Bridge of Clay: Part Two

by Markus Zusak
The oldest of five brothers, thirty-one-year-old Matthew Dunbar looks back on how he, Rory, Henry, Clayton, and Thomas had coped after the death of their mother and the disappearance and reappearance of their father.

Here are links to our lists for the novel: "Before the Beginning"–Part One, Part Two, Parts Three–Four, Parts Five–Six, Part Seven–"After the End"
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Full list of words from this list:

words only definitions & notes
  1. pillage
    steal goods; take as spoils
    The sun was some sort of barbarian, a Viking in the sky.
    It plundered, it pillaged.
    It got its hands on everything, from the tallest stick of concrete to the smallest cap in the water.
  2. dappled
    having spots or patches of color
    From the air, in a circling plane, the city looked at the mercy of its own brand of water (the salty kind), but on the ground, it didn’t take long to feel the full force of its true oppressor; her face was dappled immediately with sweat.
  3. rabble
    a disorderly crowd of people
    Outside, she stood with a flock, a herd—no, a rabble—of equally shocked and sticky people.
  4. spare
    lacking embellishment or ornamentation
    They lived in a third-floor apartment.
    A block like all the others.
    From a distance, they were one small light in a concrete Goliath.
    Up close, it was spare but closed-in.
  5. metronome
    clicking pendulum indicating the tempo of a piece of music
    The metronome went click.
  6. concession
    the act of yielding
    It was a piano and frozen playgrounds, and Walt Disney on Saturday nights—one of the many small concessions from the world that lay wayward and west.
  7. allotted
    given as a task or a portion
    An endless winter would finally break, only to return in record time, and there you were again, at work:
    Small, allotted hours.
    Friendly without friends.
  8. dour
    showing a brooding ill humor
    To be fair, sometimes there were good times, there were great times—and old and dour as he was, Waldek surprised his daughter maybe once a year and raced her to the tramline.
  9. sporadic
    recurring in scattered or unpredictable instances
    All of that and more was stationed, sporadically, across the terrain, and while most people viewed it as just another scene of suburban neglect, to Clay it was keepsake, it was memory.
  10. gaunt
    very thin, especially from disease or hunger or cold
    Another point of note was that ever since its abandonment, the grass at The Surrounds hadn’t much grown; it was the anti-Bernborough Park: low and gaunt in some areas, knee-high and stringy in others, the latter of which where Clay had just woken up.
  11. tirade
    a speech of violent denunciation
    “I don’t know,” he said, “maybe it just got too sad to grow—” but he cut the idea off there. For him that was a tirade of sentimentality.
  12. eccentricity
    strange and unconventional behavior
    The extra clothing was possibly explained by the eccentricities of an older man; a happiness came over her when she read the note about Chopin, Mozart and Bach.
  13. respectively
    in the order given
    Both had Homer written at the top, and then respectively, The Iliad, The Odyssey.
  14. reprisal
    a retaliatory action against an enemy
    Also, don't say you are seeking to leave for economic reasons. Say only this: you are afraid of reprisals from the government.
  15. fateful
    having extremely unfortunate or dire consequences
    Of course, earlier, when Clay had said those two fateful words, the rest of us stood behind him, like witnesses at the scene of a crime.
  16. timorous
    shy and fearful by nature
    And thank God for Rory, because in a broiled voice that sounded just like it always had, he unloaded a full-blooded reply, to our father’s timorous stutterings.
  17. affable
    diffusing warmth and friendliness
    Henry took my cue and remained his affable self, in the face of all the outrage.
  18. portly
    fairly large
    A pair of mismatched salt and pepper shakers stood in the middle, like some comedy duo. One portly. One tall.
  19. amble
    walk leisurely
    Clay took his arms and turned him, watching as he ambled the hall.
  20. bray
    a cry of or similar to that of a donkey
    For a moment, he expected Rosy to bark, or Achilles to let loose a bray, but they didn’t, and he reached for the crate.
  21. dulcet
    pleasing to the ear
    In the midst of that strangely dulcet tone, something in him tolled.
  22. sternum
    the breastbone
    It lowered itself, steadily, from throat to sternum to lungs, and full morning hit the street.
  23. callous
    emotionally hardened
    So selfish, so callous to leave.
  24. relentless
    not willing or able to stop or yield
    On top of that, she was obviously an intruder; her room at the camp clearly belonged to a squadron of cockroaches, and God almighty, she’d never seen such terrifying things. So big! Not to mention relentless. They fought her each day for territory.
  25. stifling
    characterized by oppressive heat and humidity
    The smell of that food in the stifling air; it belonged here as much as she did.
  26. rendition
    a performance of a musical composition or a dramatic role
    No, the one thing she truly dreaded was the sight and sound of men and women standing up, and loosening their throats, for another rendition of “Sto Lat.” They sang for home like a perfect idea—like there weren’t any reasons to leave.
  27. seethe
    be in an agitated emotional state
    He felt me seething, right through the wall, but then the practicality.
  28. placard
    a sign posted in a public place
    The caption said BOOKS ARE FRIGHTFULLY TOUGH. The other one was more like a placard, saying MINERVA McGONAGALL IS GOD.
  29. jargon
    technical terminology characteristic of a particular subject
    He was there by four-thirty, and by five he sat between two great pylons of books. Everything he could find on bridges. Thousands of pages, hundreds of techniques. Every type, each measure. All jargons. He read through them and didn’t understand a thing.
  30. cantilever
    a projecting horizontal beam fixed at one end only
    He liked looking at the bridges, though: the arches, suspensions, and cantilevers.
  31. grizzled
    having gray or partially gray hair
    I was tired that night, much older than twenty; I was ancient, stricken and grizzled.
  32. emboss
    raise in a relief
    In one converted driveway there was a collection of short stories called The Steeplechaser, a nice paperback, with a hurdler embossed on the cover.
  33. truss
    a rigid framework of beams that supports a structure
    Terms like compression, truss, and abutment were slowly making sense.
  34. frugal
    avoiding waste
    Where once she’d sat in a frozen, frugal storeroom, sharpening up the pencils, now she lived on hands and knees; she breathed the breeze of bleach.
  35. syntax
    the grammatical arrangement of words in sentences
    Out of sheer necessity, her English was forming nicely, although it was often that calamitous, jumbled-up syntax of false starts and broken endings.
  36. bridle
    headgear for a horse
    There were saddles there, too, a few bridles and stirrups; the horseworks important to her father.
  37. quell
    overcome or allay
    Clay almost sat up, but quelled it.
  38. crestfallen
    brought low in spirit
    There you were with your blurry eyes and crestfallen chest, your face on the floor—a cheek and an ear—your bony backside up in the air.
  39. miffed
    aroused to impatience or anger
    As you can imagine, the men were miffed.
  40. bristle
    react in an offended or angry manner
    “Or maybe you never will come back.”
    Clay bristled, internally. “I’m coming back. I’ll miss these little heart-to-hearts of ours.”
Created on Tue Nov 08 09:06:04 EST 2022 (updated Wed Aug 30 10:37:22 EDT 2023)

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