Alice Munro
Carrel
1. Also called cubicle, stall. a small recess or enclosed area in a library stack, designed for individual study or reading. 2. a table or desk with three sides extending above the writing surface to serve as partitions, designed for individual study, as in a library. As she reached up to push a book into place he passed behind her. He bent and grabbed her leg, all in one smooth startling motion, and then was gone. She could feel for quite a while where his fingers had dug in. It didn't seem to her a sexual touch; it was more like a joke, though not at all a friendly one. She heard him run away, or felt him running; the metal shelves were vibrating. Then they stopped. There was no sound of him. She walked around looking between the stacks, looking into the carrels. Suppose she did see him, or bumped into him around a corner, what did she intend to do? She did not know. It was simply necessary to look for him, as in some tense childish game. Carried Away: a personal collection stories "The Beggar Maid" Alice Munro
Flagstone
1. Also called flag. a flat stone slab used especially for paving. 2. flagstones, a walk, terrace, etc., paved with flagstones. A few properties seemed to have been kept up as well as possible by the people who had moved into them when they were new-people who hadn't had the money or perhaps hadn't felt the need to move on to someplace better. Shrubs had grown to maturity, pastel vinyl siding had done away with the problem of repainting. Neat fences or hedges have the sign that the children in the houses had all grown up and gone away, and that their parents no longer saw the point of letting the yard be a common run-through for whatever new children were loose in the neighborhood.The house that was listed in the phone book as belonging to Aubrey and his wife was one of these. The front walk was paved with flagstones and bordered by hyacinths they stood as stiff as china flowers, alternatively pink and blue. "I've quit quitting," she said, lighting up. "Just made a resolution to quit quitting, that's all." Maybe that was the reason for the wrinkles. Somebody-a woman-had told him that women who smoked developed a special set of fine facial wrinkles. But it could have been from the sun, or just the nature of her skin-her neck was noticeably wrinkled as well. Wrinkled neck, youthfully full and up-tilted breasts. Women of her age usually had these contradictions. The bad and good points, the genetic luck or lack of it, all mixed up together. Very few kept their beauty whole, though shadowy, as Fiona had done. And perhaps that wasn't even true. Perhaps he only thought that because he'd known Fiona when she was young. Perhaps to get that impression you had to have known a woman when she was young. So when Aubrey looked at his wife did he see a high school girl full of scorn and sass, with an intriguing tilt to her robin's-egg blue eyes, pursing her fruit lips around a forbidden cigarette? But he was not really capable of thinking about it. If he did think about it, he'd have to figure out what would become of him and Marian, after he'd delivered Aubrey to Fiona. It would not work-unless he could get more satisfaction than he foresaw, finding the stone of blameless self-interest inside her robust pulp. You never qui
Bursary
1. Ecclesiastical.the treasury of a monastery.British.a college scholarship; Bursar-a treasurer or business officer, especially of a college or university. The Bursar was giving a talk to the new scholarship students, telling them of ways to earn money and live cheaply and explaining the high standards of performance to be expected of them here if they wanted their payments to keep coming. Rose found out the number of the room, and started up the stairs to the first floor. A girl came up beside her and said, "Are you on your way to three-oh-twelve, too?" They walked together, telling each other the details of their scholarships. Rose did not yet have a place to live, she was staying at the Y. She did not really have enough money to be here at all. She had a scholarship for her tuition and the county prize to buy her books and a bursary of three hundred dollars to live on; that was all. Carried Away: a personal collection stories "The Beggar Maid" Alice Munro
Astringent
1. Medicine/Medical. contracting; constrictive; styptic 2. harshly biting; caustic: his astringent criticism 3. stern or severe; austere 4. sharply incisive; pungent: astringent wit. noun 5. Medicine/Medical.a substance that contracts the tissues or canals of the body, thereby diminishing discharges, as of mucus or blood 6. a cosmetic that cleans the skin and constricts the pores. I managed to get undressed and put in my nightgown without any part of me being exposed at any time. An awkward business. I left my underpants on, and hoped that Beryl had done the same. The idea of sharing my bed with a grownup was a torment to me. But I did get to see the contents of what Beryl called her beauty kit. Hand-painted glass jars contained puffs of cotton wool, talcum powder, milky lotion, ice-blue astringent. Blue and black pencils. Emery boards, a pumice stone, nail polish with an overpowering smell of bananas, face powder in a celluloid box shaped like a shell, with the name of a dessert-Apricot Delight. Carried Away: a personal collection stories "The Progress of Love" Alice Munro
Orangeman
1. a member of a secret society formed in the north of Ireland in 1795, having as its object the maintenance and political ascendancy of Protestantism 2. a Protestant of Northern Ireland. She was back to being just an Anglican, a serious one, by the time she got married. She was twenty-five then, and my father was thirty-eight. A tall good-looking couple, good dancers, good cardplayers, sociable. But serious people- that's how I would try to describe them. Serious the way hardly anybody is anymore. My father was not religious in the way my mother was. He was an Anglican, an Orangeman, a Conservative, because that's what he had been brought up to be. He was the son who got left on the farm with his parents and took care of them till they died. He met my mother, he waited for her, they married; he thought himself lucky then to have a family to work for. (I have two brothers and I had a baby sister who died.) I have a feeling that my father never slept with any woman before my mother and never with her until he married her. And he had to wait because my mother wouldn't get married until she had paid back to her father every cent he had spent on her since her mother died. Carried Away: a personal collection stories "Moons of Jupiter" Alice Munro
Celebrant
