Chapter 1 — Vocabulary

Vocabulary Words from Chapter 1

decanting (noun)

In the World State, the process of removing a fully developed embryo from its bottle; the clinical replacement for natural birth.

predestination (noun)

The practice of determining a person's future role, caste, and capabilities before birth through biological and chemical engineering.

viviparous (adjective)

Producing live offspring from the body rather than from eggs; refers to natural mammalian childbirth, which the World State has abolished.

surrogate (noun)

A substitute; in this context, a chemical mixture that replaces the blood and nutrients normally provided by a mother's body.

bokanovskified (adjective)

Subjected to the Bokanovsky Process; a coined term meaning an embryo has been forced to bud into dozens of identical copies.

proliferate (verb)

To increase rapidly in number; to multiply or reproduce at a fast rate.

gestation (noun)

The process of developing inside the womb (or, in this novel, inside a bottle) from fertilization to birth.

embryo (noun)

An organism in the earliest stages of development, before birth or hatching.

centrifugal (adjective)

Moving or tending to move away from a center; relating to outward force during rotation.

torpid (adjective)

Mentally or physically sluggish; inactive and lacking energy.

caste (noun)

A rigid social class into which people are born and from which they cannot move; in the World State, determined biologically before birth.

freemartin (noun)

Originally an agricultural term for a sterile female cow; in the novel, a woman who has been deliberately sterilized during the bottling process.

immunize (verb)

To make resistant to a particular disease or toxin, typically by introducing a controlled exposure.

peritoneum (noun)

The thin membrane lining the abdominal cavity, from which ovaries are accessed during the surgical extraction of ova.

dystopia (noun)

An imagined society characterized by great suffering, injustice, or oppression, often presented as the opposite of a utopia.

satire (noun)

A literary technique that uses humor, irony, or exaggeration to criticize and expose human vices, follies, or societal problems.