Princeton
A prestigious American university.
Insolent
Rude or disrespectful.
Primer
A white substance that you paint on wood or canvases before applying colorful paint. Tom jokes that his pale skin is a "primer" and that he hopes to become tanned, when Dickie calls him out for being so white at the beach.
Like a fog
Difficult to remember.
Vile
Horrible or disgusting.
Park Avenue crowd
Members of the New York City boulevard representing wealth, the elite and the American Dream; extremely wealthy people.
Despicable
Worthy of hatred.
Icebox
A small refrigerator, popular in the 1950s as it revolutionized food storage.
Sordid
Extremely filthy and dirty.
Bewildered
Very confused.
Non Sequitur
A legal term meaning an irrelevant, random or out of the blue statement or question.
A mooch
A person who uses and wastes other people's money.
"Jazz fiend"
Someone who loves jazz.
The Corso
A main street in the center of Rome's historic district.
Not knowing your ass from your elbow
A pejorative, slang term for someone who is dumb or out of touch.
Peeping
Spying on others, often specifically on others' sexual activity.
Demon
An evil spirit that often haunts a soul who has gone to hell, reminding them of their misdeeds.
Michelangelo and Leonardo
Michelangelo and Leonardo Da Vinci were two prominent artists and thinkers from the Italian Renaissance. They were both also known to be homosexuals.
Primitive
Undeveloped, unsophisticated, preliterate, and corase. Often used as a pejorative against non-Western or non-Anglicized cultures.
"See Venice and die"
A reference to the poem "To See Venice and Die" by Herbert Nehrlich about the splendors of travel.
