Vocabulary in The Veldt

Open, flat grassland of southern Africa, with few trees or shrubs. In this story it refers to the African savanna landscape reproduced inside the nursery room.

A fully automated smart house that performs every domestic task for its owners, from cooking to rocking them to sleep, leaving them with nothing to do for themselves.

A trained specialist who studies and treats mental and emotional problems; in this story a professional consulted about the children's disturbing obsession with the nursery.

A fictional technology in the story that reproduces smells as part of the nursery's total sensory environment, making the simulated Africa smell as real as it looks.

The supposed ability to send thoughts directly from one mind to another without speaking or writing; used here to suggest the nursery can somehow read and project the children's mental images.

Gradually spread through or over something, filling it completely, the way light or colour soaks into a surface.

The rotting flesh of dead animals. In this story it signals that the lions in the nursery are feeding on a carcass, hinting at real violence.

Large scavenging birds that circle overhead and feed on dead animals; their presence in the nursery sky reinforces the scene's atmosphere of death and predation.

A return to an earlier, more childlike or primitive state of behaviour or thinking; the psychologist uses it to describe the children's unhealthy mental retreat.

An unhealthy preoccupation with death, disease, or disturbing subjects; used here to describe the dark, death-focused nature of the scenes the children keep projecting in the nursery.

An irrational, intense suspicion or fear that others are plotting against you; the psychologist applies it to the children's mental state as revealed by the nursery's imagery.

Present but hidden, not yet fully developed or visible; used to describe dangerous feelings or tendencies in the children that have not yet openly shown themselves.

A device that tells the time by the shadow cast by sunlight; mentioned as part of the house's many automated features that make life effortless.

Wasted away or weakened through lack of use; applied to the parents' sense of purpose and identity, which have shrunk because the house does everything for them.

Deep, quiet thought or reflection; used here to describe the idle, purposeless mental state the parents have drifted into because the house has removed all their responsibilities.