1.

Affection
a. An effort to appear to have a quality not really or fully possessed; the
pretense of actual possession
b. The bored haughty face that she turned to the world concealed something
– most quirks conceal something eventually, even though they don’t in the
beginning – and one day I found what it was.
2. Apathetic
a. Having or showing little or no emotion
b. He was completely apathetic towards the daily routines he went through.
Pg 29
3. Ascertain
a. To find out definitely; learn with certainty or assurance; determine
b. As a matter of fact you needn’t bother to determine.
4. Bantering
a. To exchange mildly teasing remarks
b. Sometimes she and Miss Baker talked at once, unobtrusively and with a
mocking inconsequence that was never quite chatter that was as cool as
their white dresses and their impersonal eyes in the absence of all desire.
5. Bizarre
a. Markedly unusual in appearance, style, or general character and often
involving incongruous or unexpected elements; outrageously or
whimsically strange; odd
b. I lived at West Egg, the – well, the less fashionable of the two, though this
is a most superficial tag to express the strange and not a little sinister
contrast between them.
6. Contiguous
a. Touching; in contact
b. pg 17
7. Convivial
a. Friendly; agreeable
b. pg 33
8. Complacency
a. A feeling of quiet pleasure or security, often while unaware of some
potential danger, defect, or the like; self-satisfaction or smug satisfaction
with an existing situation, condition, etc.
b. There was something pathetic in his concentration, as if his satisfaction,
more acute than of old, was not enough to him any more.
9. Credulity
a. Willingness to believe or trust too readily, esp. without proper or adequate
evidence; gullibility.
b. As our gullibility switched back to her she leaned forward with
enthusiasm.
10. Cynical
a. Showing contempt for accepted standards of honesty or morality by one's
actions, esp. by actions that exploit the scruples of others.
b. The graduate nodded in a pessimistic, melancholy way.
11. Desolate
a. Barren or laid waste; devastated
b. pg 8, 16
12. Exempt
a. To free from an obligation or liability to which others are subject; release:
to exempt a student from an examination.
b. Only Gatsby, the man who gives his name to this book, was excused from
my reaction – Gatsby, who represented everything for which I have an
unaffected scorn.
13. Feigned
a. Pretended; sham; counterfeit
b. Most of the confidences were unsought – frequently I have contrived
sleep, preoccupation or a hostile levity when I realize by some
unmistakable sign that an intimate revelation was quivering on the
horizon; for the intimate revelations of young men, or at least the terms in
which they express them, are usually plagiaristic and marred by obvious
suppressions.
14. Fractiousness
a. Refractory or unruly
b. His speaking voice, a gruff husky tenor, added to the impression of
unruliness he conveyed.
15. Hauteur
a. Arrogance
b. pg 21
16. Intimation
a. To indicate or make known indirectly; hint; imply; suggest.
b. pg 16
17. Languidly
a. Lacking in vigor or vitality; slack or slow
b. pg 21
18. Prodigality
a. The quality or fact of being prodigal; wasteful extravagance in spending
b. pg 27
19. Supercilious
a. Haughtily disdainful or contemptuous, as a person or a facial expression
b. Now he was a sturdy straw-haired man of thirty with a rather hard mouth
and arrogant manner.
20. vehemently