Neologisms and terminology in 'The Handmaid's Tale'

Dystopian State and setting of the novel

State secret service who drive in black vans

Areas which polluted and radioactive, where labourers and dissenters are sent to clean up the mess

Training centre for Handmaids-to-be

State-run whore-house for rebellious Handmaids

Ambulance for driving pregnant Handmaids to hospital

Enforced sex ritual

Serena Joy's perfume

Soldiers

Event in the Middle Gilead period, wiping out records pertaining to think tanks involving the Commander

Underground Railroad for smuggling Handmaids out of the country

Event which started the Christian fundamentalist takeover, which was blamed on Islamic extremists and used as a scapegoat to justify the takeover

Name of the 'subject' taken by Handmaids during their 'training'

Name for an infertile Handmaid, or a Handmaid who gives birth to a child with deficiencies or disabilities

Baby with birth defects

Pre-Gilead prostitution service, pun on programme that delivered food to the elderly and vulnerable

Some sort of pornography-distributing vans, almost synonymous with the above

Public ceremonies, segregated by gender. Women's ceremonies involved marriages of Daughters, men's celebrate military victories

Execution ceremonies where rebels are killed

State-sanctioned way of describing black people

Meetings between powerful Commanders where the social structure of the State is hammered out

Shop which sells meat

Shop which sells groceries

Shop which prints out prayers for Commanders and Wives, used as a way of showing loyalty to the regime

The most expensive brand of car in the novel, which is owned by Offred's commander

The cheapest and 'chunky, practical' brand of car in the novel

Mid-range brand of car

Convoluted way of describing homosexuals

Where dissenters' corpses are hung

Group execution of a criminal by a group of Handmaids who beat up the accused to death

ID-card for citizens in the dystopian State

Shops which selled pornography in the pre-Gilead era

State-sanctioned greeting between Handmaids, first used by Ofglen in Chapter 3

Accepted response to the above

Ceremony as part of the Handmaid training programme, where Handmaids-to-be must own up to their 'sins' from the time before. In the novel Janine is the focus of this ceremony, which is hosted by Aunt Helena who used to run a Weight Watchers group

The regime's multiple internal forms of electronic communications

The central bank from which money is controlled by the State

Number on the above, neologism for credit card number

Neologism for credit cards

Computerized scanning devices that read credit cards and bar-coded pricing and inventory symbols

Electronic medical record

Secret underground resistance to the regime

Signed between the State and other influential world powers in which they agreed not to fight each other in order to deal with internal rebellions and civil wars