Tag Archives: word #12

Suffice

Suffice (verb) – to meet or suffice a need

Source: https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/suffice

From “How to date a brown girl (black girl, white girl, or halfie)” by Junot Diaz

I came across this word while reading “How to date a brown girl (black girl, white girl, or halfie)” by Junot Diaz. It appears around the end of the reading, as the author talks about all the possible outcomes that could come with talking to that girl. It caught my interest because it’s a word that i’ve heard before but isn’t used quite often. So i’m curious as to how it ties in with the sentence and the author’s overall point.

“She might kiss you and then go, or she might, if she’s reckless, give it up, but that’s rare. kissing will suffice.” (Diaz).

After reading the definition of the word I better understand the context of how the author was using it in that part of the text. As seen in the quote, the author is discribing how the girl would react with you if you do said set of steps and how u would behave depending on the situation.

Dandelion

Dandelion (noun) : any of a genus (Taraxacum) of yellow-flowered composite herbs with milky sap; especially : one (T. officinale) sometimes grown as a potherb and nearly cosmopolitan as a weed

The Shawl by Cynthia Ozick

” On the other side of the steel fence, far away, there were green meadows speckled with dandelion and deep-colored violets; beyond them, even farther, innocent tiger lilies, tall, lifting their orange bonnets.”

This statement describes Rose’s pain about that her daughter will die and she has no choice and let her go otherwise they all would die.

https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/dandelion

Laceration

Project 2 Glossary Annotation

  • Laceration  (noun) – a torn and ragged wound

Source: https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/laceration

From: “Quicksand” by Nella Larsen, Chapter 15 Page 118

“Helga let that pass because she couldn’t, she felt, explain. It would be too difficult, too mortifying. She had no words which could adequately, and without laceration to her pride, convey to him the pitfalls into which very easily they might step. “I might,” she said, “have considered it once—when I first came. But you, hoping for a more informal arrangement, waited too long. You missed the moment. I had time to think. Now I couldn’t. Nothing is worth the risk. We might come to hate each other. I’ve been through it, or something like it. I know. I couldn’t do it. And I’m glad.”

Here, the word laceration is used to show that Helga does not want to hurt her pride to argue with Axel Olsen about marriage. Axel Olsen proposed Helga for marriage, but Helga refused it by using the excuse of racial difference. In her argument, Helga doesn’t want to marry a white man because she has suffered from the interracial marriage of her parents.