1. a participant in any celebration. 2. the officiating priest in the celebration of the Eucharist. 3. a participant in a public religious rite. He had amazing good looks: taffy hair, bright blue eyes, ruddy skin, well-shaped body-the sort of good looks nobody disagrees about for a moment. But a single relentless notion had got such a hold on him that he could not keep from turning all his assets into parody. His mouth was wet-looking and slightly open most of the time, his eyes were half shut, his expression a hopeful leer, his movements indolent, exaggerated, inviting. Perhaps if he had been out on a stage with a microphone and a guitar and let grunt and howl and wriggle and excite, he would have seemed a true celebrant. Lacking a stage, he was unconvincing. After a while he seemed just like somebody with a bad case of hiccups-his insistent sexuality was that monotonous and meaningless. Carried Away: a personal collection stories "The Turkey Season" Alice Munro
Casement windows
1. a window sash opening on hinges that are generally attached to the upright side of its frame. 2. Also called casement window. a window with such a sash or sashes. The college buildings were not old at all, but they were built to look old. They were built of stone. The Arts Building had a tower, and the library had casement windows, which might have been designed for shooting arrows through. The buildings and the books in the library were what pleased Rose most about the place. Carried Away: a personal collection stories "The Beggar Maid" Alice Munro
Narcissus
1. any bulbous plant belonging to the genus Narcissus, of the amaryllis family, having showy yellow or white flowers with a cup-shaped corona 2. the flower of any of these plants 3. initial capital letter)Classical Mythology. a youth who fell in love with his own image reflected in a pool and wasted away from unsatisfied desire, whereupon he was transformed into the flower. The funeral was held in our house. There was not enough room at Steve's father's place for the large crowd that was expected because of the circumstances. I have a memory of the crowded room but no picture of Steve in his coffin, or of the minister, or of wreaths of flowers. I remember that I was holding one flower, a white narcissus, which must have come from a pot somebody forced indoors, because it was too early for even the forsythia bush or the trilliums and marsh marigolds in the woods. I stood in a row of children, each of us holding a narcissus. Carried Away: a personal collection stories "Miles City, Montana" Alice Munro
Bugbear
1. any source, real or imaginary, of needless fright or fear 2. a persistent problem or source of annoyance 3. Folklore. a goblin that eats up naughty children. I recovered then what in waking life I had lost-my mother's liveliness of face and voice before her throat muscles stiffened and a woeful, impersonal mask fastened itself over her features. How could I have forgotten this, I would think in the dream-the casual humor she had, not ironic but merry, the lightness and impatience and confidence? I would say that I was sorry I hadn't been to see her in such a long time-meaning not that I felt guilty but that I was sorry I had kept a bugbear in my mind, instead of this reality-and the strangest, kindest thing of all to me was her matter-of-fact reply. Oh, well, she said, better late than never. I was sure I'd see you someday. Carried Away: a personal collection stories "Friend of my Youth" Alice Munro
Consolidated
1. brought together into a single whole. 2. having become solid, firm, or coherent. It was true about the property and what he had done with it. It was true that he was a taxidermist. Bea and Peter had some trouble finding Ladner's house. It was just a basic A-frame in those days, hidden by the trees. They found the driveway at last and parked there and got out of the car. Bea was expecting to be introduced and taken on a tour and considerably bored for an hour or two, and perhaps to have to sit around drinking beer or tea while Peter Parr consolidated a friendship. Carried Away: a personal collection stories "Vandals" Alice Munro
Fastidious
1. excessively particular, critical, or demanding; hard to please: a fastidious eater. 2. requiring or characterized by excessive care or delicacy; painstaking. "Oh, Rose! Come and look!" called Dr. Henshawe, in her soft amused voice, and they looked down together from the dark window of the study. "The poor young man," said Dr. Henshawe tenderly. Dr. Henshawe was in her seventies. She was a former English professor, fastidious and lively. She had a lame leg, but a still youthful my charming tilted head, with white braids wound around it. She called Patrick poor be she he was in love, and perhaps also because he was a male, doomed to push and blunder. Even from up here he looked stubborn and pitiable, determined and dependent, sitting out there in the cold. "Guarding the door," Dr. Henshawe said. "Oh, Rose!" Another time she said disturbingly, "Oh, dear, I'm afraid he is after the wrong girl." Rose didn't like her saying that. She didn't like her laughing at Patrick. She didn't like Patrick sitting out on the steps that way, either. He was asking to be laughed at. He was the most vulnerable person Rose had ever known; he made himself so, didn't know anything about protecting himself. But he was also full of cruel judgements, he was full of conceit. Carried Away: a personal collection stories "The Beggar Maid" Alice Munro
Gravel
1. multiple small calculi formed in the kidneys. 2. the disease characterized by such concretions. My delay in answering your letter, for which I beg pardon, is due to a bout of ill health. I had an attack of the gravel and a rheumatism of the stomach worse than any misery they ever fell upon me before. I am somewhat improved at present and will be able to go about as usual by next week if all continues to mend. As to the question of the young woman's sanity. I do not know what your Doctor will say but I have thought on this and questioned the Divinity and my belief is this. It may well be that so early in the marriage her submission to her husband was not complete and there would be carelessness about her comfort, and naughty words, and quarrelsome behavior, as well as the hurtful sulks and silenced her sex is prone to. Carried Away: a personal collection stories "The Wilderness Station" Alice Munro
Blinkered
1. narrow-minded and subjective; unwilling to understand another viewpoint: When in the Oval Office, Hoover was blinkered by his distrust of government.2. having blinkers on; fitted with blinkers: a blinkered racehorse. The houses were built for lifetimes and the yards were wide and the streets were lined with mature elm and maple trees. She had never been here when the leaves were on the trees. It must make a great difference. So much that lay open now would be concealed. She was glad of a fresh start, her sported were hushed and grateful. She had made fresh starts before and things had not turned out as she had hoped, but she believed in the swift decision, the unforeseen intervention, the uniqueness of her fate. The town was full of the smell of horses. As evening came on, the blinkered horses with feathered hooves pulled the sleighs across the bridge, past the hotel, beyond the streetlights, down the dark side roads. Somewhere out in the country they would lose the sound of each other's bells. Carried Away: a personal collection stories "Carried Away" Alice Munro
