1. maunder — to mumble, to talk idly, foolishly, or to no real purpose; to move about aimlessly The poorly shaven hobo took another pull from the bottle and maundered more words about the family he once had, the son who had once been so proud of his father. 2. termagant — violent ill-tempered …
Author Archives: mysterious6030
Friday Vocabulary
1. longanimity — patient suffering, forbearance Still, his mother showed such great longanimity during his endless travails that all the neighbors wondered that such a saint had borne such a son. 2. recondite — abstruse, uncommonly profound; little known, obscure Though I spent several years waiting upon the professor, hearkening to his every word, …
Friday Vocabulary
1. corvine — of or related to a crow or crows The so-called detective pranced around the debris remaining in the street with ungainly, corvine hops, examining each little pile of trash as if it would give up the very secrets of the universe if he simply stared at it strongly enough. 2. palter …
Friday Vocabulary
1. marplot — one who defeats or spoils a plot or design by meddling or officious intrusion Strangely enough, Pierre Boulle’s The Bridge Over The River Kwai, in which Colonel Nicholson plays the marplot to the commandos’ efforts to strike against Japanese supply lines, is based to some extent on the experiences of the author …
Friday Vocabulary
1. paraphyletic — of or related to taxonomic group containing most but not all of the descendants of a common ancestor The Italic branch of Indo-European is paraphyletic as usually delineated, as it leaves out the modern Romance languages. 2. aorist — simple past tense in Ancient Greek, with no further limitations or restrictions; …
Monday Book Report: Fear to Tread
Fear to Tread, by Michael Gilbert Michael Gilbert has proven to be one of the most consistent, most versatile, and most surprising writers of thrillers and suchlike dark fiction. Not that his books are dark—far from it. At their core is an almost quaint sensibility of the power of human goodness, even as recognition that …
Friday Vocabulary
1. farrago — confused mixture, hotchpotch, medley Even taking the few moments needed to look up the actual facts to rebut this farrago of nonsense is a waste of my time. 2. crassities — [obsolete] materiality, density The soul must be devoid of crassities, taught the philosopher, else it could be broken into separate …
Friday Vocabulary
1. scorbutic — of, related to, or symptomatic of scurvy The words of denial escaped painfully from his swollen, scorbutic gums. 2. undercroft — underground chamber or vault, crypt The keys to the undercroft had gone missing in my grandfather’s time, so the police were forced to wrench open the rusted gates during their …
One Hundred and Nineteen Thousand (119,000) Songs
Around ten thirty this morning I once more crossed an imaginary line in my mind and find that I have now listened to 119,000 unique iTunes ‘songs’.* The 119,000th track was a fairly pedestrian effort by Glenn Miller’s band, with vocals by Ray Eberle, “And the Angels Sing”. It was on a Reader’s Digest compilation …
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Friday Vocabulary
1. matutinal — of or occurring in the morning He grabbed the newspaper for his matutinal visit to the smallest room in the house, there to await the results of his first cups of coffee. 2. ringent — gaping, grinning But the lip augmentation was a failure, leaving her mouth looking like a ringent …