Category Archives: Glossary

Lapis

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Lapis (Lapis Lazuli)
noun

Semiprecious stone valued for its deep-blue colour caused by the presence of the mineral lazurite, which is the source of the pigment ultramarine. Lapis lazuli is not a single mineral but an intergrowth lazurite with calcite, pyroxene, and commonly small grains of pyrite. The most important mines are in Afghanistan and Chile. Much of what is sold as lapis is an artificially dyed jasper from Germany that shows colourless specks of clear, crystallized quartz and never the goldlike flecks of pyrite that are characteristic of lapis lazuli.

Source: Merriam-Webster

“Her lapis doves and tinseled mountains are misplaced and glorified behind plates of glass at museums.”

The word lapis here has the significance of color, but also goes back to the fact that one of the most important mines of this mineral is in Afghanistan, where the main character is from.

Talisman

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Talisman
noun

1:  an object held to act as a charm to avert evil and bring good fortune
2:  something producing apparently magical or miraculous effects

Source: Merriam-Webster
“In an apartment overlooking a blue-gray street, her mother’s veil hangs on the wall like a talisman.”
From: What the Scar Revealed, by Zohra Saed

The understanding of the word “talisman” is important to get the sense of the mystical that is being conveyed in the story.

Tinseled

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Tinseled/Tinsel
noun

1:  threads, strips, or sheets of metal, paper, or plastic used to produce a glittering and sparkling appearance in fabrics, yarns, or decorations
2:  something superficially attractive or glamorous but of little real worth <disfigured by no gaudy tinsel of rhetoric or declamation

Source: Merriam-Webster
“After suckling her mother’s fingers for days in the desert, she throws a tinseled veil up to the sky and catches lapis-colored doves.”
From: What the Scar Revealed, by Zohra Saed

The word “tinseled” brings importance to the object being described, adding depth to the story.

Navel

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Navel
noun

1: a depression in the middle of the abdomen that marks the point of former attachment of the umbilical cord or yolk stalk

2:  the central point:  middle

Source: Merriam-Webster

“A newborn’s navel is the same as any wound.”
“While the night is threaded in gold, the lost city in her navel 
unwinds itself from swirls of skin and slips over this new city like a fog.”

From: What the Scar Revealed, by Zohra Saed
The understanding of word “navel” here is important because it lets the reader get the sense of individuality and the relevance of one’s background.

hitherto

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  • adverb
  • until now or until the point in time under discussion.
  • https://www.google.com/search?q=definition+of+guffawed&rlz=1C1EODA_enUS584US584&oq=definition+of+guffawed&aqs=chrome..69i57j0.5584j0j7&sourceid=chrome&es_sm=93&ie=UTF-8#q=definition%20of%20hitherto
  •  You have won rooms of your own in the house hitherto exclusively owned by men.
  • The narrartor is telling us how the room is theres until further notice

verge

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  • noun
  • an edge or border.
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  • The image that comes to my mind when I think of this girl is the image of a fisherman lying sunk in dreams on the verge of a deep lake with a rod held out over the water

emancipation

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  • noun
  • the fact or process of being set free from legal, social, or political restrictions; liberation.
  • https://www.google.com/search?q=definition+of+guffawed&rlz=1C1EODA_enUS584US584&oq=definition+of+guffawed&aqs=chrome..69i57j0.5584j0j7&sourceid=chrome&es_sm=93&ie=UTF-8#q=definition+of+emancipation+
  • The spectacle is certainly a strange one, I thought. The history of men’s opposition to women’s emancipation is more interesting perhaps than the story of that emancipation itself.
  • The narrator says how women’s freedom is more interesting then freedom itself

Anguish

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  • noun
  • severe mental or physical pain or suffering.
  • https://www.google.com/search?q=definition+of+guffawed&rlz=1C1EODA_enUS584US584&oq=definition+of+guffawed&aqs=chrome..69i57j0.5584j0j7&sourceid=chrome&es_sm=93&ie=UTF-8#q=definition+of+anguish
  • No girl could have walked to London and stood at a stage door and forced her way into the presence of actor-managers without doing herself a violence and suffering an anguish which may have been irrational — for chastity may be a fetish invented by certain societies for unknown reasons — but were none the less inevitable.
  • The narrator tells us how the girl pulls through

guffawed

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  • verb
  • laugh in a loud or boisterous way.
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  •  The manager — a fat, loose-lipped man — guffawed.
  • The Narrator tells describes the man who laughed