Dictatorial
1. of or relating to a dictator or dictatorship. 2. appropriate to, or characteristic of, a dictator; absolute; unlimited: dictatorial powers in wartime. 3. inclined to dictate or command; imperious; overbearing: a dictatorial attitude. One thing she has noticed about married women, and that is how many of them have to go about creating their husbands. They have to start ascribing preferences, opinions, dictatorial ways. Oh, yes, they say, my husband is very particular. He won't touch turnips. He won't eat fried meat. (Or he will only eat fried meat.) He likes me to wear blue (brown) all the time. He can't stand organ music. He hates to see a woman go out bareheaded. He would kill me if I took one puff of tobacco. This way, bewildered, sidelong-looking men are made over, made into husbands, heads of households. Almeda Roth cannot imagine herself doing that. She wants a man who doesn't have to be made, who is firm already and determined and mysterious to her. She does not look for companionship. Men-except her father-seem to her deprived in some way, incurious. No doubt that is necessary, so that they will do what they have to do. Would she herself, knowing that there was salt in the earth, discover how to get it out and sell it? Not likely. She would be thinking about the ancient sea. That kind of speculation is what Jarvis Poulter has, quite properly, no time for. Carried Away: a personal collection stories "Meneseteung" Alice Munro
Repletion
1. the condition of being abundantly supplied or filled; fullness.2. overfullness resulting from excessive eating or drinking; surfeit. She let him take her hands, half lift her from her chair. He turned out the dining-room lights as they went out. Up the stairs they went, that they had so often climbed separately. Past the picture of the dog on his master's grave, and Highland Mary singing in the field, and the old King with his bulgy eyes, his look of indulgence and repletion. Carried Away: a personal collection stories "Carried Away" Alice Munro
Importunate
1. urgent or persistent in solicitation, sometimes annoyingly so 2. pertinacious, as solicitations or demands 3. troublesome; annoying: importunate demands from the children for attention. Later, when I knew more, at least about sex, I decided that Brian was Herb's lover, and that Gladys really was trying to get attention from Herb, and that was why Brian had humiliated her-with or without Herb's connivance and consent. Isn't it true that people like Herb-dignified, secretive, honorable people-will often choose somebody like Brian, will waste their helpless lives on some vicious, silly person who is not even evil, or a monster, but just some importunate nuisance? Carried Away: a personal collection stories "The Turkey Season" Alice Munro
The chosen thing
<phrase> a carefully selected element; recherche item In Milady's window there were two mannequins wearing suits with quite short skirts and boxy jackets. One suit was rusty-gold color and the other a soft deep green. Big gaudy paper maple leaves were scattered round the mannequins' feet and pasted here and there on the window. At the time of year when most people's concern was to rake up leaves and burn them, here they were the chosen thing. Hateship, Friendship, Courtship, Loveship, Marriage "Hateship, Friendship, Courtship, Loveship, Marriage" Alice Munro
Sallow
Sallow- adj. of a sickly, yellowish or lightish brown color: sallow cheeks; a sallow complexion. verb (used with object) to make sallow. Nelson looked older than he was. He was short and sturdily built, sallow-skinned, unsmiling, with a suggestion of mature scorn and handy pugnaciousness laid over his features, so that it seemed he might be a hockey coach, or an intelligent, uneducated, fair-minded and foul-mouthed foreman of a construction gang, rather than a shy, twenty-two-year-old student. He was not shy in love. I found him resourceful and determined. The seduction was mutual, and it was a first affair for both of us. I had once heard somebody say, at a party, that one of the nice things about marriage was that you could have real affairs-an affair before marriage could always turn out to be nothing but courtship. I was disgusted by this speech, and frightened to think that life could be so bleak and trivial. But once my own affair with Nelson started, I was amazed all the time. There was no bleakness or triviality about it, only ruthlessness and clarity of desire, and sparkling deception. Carried Away: a personal collection stories "The Albanian Virgin " Alice Munro
Flibbert
Southwest English dialectal small piece or bit; Dialectal-of a dialect; characterstic of a dialect Flo goes across to Hanratty, the better part of town, to shop, but also to see people, and listen to them. Among the people she listened to were Mrs. Lawyer Davies, Mrs. Anglican Rector Henley-Smith, and Mrs. Horse-Doctor McKay. She came home and imitated their flibberty voices. Monsters, she made them seem, of foolishness, and showiness, and self-approbation. She tries again looking at the kitchen floor, that clever and comforting geometrical arrangement, instead of looking at him or his belt. How can this go on in front of such daily witnesses-the linoleum, the calendar with the mill and creek autumn trees, the old accommodating pots and pans? Hold out your hand! Those things aren't going to help her, none of them can rescue her. They turn bland and useless, even unfriendly. Pots can show malice, the patterns of linoleum can leer up at you, treachery is the other side of dailiness. Carried Away: a personal collection stories "Royal Beatings" Alice Munro
Verge
edge of something I have found the golf course-I think it the right one, though the ragged verges have been cleaned up and there is a fancier clubhouse. Hateship, Friendship, Courtship, Loveship, Marriage "Nettles" Alice Munro
Niblick
a club with an iron head, the face of which has the greatest slope of all the irons, for hitting the ball with maximum loft. I had never been on a golf course. I had seen the game being played on television, once or twice and never by choice, and I had an idea that some of the clubs were called irons, or some of the irons clubs, and that there was one of them called a niblick, and that the course itself was called the links. When I told him this Mike said, "Maybe you're going to be awfully bored." Hateship, Friendship, Courtship, Loveship, Marriage "Nettles" Alice Munro
