How the García Girls Lost Their Accents: List 3

by Julia Alvarez
After they move from the Dominican Republic to New York City, the four García sisters are caught between the expectations of their traditional parents and their own desire to assimilate to American culture.

This list covers Part II: A Regular Revolution–Daughter of Invention.

Here are links to our lists for the novel: List 1, List 2, List 3, List 4, List 5, List 6

Here are links to our lists for other works by Julia Alvarez: In the Time of the Butterflies, Names/Nombres
35 words 459 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. epithet
    a defamatory or abusive word or phrase
    At school, epithets...were hurled our way.
  2. gauche
    lacking social poise or refinement
    You wouldn't be as gauche as to ask, "Hey, are you related to the guy who makes vacuum cleaners?"
  3. supposition
    the cognitive process of conjecturing
    We had our own kind of fame, based mostly on the rich girls' supposition and our own silence.
  4. antithesis
    exact opposite
    Her nightwear was the antithesis of Mami's: in fact, Carla looked almost dressed up in her prim cotton nightgown.
  5. flourish
    a showy gesture
    She waved her hand with a flourish as if she were introducing us to King Arthur's court.
  6. amiss
    not functioning properly
    Tía admitted that yes, something was amiss, but she had promised our mother not to say what.
  7. layman
    someone who is not a clergyman or a professional person
    Primi herself used Baggies in her practice of layman's santería, concocting powders and potions to make this ache or that rival woman go away.
  8. flabbergasted
    as if struck dumb with astonishment and surprise
    But when she opened the Baggy and took a sniff and poked her finger in and tasted a pinch and had Primitiva do the same, they were flabbergasted.
  9. untoward
    not in keeping with accepted standards of what is proper
    Still, there was something untoward about Fifi taking all the blame since our habit had been to share the good and the bad that came our way.
  10. impassioned
    characterized by intense emotion
    She gave Mami an impassioned apology and argument—her sisters should not be punished along with her.
  11. acclimate
    get used to a certain environment
    From Mami we hear that our sister is beautifully acclimated to life on the Island and taking classes in shorthand and typing at the Ford Foundation trade school.
  12. repatriate
    send someone back to his homeland against his will
    With one successfully repatriated daughter, Papi might yank us all out of college and send us back.
  13. plaintively
    in a manner expressing sorrow
    Her little patent leather pocketbook plaintively matches her pumps.
  14. wry
    humorously sarcastic or mocking
    A wry smile spreads on his face: he is about to say something clever.
  15. exhort
    spur on or encourage especially by cheers and shouts
    We're off to the movies or to Capri's for an ice cream and just hanging out, the boys much exhorted to take care of the ladies.
  16. euphemism
    an inoffensive expression substituted for an offensive one
    He grins wickedly and drives us a little ways out of town to Motel Los Encantos, "motel" being the Island euphemism...
  17. nonplussed
    filled with bewilderment
    "What'd ya expect?" Mundín is nonplussed at our lack of proper titillation.
  18. titillate
    stimulate or excite
    "What'd ya expect?" Mundín is nonplussed at our lack of proper titillation.
  19. proffer
    present for acceptance or rejection
    He keeps his eyes on the tile floor as he goes from one to the other, proffering refreshments, as if to reassure us there will be no witnesses.
  20. tryst
    a secret rendezvous, especially a romantic one
    But tonight, as we've agreed, we're staging a coup on the same Avenida where a decade ago the dictator was cornered and wounded on his way to a tryst with his mistress.
  21. churlish
    having a bad disposition; surly
    No time for further delay. We smile three churlish Che Guevara smiles.
  22. myopic
    lacking foresight or scope
    "What are you girls up to?" he fires at us. We meet his look with bulletproof smiles, stone faces on which, with his myopic macho vision, he can't make out the writing on the walls.
  23. emphatic
    forceful and definite in expression or action
    "Where are they?" Mami asks more emphatically.
  24. palpable
    capable of being perceived
    There is an embarrassed silence in which the words her reputation are as palpable as if someone had hung a wedding dress in the air.
  25. berate
    censure severely or angrily
    Once the door is closed, Mami loses her temper. First, she berates Carla, who as the oldest was in charge and had orders to stick with Manuel and Fifi as their in-car chaperone.
  26. cursory
    hasty and without attention to detail; not thorough
    Some nights, though, if she got a good idea, she rushed into Yoyo's room, a flushed look on her face, her tablet of paper in her hand, a cursory knock on the door she'd just thrown open.
  27. prodigious
    great in size, force, extent, or degree
    In the close quarters of an American nuclear family, their mother's prodigious energy was becoming a real drain on their self-determination.
  28. throng
    press tightly together or cram
    Now in America, he was safe, a success even; his Centro de Medicina in the Bronx was thronged with the sick and the homesick yearning to go home again.
  29. gander
    mature male goose
    "Please, Mami, just leave me alone, please," Yoyo pleaded with her. But Yoyo would get rid of the goose only to have to contend with the gander.
  30. florid
    elaborately or excessively ornamented
    Yoyo and her sisters were forgetting a lot of their Spanish, and their father's formal, florid diction was hard to understand.
  31. expurgate
    edit by omitting or modifying parts considered indelicate
    She had gotten used to the nuns, a literature of appropriate sentiments, poems with a message, expurgated texts.
  32. avail
    a means of serving
    He called down curses on her head, ordered her on his authority as her father to open that door! He throttled that doorknob, but all to no avail.
  33. contend
    come to terms with
    Laura had hired a locksmith to install good locks on all the bedroom doors after the house had been broken into once while they were away. Now if burglars broke in again, and the family were at home, there would be a second round of locks for the thieves to contend with.
  34. commonplace
    a trite or obvious remark
    Together they concocted a speech: two brief pages of stale compliments and the polite commonplaces on teachers, a speech wrought by necessity and without much invention by mother and daughter late into the night on one of the pads of paper Laura had once used for her own inventions.
  35. misnomer
    an incorrect or unsuitable name
    After it was drafted, Laura typed it up while Yoyo stood by, correcting her mother's misnomers and mis-sayings.
Created on Mon Feb 18 17:20:21 EST 2019 (updated Wed Feb 20 11:00:00 EST 2019)

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.