In Cold Blood
Vocabulary

Perhaps, having heard all she had, Bonnie welcomed their swift approach.†

approach = getting near

Of course, Dick was very literal-minded, very— he had no understanding of music, poetry-and yet when you got right down toot, Dick's literalness, his pragmatic approach to every subject, was the primary reason Perry had been attracted to him, for it made Dick seem, compared to himself, so authentically tough, invulnerable, "totally masculine.†

approach = technique (way of doing something)

And yet this was at least a partially inaccurate impression, for now and again the prisoner glimpsed him as he paused to talk to other men, joke with them and laugh, and then he seemed carefree, jovial, generous: "The kind of person who might see the human side"-an important attribute, for the man was Roland H. Tate, Judge of the 32nd Judicial District, the jurist who would preside at the trial of the State of Kansas versus Smith and Hickock.†

attribute = characteristic

Dewey himself, did not believe the boy had "anything to do with it"; still, it was true that at this early stage of the investigation, Bobby was the only person to whom a motive, however feeble, could be attributed.

attributed = credited (pointed to as the cause of something)

Correspondence between you and your sister cannot serve anything but a purely social function.†

correspondence = communication by writing letters

But the bulkiest of Hickock's mud pies was aimed at the two defense attorneys, Arthur Fleming and Harrison Smith, whose "incompetence and inadequacy" were the chief cause of the correspondent's present predicament, for no real defense had been prepared or offered by them, and this lack of effort, it was implied, had been deliberate-an act of collusion between the defense and the prosecution.†

correspondent = reporter

He hated the light bulb's monotonous surveillance; it disturbed his sleep and, more explicitly, endangered the success of a private project-escape.†

explicitly = clearly and specifically

The hypothesis of unconscious motivation explains why the murderers perceived innocuous and relatively unknown victims as provocative and thereby suitable targets for aggression.†

hypothesis = a seemingly reasonable, but unproven, explanation

A negative grunt.†

negative = indicating an answer of "no"

[of the lie-detector or polygraph test] The results of the test, to the dismay of Osprey's sheriff as well as Alvin Dewey, who does not believe in exceptional coincidences, were decisively negative.†

negative = indicating that a condition was not found to be present

Oh, I don't really miss it-the frenzy, and never a cab, and always worrying how one looks. Positively not.†

positively = absolutely (used for emphasis)

People were scarcely real to them, in the sense of being warmly or positively (or even angrily) felt about... The three men under sentence of death had shallow emotions regarding their own fate and that of their victims.†

positively = in a good or beneficial manner

First they trot the length of Main Street, stopping to scrutinize the engine grilles of parked automobiles, particularly those stationed in front of the two hotels, the Windsor and Warren, for these cars, usually the property of travelers from afar, often yield what the bony, methodical creatures are hunting: slaughtered birds-crows, chickadees, and sparrows foolhardy enough to have flown into the path of oncoming motorists.†

yield = provide