Cruet
a glass bottle, especially one for holding vinegar, oil, etc., for the table The white tablecloths were changed every week and in the meantime were protected by oilcloth mats. In winter, the dining room smelled of these mats wiped by a kitchen rag, and of coal fumes from the furnace, and beef gravy and dried potatoes and onions-a smell not unpleasant to anybody coming in hungry from the cold. On each table was a little cruet stand with the bottle of brown sauce, the bottle of tomato sauce, and the pot of horseradish. Carried Away: a personal collection stories "Carried Away" Alice Munro
Taffeta
a medium-weight or light-weight fabric of acetate, nylon, rayon, or silk, usually smooth, crisp, and lustrous, plain-woven, and with a fine crosswise rib effect. Along one wall was a rack of evening dresses, all fit for belles of the ball with their net and taffeta, their dreamy colors. And behind them, in a glass case so no profane fingers could get at them, half a dozen wedding gowns, pure white froth or vanilla satin or ivory lace, embroidered in silver beads or seed pearls. Tiny bodices, scalloped necklines, lavish skirts. Even when she was younger she could have never contemplated such extravagance, not just in the matter of money but in expectations, in the preposterous hope of transformation, and bliss. Hateship, Friendship, Courtship, Loveship, Marriage "Family Furnishings" Alice Munro
Piles
a nontechnical name for haemorrhoids from Latin pilae balls (referring to the appearance of external piles Clark had fights not just with the people he owed money to. His friendliness, compelling at first, could suddenly turn sour. There were places he would not go into, where he always made Carla go because of some row. The drugstore was one such place. An old woman had pushed in front of him-that is, she had gone to get something she'd forgotten and come back and pushed in front, rather than going to the end of the line, and he complained, and the cashier had said to him, "She has emphysema," and Clark had said, "Is that so? I have piles, myself," and the manager had been summoned, to say that was uncalled for. Carried Away: a personal collection stories "Runaway" Alice Munro
Dislocation
n. the act of dislocating (to throw out of order; upset; disorder: Frequent strikes dislocated the economy.) Or they might be in Aubrey's room. But he did not know where that was. The more he explored this place, the more cooridors and seating spaces and ramps he discovered and in his wanderings he was still apt to get lost. He would take a certain picture or chair as a landmark, and the next week whatever he had chosen seemed to have been placed somewhere else. He didn't like to mention this to Kristy, lest she think he was suffering some mental dislocations of his own. He supposed this constant change and rearranging might be for the sake of the residents-to make their daily exercises more interesting. Carried Away: a personal collection stories "The Bear Came Over the Mountain" Alice Munro
Flange
a projecting rim, collar, or ring on a shaft, pipe, machine housing, etc., cast or formed to give additional strength, stiffness, or supporting area, or to provide a place for the attachment of other objects. "On Friday morning last there occurred in the sawmill operation of Douds factory a particularly ghastly and tragic accident. Mr. Jack Agnew, in reaching under the main shaft, had the misfortune to have his sleeve caught by a setscrew in an adjoining flunge, so that his arm and shoulder were drawn under the shaft. His head in consequence was brought in contact with the circular saw, that saw being about one foot in diameter. In an instant the unfortunate young man's head was separated from his body, being severed at an angle below the left ear and through the neck. His death is believed to have been instantaneous. He never spoke or uttered a cry so it was not by any sound of his but by the spurt and shower of his blood that his fellow-workers were horribly alerted to the disaster." This account was reprinted in the paper a week later for those who might have missed it or who wished to have an extra copy to send to friends or relations out of town (particularly to people who used to live in Carstairs and did not anymore.) The misspelling of flange was corrected. Carried Away: a personal collection stories "Carried Away" Alice Munro
Cupbearer
a servant who fills and serves wine cups, as in a royal palace or at an elaborate banquet "The moons of Jupiter were the first heavenly bodies discovered with the telescope." He said this gravely, as if he could see the sentence in an old book. "It wasn't Galileo named them, either; it was some German. Io, Europa, Ganymede, Callisto. There you are." "Yes." "Io and Europa, they were girlfriends of Jupiter's, weren't they? Ganymede was a boy. A shepherd? I don't know who Callisto was." "I think she was a girlfriend too," I said. "Jupiter's wife-Jove's wife-changed her into a bear and stuck her up in the sky. Great Bear and Little Bear. Little Bear was her baby." The loudspeaker said that it was time for visitors to go. "I'll see you when you come out of the anesthetic," I said. "Yes." When I was at the door, he called to me, "Ganymede wasn't any shepherd. He was Jove's cupbearer." Carried Away: a personal collection stories "Moons of Jupiter" Alice Munro
Baize
a soft, usually green, woolen or cotton fabric resembling felt, used chiefly for the tops of billiard tables. (My example: The skin on his face looked liked the faded baize of an abused pool table.) We got up and started to collect the dishes. Working close to each other in the small space between the kitchen table and counter and the refrigerator, we soon developed without speaking about it a certain order and harmony of scraping for storage and filling the sink with hot, soapy water and pouncing on any piece of cutlery that hadn't been touched and slipping it into the baize-lined drawer in the dining-room buffet Hateship, Friendship, Courtship, Loveship, Marriage "Family Furnishings" Alice Munro
Watercourse
a stream of water, as a river or brook And the gravel pits were simply for leaping into, with the shouts of animals leaping on their prey, after a furious run through the long grass. If it had been earlier in the year, Mike said, when these held more water, we could have built a raft. That project was considered, with regard to the river. But the river in August was almost as much a stony road as it was a watercourse, and instead of trying to float down it or swim in it we took off our shoes and waded-jumping from one bare bone-white rock to another and slipping on the scummy rocks below the surface, plowing through mats of flat-leaves water lilies and other water plants whose names I can't recall or never knew (wild parsnip, water hemlock?). I went back to living as I had lived before they came. Hateship, Friendship, Courtship, Loveship, Marriage "Nettles" Alice Munro
