a rounding error, but I still worried that it might be dirty money or that I might be exploiting Davis or...but she shushed me.
  9. nobility
    elevation of mind and exaltation of character
    “Holmesy. I’m so...done with the idea that there’s nobility in turning down money.”
  10. unethical
    not conforming to approved standards of social behavior
    “Yeah, and Davis Pickett only got his money because he knew someone, specifically his father. This is not illegal or unethical. It’s awesome.”
  11. debutante
    a young woman making her formal entrance into society
    “Aww, Holmesy, we’ve both fallen in love. Me with an artist, you with a billionaire. We’re finally leading the debutante lives we’ve always deserved.”
  12. array
    an impressive display or assortment
    Ms. Holmes, you may find that if a teenager walks into a bank with a vast array of hundred-dollar bills, the bank will generally be suspicious, so I’ve spoken to one of our bankers at Second Indianapolis, and they’ll accept your deposit.
  13. emancipated
    free from traditional social restraints
    “None with whom the Picketts have a good relationship. Davis has been declared an emancipated minor by the state and is his brother’s legal guardian.”
  14. kudos
    an expression of approval and commendation
    I was driving, and Daisy was talking about how her most recent fic had sort of gone viral in the Star Wars fan-fiction world and how she had tons of kudos on it and how she’d had to stay up all night to finish this paper on The Scarlet Letter and how she could maybe finally get some sleep now that she was “retiring” from Chuck E. Cheeses, and I felt fine.
  15. complacent
    contented to a fault with oneself or one's actions
    The medicine has made you complacent, and you forgot to change the Band-Aid this morning.
  16. fester
    generate pus
    And you left the same Band-Aid on for—God—probably thirty-seven hours by now, just letting it fester inside that warm, moist old Band-Aid.
  17. malfunction
    a failure to work normally
    Told myself I was fine, this was a malfunction in my brain, that thoughts were just thoughts, but when I glanced at the Band-Aid again I saw the pad was stained.
  18. optometrist
    a person skilled in testing for defects of vision
    I pulled into an optometrist’s parking lot, took off the Band-Aid, and looked at the wound.
  19. gape
    be wide open
    Why did I have to give myself a constant, gaping open wound on, of all places, my finger?
  20. windfall
    a sudden happening that brings good fortune
    The woman gave us five temporary checks to use until our real ones arrived, encouraged us not to make any major purchases for at least six months “while you learn to five with this windfall,” and then started talking about the places we could put the money—college savings accounts or mutual funds or bonds or stocks—and I was trying to pay attention to her, but the problem was I wasn’t really in the bank.
  21. torrent
    an overwhelming number or amount
    I was inside my head, the torrent of thoughts screaming that I had sealed my fate by not changing the Band-Aid for over a day, that it was too late, and now I could feel the heat and soreness in my fingertip, and you know it’s real once you can physically feel it, because the senses can’t lie.
  22. lofty
    of high moral or intellectual value
    You hear a lot about the benefits of insanity or whatever—like, Dr. Karen Singh had once told me this Edgar Allan Poe quote: “The question is not yet settled, whether madness is or is not the loftiest intelligence.”
  23. groggy
    stunned or confused and slow to react
    The oblong pill made me feel exceptionally groggy, but only from the bridge of my nose up.
  24. meteor
    a mass that enters earth's atmosphere, becoming incandescent
    There is a meteor shower Thursday night.
  25. carrel
    small individual study area in a library
    I read about one school where you could use the same library study carrel that Alice Walker had.
  26. competent
    properly or sufficiently qualified, capable, or efficient
    My grades were good, and I was a competent standardized test taker.
  27. meticulously
    in a manner marked by extreme care of details
    Across the table from me, Mychal was working on a new art project—meticulously tracing the waveforms of some song onto a sheet of thin, translucent paper—while Daisy regaled our lunch table with the story of her car purchase, without ever quite revealing how she came across the necessary funds.
  28. linoleum
    a floor covering made from linseed oil, cork, and resin
    I never realized how small my house was until I saw Davis seeing it—the linoleum in the kitchen rolling up in the corners, the little settling cracks in the walls, all our furniture older than I was, the mismatched bookshelves.
  29. telepathic
    communicating without apparent physical signals
    I closed my eyes and tried to telepathically beg my mother not to attack him.
  30. cicada
    stout-bodied insect with large membranous wings
    The flag was whipping in the wind, and I could hear the white noise of traffic in the distance, but it was otherwise quiet, the cicadas and crickets silenced by the cold.
  31. permeate
    spread or diffuse through
    And I wanted to tell him that even though I’d never been in love, I knew what it was like to be in a feeling, to be not just surrounded by it but also permeated by it, the way my grandmother talked about God being everywhere.
  32. frigid
    extremely cold
    “The leaves are gone / you should be, too / I’d be gone if I were you / but then again, here I am / walking alone / in the frigid dawn.”
  33. couplet
    a stanza consisting of two successive lines of verse
    “I’ve been trying to write just couplets lately. Like, nature stuff. Like, ‘the daffodil knows more of spring / than roses know of anything.’”
  34. quirk
    a strange attitude or habit
    I knew that my crazy was no longer a quirk, a simple matter of a cracked finger pad.
  35. chaste
    morally pure
    Davis drove me home, walked me to the door, and kissed me chastely on my sweaty lips.
  36. precarious
    not secure; beset with difficulties
    I feel kinda precarious in general, and I can’t really date you.
  37. relentless
    never-ceasing
    I stared at the picture while we talked because the relentlessness of Dr. Singh’s eye contact was a little much for me.
  38. peripheral
    on or near an edge or constituting an outer boundary
    In my peripheral vision, I could see her legs crossed, black short-heeled shoes, her foot tapping in the air.
  39. apprehend
    understand or perceive the meaning of something
    “Can you apprehend these outside forces?”
  40. rig
    manipulate in a fraudulent manner
    The whole process is rigged, from start to finish. They make you pay to find out you can’t afford to go.
Created on Thu Jan 11 11:36:46 EST 2018 (updated Tue Apr 09 15:49:14 EDT 2019)

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