Love from A to Z: List 1

by S.K. Ali
After she gets suspended from school, Zayneb takes a trip to Qatar, where she meets Adam, who is coping with the loss of his mother and keeping a major secret from his father.

This list covers "Marvel: Two Saturdays in March" to "Oddity: The Cold."

Here are links to our lists for the novel: List 1, List 2, List 3, List 4, List 5
40 words 242 learners

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Full list of words from this list:

words only definitions & notes
  1. ruminate
    reflect deeply on a subject
    Adam, being Adam, found himself marveling more than ruminating on the weird bits of existing.
  2. hijab
    a headscarf worn by Muslim women
    Perhaps it was because of the late hour, but the link was oddly intriguing to a girl looking for thirteenth-century hijab styles: Al-Qazwini’s Catalogue of Life as It Existed in the Islamic World, 1275 AD.
  3. stifle
    smother or suppress
    She dedicated her journal entries to pruning the prickly overgrowth that stifled her young life.
  4. staccato
    marked by or composed of disconnected parts or sounds
    After Hateful Woman got into her seat, her actions were executed in staccato, each orchestrated to let me know she was mad at my presence. Setting her purse down on the floor, slam, snapping the seat pocket in front of her to punch her newspaper in, pow, pulling her seat belt strap from under her, yank.
  5. caricature
    a representation of a person exaggerated for comic effect
    "...And our youngest, Zayneb? She screamed nonstop for hours. A ball of anger!” Dad/Mom would say, laughing when they got to the punch line: me. When I was way younger, I’d get angry at this, their one-dimensional descriptions of us, their reducing us to these simple caricatures, their using me as a punch line.
  6. perverse
    marked by a disposition to oppose and contradict
    He had parked himself in a corner of the room, on top of an empty desk, in order to get the best view of the class, a look of perverse satisfaction on his face.
  7. permeate
    spread or diffuse through
    “Islam isn’t a culture. It’s a religion.”
    “A religion that permeates every aspect of one’s living, right?”
  8. forte
    an asset of special worth or utility
    She’d appreciate my attempt at art, her forte.
  9. exemplary
    worthy of imitation
    “The only reason we’ve decided to give Miss Malik a week’s suspension instead—which will go into her records, by the way—is due to her exemplary academic record over the years. I’ll see this as a terrible, terrible decision she’s made. Mr. Fencer agrees with me on this.”
  10. uncanny
    surpassing the ordinary or normal
    She told me Fencer was an Islamophobe. That she’d had two classes with him—one in junior year and one first semester of this year—and, somehow, he brought an uncanny number of topics and discussions around to how Islam and Muslims were ruining the world.
  11. devout
    deeply religious
    He doesn’t know what I know: that Ayaan is a devout Muslim who goes to the mosque more than hijabi me.
  12. rile
    disturb, especially by minor irritations
    What riles me is that people think Islamophobia is these little or big acts of violence.
  13. prevalent
    most frequent or common
    No, there’s the other kind too, and it’s a more prevalent kind: the slow, steady barrage of tiny acts of prejudice, these your-people-are-trash lightsaber cuts that tear and peel strips off your soul until you can’t feel your numbed heart any longer.
  14. barrage
    the rapid and continuous delivery of communication
    No, there’s the other kind too, and it’s a more prevalent kind: the slow, steady barrage of tiny acts of prejudice, these your-people-are-trash lightsaber cuts that tear and peel strips off your soul until you can’t feel your numbed heart any longer.
  15. gingerly
    in a manner marked by extreme care or delicacy
    After dinner, Dad knocked on my bedroom door before opening it gingerly.
  16. compliant
    disposed to act in accordance with someone's wishes
    “I won’t bother Auntie Nandy. I’ll be quiet and compliant.”
  17. flush
    of a surface exactly even with an adjoining one
    As the square compartments revealed themselves, smooth and flush without any screws or nails, I thought about touch.
  18. cursory
    hasty and without attention to detail; not thorough
    Those hugs are cursory. They don’t go much beyond the shoulder-slam, hey-I-see-you-bro.
  19. gouge
    make a groove in
    I realized it had worked its way around inside, gouging, for a while.