Tulle
a thin, fine, machine-made net of acetate, nylon, rayon, or silk. Origin: French, after Tulle, France, where first made Once, when my children were little, my father said to me, "You know those years you were growing up-well, that's all just kind of a blur to me. I can't sort out one year from another." I was offended. I remembered each separate year with pain and clarity. I could have told how old I was when I went to look at the evening dresses in the window of Benbow's Ladies' Wear. Every week through the winter a new dress, spotlit-the sequins and tulle, the rose and lilac, sapphire, daffodil-and me a cold worshipper on the slushy sidewalk. Carried Away: a personal collection stories "Moons of Jupiter" Alice Munro
Woodlot
a tract, especially on a farm, set aside for trees The meandering creeks have been straightened, turned into ditches with high, muddy banks. Some of the crop fields and pasture fields are fenced with big, clumsy uprooted stumps; others are held in crude stickers of rail fences. The trees have all been cleared back to the woodlots. And the woodlots are all second growth. Of course, Almeda in her observations cannot escape words. She may think she can, but she can't. Soon this glowing and swelling begins to suggest words-not specific words but a flow of words somewhere, just about ready to make themselves known to her. Poems, even. Yes, again, poems. Or one poem. Isn't that the idea-one very great poem that will contain everything and, oh, that will make all the other poems, the poems she has written, inconsequential, mere trial and error, mere rags? Stars and flowers and birds and trees and angels in the snow and dead children at twilight-that is not the half of it. You have to get in the obscene racket on Pearl Street and the polished toe of Jarvis Poulter's boot and the plucked-chicken haunch with its blue-black flower. Almeda is a long way now from human sympathies or fears of cozy household considerations. She doesn't think about what could be done for that woman or about keeping Jarvis Poulter's dinner warm and hanging his long underwear on the line. She has to think of so many things at once-Champlain and the naked Indians and the salt deep in the earth, but as well as the salt the money, the money-making intent brewing forever in heads like Jarvis Poulter's. Also the brutal storms of winter and the clumsy and benighted deeds on Pearl Street. The changes of climate are often violent, and if you think about it there is no peace even in the stars. All this can be borne only if it is channeled into a poem, and the word channelled is appropriate, because the name of the poem will be-it is- "The Meneseteung." Carried Away: a personal collection stories "Meneseteung" Alice Munro
Out of my jurisdiction
above my pay grade; not something that concerns me or am willing to comment on My father had said that Alfrida was living alone now. I asked him what had become of Bill. He said that all of that was outside of his jurisdiction. But he believed there had been a bit of a rescue operation. "Of Bill? How come? Who by?" "Well, I believe there was a wife." "I met him at Alfrida's once. I liked him." "People did. Women." Hateship, Friendship, Courtship, Loveship, Marriage "Family Furnishings" Alice Munro
Trousseau
an outfit of clothing, household linen, etc., for a bride My mother could not say who the Cameronians were or why they were called that. Some freak religion from Scotland, she said from the perch of her obedient and lighthearted Anglicanism. The teacher always boarded with the Grieveses, and my mother was a little daunted at the thought of going to live in that black board house with its paralytic Sundays and coal-oil lamps and primitive notions. But she was engaged by that time, she wanted to work on her trousseau instead of running around the country having a good time, and she figured she could get home one Sunday out of three. Carried Away: a personal collection stories "Friend of my Youth" Alice Munro
Approbation
approval; commendation; official approval or sanction What are we doing this for, I thought, and the answer came-to show off. To give Andrew's mother and my father the pleasure of seeing their grandchildren. That was our duty. But beyond that we wanted to show them something. What strenuous children we were, Andrew and I, what relentless seekers of approbation. It was as if at some point we had received an unforgettable, indigestible message-that we were far from satisfactory, and that the most commonplace success in life was probably beyond us. Roger dealt out such messages, of course-that was his style-but Andrew's mother, my own mother and father couldn't have meant to do so. All they meant to tell us was "Watch out. Get along." My father, when I was in high school, teased me that I was getting to think I was so smart I would never find a boyfriend. He would have forgotten that in a week. I never forgot it. Andrew and I didn't forget things. We took umbrage. Carried Away: a personal collection stories "Miles City, Montana" Alice Munro
Fluttery
fluttering; apt to flutter. Day by day. But things really didn't change back and forth, and he didn't get used to the way they were. Fiona was the one who seemed to get used to him, but only as some persistent visitor who took a special interest in her. Or perhaps even as a nuisance who must be prevented, according to her old rules of courtesy, from realizing that he was one. She treated him with a distracted, social sort of kindness that was successful in holding him back from the most obvious, the most necessary question. He could not demand of her whether she did or did not remember him as her husband of nearly fifty years. He got the impression that she would be embarrassed by such a question-embarrassed not for herself but for him. She would have laughed in a fluttery way and mortified him with her politeness and bewilderment, and somehow she would have ended up not saying either yes or no. If she would have said either one in a way that gave not the least satisfaction. Carried Away: a personal collection stories "The Bear Came Over the Mountain" Alice Munro
Balky
