- expeditionariesnounChapter 1 →
People traveling together on a journey of exploration or discovery into unknown territory, here referring to the founding settlers pushing through unmapped jungle.
“Inside, where the expeditionaries explored with careful intent, there was nothing but a thick forest of flowers.”
- insurmountableadjectiveChapter 1 →
Impossible to overcome or get past; so large or difficult that no effort can conquer it.
“cost of countless sacrifices and suffering, and to have found it all of a sudden without looking for it, as if it lay across his path like an insurmountable object.”
- instructionaladjectiveChapter 1 →
Designed to teach or explain something clearly; serving as a practical guide or manual.
“end in his room, calculating the strategic possibilities of his novel weapon until he succeeded in putting together a manual of startling instructional clarity and an irresistible power of conviction.”
- insufficiencynounChapter 1 →
A state of not being enough or adequate; a lack or shortcoming in capacity or ability.
“alien to the existence of his sons, partly because he considered childhood as a period of mental insufficiency, and partly because he was always too absorbed in his fantastic speculations.”
- unwhitewashedadjectiveChapter 1 →
Not coated with whitewash, the cheap white lime-based paint traditionally brushed onto walls; here describing bare, unfinished mud walls.
“Thanks to her the floors of tamped earth, the unwhitewashed mud walls, the rustic, wooden furniture they had built themselves were always dean, and the old chests where they kept”
- catastrophesnounChapter 1 →
Sudden, devastating disasters or calamities — plagues, floods, wars — that cause widespread destruction and suffering.
“He was a fugitive from all the plagues and catastrophes that had ever lashed mankind.”
- cartilaginousadjectiveChapter 2 →
Made of or resembling cartilage, the tough, rubbery tissue found in joints and the ears; flexible rather than bony.
“purest state of virginity, for he had been born and had grown up with a cartilaginous tail in the shape of a corkscrew and with a small tuft of hair”
- daguerreotypesnounChapter 4 →
Very early photographs made on silver-coated metal plates, produced by a process invented in the 1830s; among the first images ever captured mechanically.
“At first José Arcadio Buendía helped him in his work, enthusiastic over the novelty of the daguerreotypes and the predictions of Nostradamus.”
- concatenationnounChapter 5 →
A chain or linked series of events or causes, each one leading to the next in an unbroken sequence.
“He himself, facing a firing squad, would not understand too well the concatenation of the series of subtle but irrevocable accidents that brought him to that point.”
- evangelizationnounChapter 5 →
The work of spreading the Christian faith and converting people to it, as a priest or missionary would do.
“He was so stubborn that Father Nicanor gave up his attempts at evangelization and continued visiting him out of humanitarian feelings.”
- inviolabilitynounChapter 5 →
The quality of being too sacred or protected to be broken, violated, or disclosed; here referring to a secret that must never be revealed.
“It took a good deal of work to convince her of the inviolability of the marital secret, for Remedios was so confused and at the same time so amazed at”
- antimilitaristadjectiveChapter 8 →
Strongly opposed to military power, armies, and the values or methods associated with them.
“On the contrary, like so many of his fellow party members, he was an antimilitarist.”
- misappropriationnounChapter 9 →
The dishonest taking or misuse of money or property entrusted to someone, especially public funds; a form of corruption or embezzlement.
“judgment for misappropriation of funds.”
- mother-of-pearlnounChapter 9 →
The smooth, iridescent lining found inside oyster and mussel shells, used as a decorative material on jewelry, book covers, and ornaments.
“He brought her a prayerbook bound in mother-of-pearl.”
- scandalizationnounChapter 10 →
The act of shocking or deeply offending someone's sense of morality or propriety; the state of being scandalised.
“In the midst of the excitement of the family the scandalization of Úrsula, the joy of the people cramming the street to watch that apotheosis of squandering.”
- archiepiscopaladjectiveChapter 13 →
Belonging to or befitting an archbishop, the highest rank of bishop in the Church; used here to suggest grand, ecclesiastical luxury.
“furtive visits to the French matrons, Aureliano Segundo bought Petra Cotes a bed with an archiepiscopal canopy, put velvet curtains on the windows, and covered the ceiling and the walls”
- clavichordistnounChapter 14 →
A person who plays the clavichord, a small keyboard instrument from the Renaissance and Baroque periods that preceded the modern piano.
“The diploma that certified her as a concert clavichordist was ratified by the virtuosity with which she executed popular melodies of the seventeenth century at the gathering organized to celebrate”
- impermeabilitynounChapter 13 →
The quality of not allowing anything to pass through; here used figuratively to mean an emotional closedness that nothing — not love, not grief — can penetrate.
“take her long to realize that he was as insensible to her begging as the colonel would have been, and that they were armored by the same impermeability of affection.”
- sleight-of-handnounChapter 15 →
Clever trickery or deceptive maneuvering, originally referring to a conjurer's deft finger-work; here describing lawyers manipulating legal procedures to make valid claims disappear.
“It was there that the sleight-of-hand lawyers proved that the demands lacked all validity for the simple reason that the banana company did not have, never had had, and never”
- gourmandizingverbChapter 15 →
Eating excessively and greedily; indulging in enormous amounts of food with little restraint.
“both expedients served to ease his conscience, and thus he could go back without remorse under the shadow of Petra Cotes, where he revived his noisy revelry and unlimited gourmandizing.”
- cat-o-nine-tailsnounChapter 18 →
A whip made of nine knotted cords attached to a handle, historically used for flogging as punishment; here described as an ecclesiastical one kept for self-discipline.
“felt for himself in the emptiness of the saturnalia, he armed himself with an ecclesiastical cat-o-nine-tails that he kept in the bottom of his trunk along with a hair-shirt and”
- materializationnounChapter 18 →
The process of something taking on a physical, visible form; here describing a person who appears as though he were a memory or vision suddenly made real and solid.
“of the window he saw the gloomy old man with his crow’s-wing hat like the materialization of a memory that had been in his head since long before he was”
- popularizationnounChapter 16 →
The process of making something widely known and available to ordinary people; here describing how zinc roofing sheets were introduced to the general population.
“been one of the first to bring zinc sheets to Macondo, much earlier than their popularization by the banana company, simply to roof Petra Cotes’s bedroom with them and to”
One Hundred Years of SolitudeNovel by Gabriel García Márquez