Slaughterhouse-Five: Chapters 7–10

by Kurt Vonnegut
Loosely based on the author, the narrator sets out to write a book about his experiences during World War II, but ends up telling about Billy Pilgrim, a soldier who gets "unstuck in time" and travels throughout moments of his life both on Earth and the planet Tralfamadore.

Here are links to our lists for the novel: Chapter 1, Chapter 2, Chapters 3–4, Chapters 5–6, Chapters 7–10
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Full list of words from this list:

words only definitions & notes
  1. bucolic
    idyllically rustic
    The sun had just gone down, and its afterglow was backlighting the city, which formed low cliffs around the bucolic void to the idle stockyards.
  2. diffident
    lacking self-confidence
    There were diffident raps on the factory window.
  3. harangue
    address forcefully
    A meeting was in progress. The boys were harangued by a man in a full beard.
  4. adulation
    exaggerated flattery or praise
    The adulation that Trout was receiving, mindless and illiterate as it was, affected Trout...
  5. ersatz
    artificial and inferior
    The blind innkeeper said that the Americans could sleep in his stable that night, and he gave them soup and ersatz coffee...
  6. obliterate
    do away with completely, without leaving a trace
    We are now prepared to obliterate more rapidly and completely every productive enterprise the Japanese have above ground in any city, said Harry Truman.
  7. appalling
    causing shock, dismay, or horror
    Those who approved it were neither wicked nor cruel, though it may well be that they were too remote from the harsh realities of war to understand fully the appalling destructive power of air bombardment in the spring of 1945.
  8. incendiary
    capable of causing fires or catching fire spontaneously
    On the night of March 9th, 1945, an air attack on Tokyo by American heavy bombers, using incendiary and high explosive bombs, caused the death of 83,793 people. The atom bomb dropped on Hiroshima killed 71,379 people.
  9. commiserate
    feel or express sympathy or compassion
    Now his snoozing became shallower as he heard a man and a woman speaking German in pitying tones. The speakers were commiserating with somebody lyrically.
  10. epigraph
    a quotation at the beginning of some piece of writing
    Later on, as a middle-aged optometrist, he would weep quietly and privately sometimes, but never make loud boohooing noises.
    Which is why the epigraph of this book is the quatrain from the famous Christmas carol.
  11. beguiled
    filled with wonder and delight
    But Billy Pilgrim wasn’t beguiled by the back of the store. He was thrilled by the Kilgore Trout novels in the front.
  12. emaciated
    very thin, especially from disease or hunger or cold
    There wasn’t a sound inside the emaciated chest cavity.
  13. jaded
    bored or apathetic after experiencing too much of something
    A jaded sailor stepped away from a movie machine while the film was still running.
  14. catacomb
    an underground tunnel with recesses where bodies were buried
    Somewhere in there the poor old high school teacher, Edgar Derby, was caught with a teapot he had taken from the catacombs.
Created on Tue Mar 12 14:45:41 EDT 2013 (updated Fri Jul 25 13:04:26 EDT 2025)

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