given to balking; stubborn; obstinate: a balky mule. "You flare up," said Carla. "That's what men do." She had not said anything to him about his row with Joy Tucker. Joy Tucker was the librarian from town who boarded her horse with them. The horse was a little chestnut mare named Lizzie-Joy Tucker, when she was in a jokey mood, called her Lizzie Borden. Yesterday she had driven out, not in a jokey mood at all, and complained about the roof's not being fixed yet, and Lizzie looking miserable, as if she might have caught a chill. There was nothing the matter with Lizzie, actually. Clark has tried-for him-to be placating. But then it was Joy Tucker who flared up and said that their place was a dump, and Lizzie deserved better, and Clark said, "Suit yourself." Joy had not-or not yet-removed Lizzie, as Carla had expected. But Clark, who had formerly made the little mare his pet, had refused to have anything more to do with her. Lizzie's feelings were hurt, in consequence-she was balky when exercised and kicked up a fuss when her hoofs had to be picked out, as they did every day, lest they develop fungus. Carla had to watch out for nips. Carried Away: a personal collection stories "Runaway" Alice Munro
Dappled
having spots of a different shade, tone, or color from the background; mottled I wished for the days when I was little, before we had the turkeys. We had cows, and sold the milk to the cheese factory. A turkey farm is nothing like as pretty as a dairy farm or a sheep farm. You can see that the turkeys are on a straight path to becoming frozen carcasses and table meat. They don't have the pretense of a life of their own, a browsing idyll, that cattle have or pigs in the dappled orchard. Turkey barns are long, efficient buildings-tin sheds. No beams or bay or warm stables. Even the smell of guano seems thinner and more offensive than the usual smell of stable manure. No hints there of hay coils and rail fences and songbirds and the flowering hawthorn. The turkeys were all let out into one long field, which they picked clean. They didn't look like great birds there but like fluttering laundry. Carried Away: a personal collection stories "Miles City, Montana" Alice Munro
Opium-dream
keff, narcosis, illusory high Sometimes they may report that they have taken numerous lovers, but those lovers will be all imaginary and the woman who thinks herself a prodigy of vice will in fact be quite chaste and untouched. For all this he-the doctor-lays blame on the sort of reading that is available to these females, whether it is of ghosted or demons or of love escapades with Lords and Dukes and suchlike. For many, these tales are a passing taste given up when life's real duties intervene. For others they are indulged in now and then, as if they were sweets or sherry wine, but for some there is complete surrender and living within them just as in an opium-dream. He could not get an account of her reading from the young woman, but he believes she may by now have forgotten what she has read, or conceals the matter out of slyness. Carried Away: a personal collection stories "The Wilderness Station" Alice Munro
Privation
lack of the usual comforts or necessaries of life: His life of privation began to affect his health.an instance of this. the act of depriving.the state of being deprived. I would often think of this meal in the years that followed, when this kind of food, this informal way of sitting and eating and even some version of the style of the untidiness of the room, would become familiar and fashionable. The people I knew, and I myself would give up-for a while-on dining-room tables, matching wine glasses, to some extent on cutlery or chairs. When I was being entertained or making a stab at entertaining people, in this way, I would think of Charlotte and Gjurdhi and the edge of true privation, the risky authenticity that marked them off from all these later imitations. At the time, it was all new to me, and I was both uneasy and delighted. I hoped to be worthy of such exoticism but not to be tried too far. The change in the apartment building seemed to have some message for me. It was about vanishing. I knew that Charlotte and Gjurdhi had not actually vanished-they were somewhere, living or dead. But for me they had vanished. And because of this fact-not really because of any loss of them- I was tipped into dismay more menacing than any of the little eddies of regret that had caught me in the past year. I had lost my bearings. I had to get back to the store so my clerk could go home, but I felt as if I could as easily walk another way, just any way at all. My connection was in danger-that was all. Sometimes our connection is frayed, it is in danger, it seems lost. Views and streets deny knowledge of us, the air grows thin. Wouldn't we rather have a destiny to submit to, then, something that claims us, anything, instead of such flimsy choices, arbitrary days? I let myself slip, then into imagining a life with Nelson. Carried Away: a personal collection stories "The Albanian Virgin " Alice Munro
Bedraggled
limp and soiled, as with rain or dirt She had dreamt of Flora last night and the night before. In the first dream Flora had walked right up to the bed with a red apple in her mouth, but in the second dream-last night-she had run away when she saw Carla coming. Her leg seemed to be hurt but she ran anyway. She led Carla to a barbed-wire barricade of the kind that might belong till on some battlefield, and then she-Flora-slipped through it, hurt leg and all, just slithered through like a white eel and disappeared. The horses had seen Carla go across to the ring and they had all walked up to the fence-looking bedraggled in spite of their New Zealand blankets-so that she would take notice of them on her way back. She talked quietly to them, apologizing for coming empty-handed. She stroked their necks and rubbed their noses and asked whether they knew anything about Flora. Grace and Juniper snorted and nuzzled up, as if they recognized the name and shared her concern, but then Lizzie butted in between them and knocked Grace's head away from Carla's petting hand. She gave the hand a nip for good measure, and Carla had to spend some time scolding her. Carried Away: a personal collection stories "Runaway" Alice Munro
Pocked
marked with pustules or with pits left by them; pitted There had been a thaw. Plenty of snow was left, but the dazzling hard landscape of earlier winter had crumbled. These pocked heaps under a gray sky looked like refuse in the fields. Carried Away: a personal collection stories "The Bear Came Over the Mountain" Alice Munro
Gimcrack
noun a showy, useless trifle; gewgaw. adjective showy but useless. And Fiona in particular hated the smell of urine and bleach that hung about, hated the perfunctory bouquets of plastic flowers in niches in the dim, low-ceilinged corridors. Now that building was gone, though it had dated only from the fifties. Just as Mr. Farquar's house was gone, replaced by a gimcrack sort of castle that was the weekend home of some people from Toronto. The new Meadowland was an airy, vaulted building whose air was faintly pleasantly pine-scented. Profuse and genuine greenery sprouted out of giant crocks. Carried Away: a personal collection stories "The Bear Came Over the Mountain" Alice Munro
Mulish
