1.banal: repeated too often; overfamiliar through overuse
Novel Sentence: “If one wants to appraise it, it is at once heroic and banal - but who wants to do that?” (Remarque 272).
Stand-alone:The characters were well drawn but the plot was banal.
In-text: I watch them curiously, but as time passes, it becomes dull, banal.
2.surreptitious: marked by quiet and caution and secrecy
Novel Sentence: “Now I see that he is tormenting me, he is merely raking about in the wound and looking up surreptitiously at me over his glasses“ (Remarque 243).
Stand-alone: I went for a surreptitious swim in the river.
In-text: They have to live surreptitious life.
3.unbearable: incapable of being put up with
Novel Sentence:“The night is unbearable” (Remarque 108).
Stand-alone: The heat of summer in Tokyo is unbearable.
In-text: In this way, his experience also demonstrates a conflict with society; while his society feels hatred towards the Russians and expects the soldiers to feel the same, Paul begins to identify with their unbearable suffering.
4.disquietude:feelings of anxiety that make you tense and irritable
Novel Sentence:"My disquietude grows” (Remarque 172).
Stand-alone: A single element of disquietude, a solitary, vague unrest disturbs him.
In-text: One of the most prevalent outcomes of abortion are shame, disquietude and guilt that the mother suffers, sometimes for years.
5.embitter:cause to be bitter or resentful
Novel Sentence: “At first astonished, then embittered, and finally indifferent, we recognized that what matters is not but the boot brush,not intelligence but the system, not freedom but drill” (Remarque 21).
Stand-alone: We were embittered by his callousness.
In-text: Most of them had thoughts, flashbacks and embittered that were triggered by everyday things, such as hearing news about abortions, friends who have children, seeing children play, etc..
6.convalescent:returning to health after illness or debility
Novel Sentence: “Perhaps you will go to the convalescent home at Klosterberg, among the villas Franz” (Remarque 30).
Stand-alone: This food is perfect for a convalescent.
In-text: When an abortion is performed on a woman, in convalescent from abortion, she becomes subject to many physical complications.
7.docile:easily handled or managed
Novel Sentence:“They listen, they are docile-but when it begins again...” (Remarque 134).
Stand-alone: The cows looked big and docile.
In-text: Nadila is docile student in school, no one doesn't notice that she is Aisha's sister.
8.ghastly:shockingly repellent; inspiring horror
Novel Sentence:“He looks ghastly, yellow and wan” (Remarque 14).
Stand-alone: You look ghastly pale.
In-text: He creates a tale of ghastly and inhumanity and the only redeeming themes of his book are the recurring ideas of comradeship in the face of death and nature's beauty in the face of bleak hopelessness.
9.commotion:a disorderly outburst or tumult
Novel Sentence:“I sit by Kemmerich’s bed. He is sinking steadily. Around us is great commotion” (Remarque 26).
Stand-alone: It caused quite a commotion in the hall.
In-text: After commotion, suddenly being a muslim means being dangerous, a suspected terrorist.
10.melancholy:a constitutional tendency to be gloomy and depressed
Novel Sentence:“'We know that only in some strange and melancholy way we have become a wasteland” (Remarque 20).
Stand-alone: I get melancholy.
In-text: Some may feel relief that the unwanted pregnancy has been dealt with while others feel loss and melancholy.
11.haul: the act of drawing something
Novel Sentence:“Then he hauls out a frying pan from under his coat, and a handful of salt as well as a lump of fat from his pocket” (Remarque 39).
Stand-alone: We had a successful haul of sardines today.
In-text: When Nadira's father was hauled by police and detained at the border, Nadira and her older sister, Aisha, are sent back to Queens and told to carry on with their lives as if nothing ever happened.
12.shrewd: marked by practical hardheaded intelligence
Novel Sentence: “And finally Stanislaus Katczinsky, the leader of our group shrewd, cunning and hard-bitten” (Remarque 3).
Stand-alone: He is shrewd and calculating.
In-text: She is always compared to her older, smarter, popular, pretty and shrewd sister.
13.ceaseless: uninterrupted in time and indefinitely long continuing
Novel Sentence: “But on the last day an astonishing number of English heavies opened up on us with high-explosive, drumming ceaselessly on our position, so that we suffered severely and came back only eighty strong” (Remarque 2).
Stand-alone: There is a ceaseless stream of traffic in this street.
In-text: However, at the border to Canada many people making ceaseless queue and their entry is refused, and on their way back the father is imprisoned at the US border because their visas had long-since expired.
14.indigent:poor enough to need help from others
Novel Sentence: “An indigent looking wood receives us” (Remarque 56).
Stand-alone: Early as 1710 public school education was provided for indigent children.
In-text: They can't get good jobs, so they're indigent.
15.monotonously: sounded or spoken in a tone unvarying in pitch
Novel Sentence: “Monotonously the lorries sway, monotonously come the calls, monotonously falls the rain” (Remarque 74).
Stand-alone: The windshield wipers swished back and forth monotonously.
In-text: A sudden monotonously bell ring.