    It must be a hole I’ve carried since the start of freshman year.
  20. incessantly
    without interruption
    After I received it, in November, I spent too much time incessantly unfolding it to pore over it.
  21. elusive
    difficult to detect or grasp by the mind or analyze
    I’d wanted to get away—maybe even find that elusive thing called peace—but everything followed me.
  22. slew
    a large number or amount or extent
    Then I got a slew of private messages from Ayaan: What did you do?
    I mean Kavi told me.
    But what did you do?
    SUSPENDED?
    AND you blew everything.
  23. tarmac
    a paved road or surface, especially at an airport
    These messages came flooding in as the plane taxied on the tarmac at Heathrow and my phone got service again.
  24. profusely
    in very large amounts or quantities; extremely
    Kavi had already told me this morning, after apologizing in tears to me last night for her contribution to getting me suspended, that she’d apologized profusely to Ayaan for writing #EatThemAlive, possibly alerting Fencer to what was going on.
  25. solicit
    request urgently or persistently
    She stepped out in front of me, into the aisle, her eyes on other passengers, her head shaking hard in an attempt to solicit sympathy for her plight.
  26. belligerent
    characteristic of an enemy or one eager to fight
    Part of the coat she was sitting on stuck out into the aisle—cutesy for her, but if I'd let that happen? Belligerent.
  27. succumb
    give in, as to overwhelming force, influence, or pressure
    Angry people are not known to be public criers. They usually don’t succumb to displays of grief.
  28. tangible
    perceptible by the senses, especially the sense of touch
    I guess at some point it was natural I would move on to less-tangible things. That point occurred just this past year, when I noticed the things I needed to hold on to, marvels you couldn't necessarily grasp in your hands.
  29. venture
    proceed somewhere despite the risk of possible dangers
    The next time I ventured back there, she wasn’t in her seat.
  30. exodus
    a journey by a large group to escape from a hostile environment
    Even though I had made up my mind to try one last time, I fell asleep until the flight landed in Doha and the guy beside me nudged me to get a move on. I picked up my duffel and got in the exodus line, thinking of Dad and Hanna.
  31. carousel
    a conveyer belt that carries luggage for air travelers
    The Doha airport was so quiet that the whir of luggage wheels formed a hum that accompanied those of us who disembarked. It followed us to the visa counter and then to the luggage carousel.
  32. connoisseur
    an expert able to appreciate a field
    “She’s a rock connoisseur.”
  33. duvet
    a soft quilt usually filled with down
    Last night I’d rolled my luggage into the minimalist guest bedroom—white-duvet-covered bed framed by a huge, mirrored wardrobe, sleek with no knobs or handles—and promptly unzipped my carry-on suitcase to pull out some essentials.
  34. per se
    with respect to its inherent nature
    Squish is not a stuffed animal per se but some sort of cross between a puffer fish (round and spotty with bulging eyes and knowing lips), an elephant (longish snout), and a cat (perky ears—well, previously perky, now loved to nubbins).
  35. disheveled
    in disarray; extremely disorderly
    She spotted disheveled, just-woke me.
  36. ravenous
    extremely hungry
    “I am not going to starve you. I’ve heard teens are ravenous creatures.”
  37. chiffon
    a sheer fabric of silk or rayon
    I wore it with jeans and a dark blue chiffon hijab, and Auntie Nandy, in jeans herself and a tunic top, said I looked great.
  38. spire
    a tall tower that forms the superstructure of a building
    And, being a city in a predominantly Muslim country, the whole landscape was also dotted with the spires and domes of traditional-looking mosques.
  39. scrutiny
    the act of examining something closely, as for mistakes
    I was so giddy and happy and felt free to be away from scrutiny, to be around people who didn’t look at me weird for the way I dressed, for how Muslim I looked, but only for how weird I acted.
  40. percolate
    spread gradually
    And that’s how I arrived at the party, with a big smile capping the happiness beginning to percolate within.
Created on Thu Jun 25 09:13:30 EDT 2020 (updated Wed Jul 01 08:35:31 EDT 2020)

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