of or like a mule, as being very stubborn, obstinate, or intractable Meadowlake was short on mirrors, so he did not have to catch sight of himself stalking and prowling. But every once in a while it came to him how foolish and pathetic and perhaps unhinged he must look, trailing around after Fiona and Aubrey. And having no luck in confronting her, or him. Less and less sure of what right he had to be in the scene but unable to withdraw. Even at home, while he worked at his desk or cleaned up the house or shoveled snow when necessary, some ticking metronome in his mind was fixed on Meadowlake, on his next visit. Sometimes he seemed to himself like a mulish boy conducting a hopeless courtship, sometimes like one of those wretched who follow celebrated women through the streets, convinced that one day these women will turn around and recognize their love. Carried Away: a personal collection stories "The Bear Came Over the Mountain" Alice Munro
Skald
one of the ancient Scandinavian poets What he felt was mainly a gigantic increase in well-being. A tendency to pudginess that he had had since he was twelve years old disappeared. He ran up steps two at a time. He appreciated as never before a pageant of torn clouds and winter sunset seen from his office window, the charm of antique lamps glowing between his neighbors' living-room curtains, the cries of children in the park at dusk, unwilling to leave the hill where they'd been tobogganing. Come summer, he learned the names of flowers. In his classroom, after coaching by his nearly voiceless mother-in-law (her affliction was cancer of the throat), he risked reciting and then translating the majestic gory ode, the head-ransom, the Hofuolausn, composed to honor King Eric Blood-axe by the skald whom that king had condemned to death. (And who was then, by the same king-and by the power of poetry-set free.) All applauded-even the peaceniks in the class whom he'd cheerfully taunted earlier, asking if they would like to wait in the hall. Driving home that day or maybe another he found an absurd and blasphemous quotation running in his head. "And so he increased in wisdom and stature-And in favor with God and man." That embarrassed him at the time and gave him a superstitious chill. As it did yet. But so long as nobody knew, it seemed not unnatural. Carried Away: a personal collection stories "The Bear Came Over the Mountain" Alice Munro
Workaday
ordinary; commonplace; everyday; prosai On one side there was a big smooth whitish stone that bulged out and dominated all the others, and so that side had to me an expansive and public air, and I would always choose to climb that way rather than on the other side, where the stones were darker and cling together in a more mean-spirited way. Each of the trees in the place had likewise an attitude and a presence-the elm looked serene and the oak threatening, the maples friendly and workaday, the hawthorn old and crabby. Hateship, Friendship, Courtship, Loveship, Marriage "Nettles" Alice Munro
Soft-soap
persuasive talk; flattery: to use soft soap to get one's way. This time she didn't look as if she'd been stuck into the garment for a joke. The woman came and stood beside her, and laughed, but with relief. "It's the color of your eyes. You don't need to wear velvet. You've got velvet eyes." That was the kind of soft-soaping Johanna would have felt bound to scoff at, except that at the moment it seemed to be true. Her eyes were not large, and if asked to describe their color she would have said, "I guess they're a kind of a brown but now they looked to be a really deep brown, soft and shining. Hateship, Friendship, Courtship, Loveship, Marriage "Hateship, Friendship, Courtship, Loveship, Marriage" Alice Munro
Eatable
pl n (sometimes singular) food When the show was over I sat in my seat while the children clambered across me, making no comments on anything they had just seen or heard. They were pestering their keepers for eatable and further entertainments. An effort had been made to get their attention, to take it away from canned pop and potato chips and fix it on various knowns and unknowns and horrible immensities, and it seemed to have failed. A good thing too, I thought. Children have a natural immunity, most of them, and it shouldn't be tampered with. As for the adults who would deplore it, the ones who promoted this show, weren't they immune themselves to the extent that they could put in the echo-chamber effects, the music, the church like solemnity, simulating the awe that they supposed they ought to feel? Awe-what was that supposed to be? A fit of the shivers when you looked out the window? Once you know what it was, you wouldn't be courting it. Carried Away: a personal collection stories "Moons of Jupiter" Alice Munro
Hiding
severe beating; flogging; thrashing. "Go on up to your room now! Hurry!" Rose goes up the stairs, stumbling, letting herself stumble, letting herself fall against the steps. She doesn't bang her door because a gesture like that could still bring him after her, and anyway, she is weak. She lies on the bed. She can hear through the stovepipe hole Flo snuffling and remonstrating, her father saying angrily that Flo should have kept quiet then, if she did not want Rose punished she should not have recommended it. Flo says she never recommended a hiding like that. Carried Away: a personal collection stories "Royal Beatings" Alice Munro
Doddering/doddery
shaky or trembling, as from old age; tottering: a doddering old man. I thought he was just one of those men who wander in off the street, alone, and stand looking about, as if trying to figure out what sort of place this is or what the books are for. Not a drunk or a panhandler, and certainly not anybody to be worried about-just one of a number of shabby, utterly uncommunicative old men who belong to the city somewhat as the pigeons do moving restlessly all day within a limited area, never looking at people's faces. He was wearing a coat that came down to his ankles, made of some shiny, rubberized, liver-colored material, and a brown velvet cap with a tassel. The sort of cap a doddery old scholar or a clergyman might wear in an English movie. Carried Away: a personal collection stories "The Albanian Virgin " Alice Munro
Shantung
silk fabric weave from province of Shangdong A few women must have come from home, because they were wearing summer dresses and sandals and trying to keep track of small children. Louisa thought that they would not care at all for the way she was dressed-fashionably, as always, in beige shantung with a crimson silk tam-but she noticed, just then, a woman more elegantly got up than she was, in green silk with her dark hair drawn tightly back, tied with a green-and-hood scarf. She might have been forty-her face was worn, but beautiful. Carried Away: a personal collection stories "Carried Away" Alice Munro
