Vocabulary in Blood Meridian

A small back room or annex to a kitchen used for washing dishes, pots, and doing other rough household work — not the main cooking area.

Quietly harbors or nurses a feeling or tendency deep inside, in a dark and smoldering way, without expressing it openly.

Savagely cruel and uncivilized, completely outside the norms of ordered human society — used here to describe a landscape that is as harsh and merciless as any brutal people.

The background facts, origins, and prior experiences that shaped a person — everything that came before and might explain who they are now.

Armed adventurers who crossed into a foreign country without official government authorization, intending to seize territory or stir up revolution for personal or political gain.

People used as tools or means by which a larger purpose is carried out — here, soldiers who see themselves as agents of a political or moral mission.

Formally and completely given up or renounced something, as if under oath — here meaning the character has entirely abandoned any habit of weighing right against wrong.

Without eyelids, and therefore unable to close or look away — used here to give the stars an unblinking, relentless, almost menacing quality as they stare down on the riders.

The state of being completely fixed, motionless, and unchanging — here describing the unwavering, permanent glare of the stars overhead.

Long, straight, and limp — used here of hair that hangs flat and lifeless, without body or curl, giving the figures a gaunt, unkempt appearance.

Braided — woven into a flat, interlaced pattern, as hair twisted into braids rather than left loose.

Devastated and destroyed-looking, as if worn down to ruin — here describing eyes that look hollowed out, ravaged, and dangerous rather than merely sad.

Pitted with holes or depressions in the ground, like a battlefield or bombed landscape, giving the terrain a broken, scarred appearance.

Of or relating to a tomb or burial; having the gloomy, hollow quality associated with death and the grave — here making the riders look like a funeral procession of the dead.

A slow, formal procession or march, typically associated with religious ceremonies or funerals, where participants move in a solemn, ordered line.

Oval or ellipse-shaped rather than perfectly round — here describing the sun appearing flattened and distorted near the horizon, as atmospheric haze warps its shape.

Long, jagged ridges or banks — borrowed from the nautical term for underwater rock ridges, here applied to long streaks of cloud massed along the horizon.

Open or responsive to something — here used in the negative to mean that this particular hardship cannot be explained, justified, or made sense of by rational thought.

Utterly foreign and strange, belonging to a world that feels completely unlike one's own — here describing a landscape that feels hostile and unknowable rather than merely unfamiliar.

Permission or agreement — used here in the Judge's philosophical claim that anything existing outside his awareness has no right to exist, as if his knowledge alone legitimizes the world.

An official grant of rights or a license given by an authority — here, the formal permission given to the Yuma Indians by Mexican authorities to operate the river ferry.

To obtain money or compliance from someone by force, threats, or intimidation — here describing Glanton's practice of demanding excessive fees and brutalizing the Yuma ferry operators.

Soldiers who fight for pay rather than loyalty to a cause or country — hired killers who will work for whoever offers money, with no moral stake in the outcome.

A sum of money paid as a reward for killing or capturing a specific target — here the payment offered by Mexican authorities for each Apache scalp delivered as proof of a kill.