Invisible Man Vocabulary (Prologue, Chapters 1 & 2)

1. Trifle (n): anything that is of a small amount
"But his muscles relaxed a trifle beneath my pressure and I breathed, 'Seven?'" -Invisible Man, p. 25
Forms: trifled, trifling (verbs), trifler (noun)
From Old French "trufler" - "to make fun of"
Synonyms: Fritter (to waste something), bauble (anything gaudy and cheap), toy (something of no importance)

2. Streamlined (adj): compact and designed for efficiency
"...today, dressed in one of the smart, well-tailored, angular, sterile, streamlined, modern outfits you see in women's magazines, she would appear just as ordinary as an expensive piece of machine-tooled jewelry and just as lifeless." -Invisible Man, p. 43
Forms: unstreamlined (adjective)
From 1936 in the extended sense of "simplify and organize"
Synonyms: sleek (smooth and new), up-to-date (modern, contemporary)

3. Nuance (n): Something very subtle and often subtextual, especially with regards to differences between things
"All had to be said, each memorized nuance considered, rendered." -Invisible Man, p. 30
Forms: nuanced, unnuanced (adjectives)
From: Vulgar Latin, nubes - "cloud" + ance
Synonyms: Subtlety (something hard to notice), nicety (a fine point or specific), hint (a less-than-explicit clue)

4. Rendered (adj): Something that has been created or shown off
"All had to be said, each memorized nuance considered, rendered." -Invisible Man, p. 30
Forms: render (verb), renderable, unrenderable, unrendered, well-rendered (adjectives), renderer (noun)
From: Latin "reddere" - "to give back"
Synonyms: give (to voluntarily impart), contribute (to add to an existing pool), demonstrate (to reveal)

5. Wrought (v - past tense): To have been fashioned and molded
"'And it has been my pleasant fate to return each spring and observe the changes that the years have wrought." -Invisible Man, p. 39
Forms: interwrought, self-wrought, superwrought, underwrought, unwrought (adjectives)
From: Middle English "wroght", metathetic variant of "worht", past participle of "worchen" - "to work"
Synonyms: worked (something that has undergone effort of any kind)