Scalloped
technique is a series of convex curves, commonly at the edge of a piece of fabric fabric, that look the edge of a scallop shell when repeated This time she didn't look as if she'd been stuck into the garment for a joke. The woman came and stood beside her, and laughed, but with relief. "It's the color of your eyes. You don't need to wear velvet. You've got velvet eyes." That was the kind of soft-soaping Johanna would have felt bound to scoff at, except that at the moment it seemed to be true. Her eyes were not large, and if asked to describe their color she would have said, "I guess they're a kind of a brown but now they looked to be a really deep brown, soft and shining. Hateship, Friendship, Courtship, Loveship, Marriage "Hateship, Friendship, Courtship, Loveship, Marriage" Alice Munro
Leaf out
to produce leafs When I had walked for over an hour, I saw a drugstore that was open. I went in and had a cup of coffee. The coffee was reheated, black and bitter, it's taste was medicinal, exactly what I needed. I was already feeling relieved, and now I began to feel happy. Such happiness, to be alone. To see the hot late-afternoon light on the sidewalk outside, the branches of a tree just out in leaf, throwing their skimpy shadows. To hear from the back of the shop the sounds of the ball game that the man who had served me was listening to on the radio. I did not think of the story I would make about Alfrida-not of that in particular-but of the work I wanted to do, which seemed more like grabbing something out of the air than constructing stories. The cries of the crowd came to me like big heartbeats, full of sorrows. Lovely formal sounding waves, with their distant, almost inhuman assent and lamentation. This was what I wanted, this was what I thought I had to pay attention to, this was how I wanted my life to be. Hateship, Friendship, Courtship, Loveship, Marriage "Family Furnishings" Alice Munro
Remonstrate
to say or plead in protest, objection, or disapproval "Go on up to your room now! Hurry!" Rose goes up the stairs, stumbling, letting herself stumble, letting herself fall against the steps. She doesn't bang her door because a gesture like that could still bring him after her, and anyway, she is weak. She lies on the bed. She can hear through the stovepipe hole Flo snuffling and remonstrating, her father saying angrily that Flo should have kept quiet then, if she did not want Rose punished she should not have recommended it. Flo says she never recommended a hiding like that. Carried Away: a personal collection stories "Royal Beatings" Alice Munro
Twiddle
to turn about or play with lightly or idly, especially with the fingers; twirl I knew that the birds man was talking about sex, though I don't think I knew the word "sex." And I hated him for that even more than I usually hated him. Specifically, he was wrong. We didn't go in for any showings and rubbings and guilty intimacies-there was none of that bothered search for hiding places, none of the twiddling pleasure and frustration and immediate, raw shame. Hateship, Friendship, Courtship, Loveship, Marriage "Nettles" Alice Munro
Caper
v. to leap or skip about in a sprightly manner; prance; frisk; gambol. noun 1. a playful leap or skip. 2. a prank or trick; harebrained escapade.3. a frivolous, carefree episode or activity. 4. Slang.a criminal or illegal act, as a burglary or robbery. s hortening of capriole Capriole-a caper or leap. Manège.a movement in which the horse jumps up with its forelegs well drawn in, kicks out with its hind legs in a horizontal position in the air, and then lands again on the same spot. verb (used without object), cap·ri·oled, cap·ri·ol·ing. to execute a capriole. Ménage-the art of training and riding horses.; the action, movements, or paces of a trained horse.; a school for training horses and teaching horsemanship. She got out the potatoes and began to peel them, but her tears would not stop and she could not see what she was doing. She wiped her face with a paper towel and tore off a fresh one to take with her and went out into the rain. She didn't go into the barn because it was too miserable in there without Flora. She walked along the lane back to the woods. The horses were in the other field. They came over to the fence to watch her. All of them except Lizzie, who capered and snorted a bit, had the sense to understand that her attention was elsewhere. Carried Away: a personal collection stories "Runaway" Alice Munro
Scudding
v. to run or move quickly or hurriedly. n. 1. the act of scudding. 2. clouds, spray, or mist driven by the wind; a driving shower or gust of wind 3. low-drifting clouds appearing beneath a cloud from which precipitation is falling. The sun was shining, as it had been for some time. When they sat at lunch it had made the wineglasses sparkle. No rush had fallen since early morning. There was enough of a wind blowing to lift the roadside grass, the flowering weeds out of their drenched clumps. Summer clouds, not rain clouds were scudding across the sky. The whole countryside was changing, shaking itself loose, into the true brightness of a July day. And as they sped along she was able to see not much trace at all of the recent past-no big puddles in the fields, showing where the seed had washed out, no miserable spindly cornstalks or lodged grain. Carried Away: a personal collection stories "Runaway" Alice Munro
Marcel
v. to wave (the hair) by means of special irons, producing the effect of regular, continuous waves (marcel waves ). noun a marcelling; a marcelled condition. By Spring a nurse had arrived. That was the way things were done. People died at home, and a nurse came in to manage it. The nurse's name was Audrey Atkinson. She was a stout woman with corsets as stiff as barrel hoops, marcelled hair the color of brass candlesticks, a mouth shaped by lipstick beyond its own stingy outlines. Carried Away: a personal collection stories "Friend of my Youth" Alice Munro
Ecru
very light brown in color, as raw silk, unbleached linen, etc. "Can you get the milk out of them or does your father have to?" Beryl said. "Is it hard to do?" I pulled some milk down through the cow's teat. One of the barn cats came over and waited. I shot a thin stream into its mouth. The cat and I were both showing off. "Doesn't that hurt?" said Beryl. "Think if it was you." I had never though of a cow's teat as corresponding to any part of myself, and was shaken by this indecency. In fact, I could never grasp a warm, warty teat in such a firm and casual way again. Beryl slept in a peach-colored rayon nightgown trimmed with ecru lace. She had a robe to match. She was just as careful about the word ecru as Mr. Florence was about his royal blue and pearly gray. Carried Away: a personal collection stories "The Progress of Love" Alice Munro