1. spile — large wooden piling; wooden plug used as a spigot; to tap (a tree, a keg) by means of a spile Even with the dark lantern I could hardly make out the body beneath the pier, so dense was the forest of tarry spiles. 2. piacular — making atonement, expiatory; requiring atonement, …
Author Archives: mysterious6030
Friday Vocabulary
1. sesquipedalian — long-winded, given to using big words; polysyllabic I finally was able to decipher the doctor’s obfuscatory and sesquipedalian oration and learned that my car had been stolen. 2. plexus — network of nerves or blood vessels; web-like structure of networked complexity Somehow over the years this one small block of the …
Friday Vocabulary
1. bunt — [nautical] reinforced part of fishing net where the catch is concentrated; bulging middle part of a sail When the sails were well furled, the bunts triced securely, the bosun let us take a short break. 2. spissitude — density, thickness Away from the lake, the miasmic air of the swamps seemed …
Friday Vocabulary
1. treen — made wholly of wood Our current age may best be judged by the label attached to a decorative rabbit-shaped bowl that I found at the store: “Our treen products are made of resin and is not for use with food.” 2. pillock — [British informal] stupid person I always thought that …
Friday Vocabulary
1. hawser — large rope or small cable for warping, towing, or mooring With muffled paddles the trio made their way beneath the six inch hawser to the stern of the English merchantman, grimly set upon their treacherous work. 2. pepperpot (also pepper-pot) — pepperbox; something or someone figuratively like a pepperpot But Brawley …
Friday Vocabulary
1. enucleate — to remove the nucleus; to remove (kernel, tumor, eyeball) from its surrounding cover Nebuchadnezzar famously enucleated King Zedekiah before taking him off to captivity in Babylon. 2. afferent — [biology] leading inward or conducting towards, as of nerves or other physiological pathways to organs One theory of tinnitus holds that the …
Friday Vocabulary
1. peltry — pelts collectively Such families of Indians—bedraggled, half-starving, and bone weary from their threadbare existence at the edge of merest survival—supplied in their thousands the peltry for one of Europe’s most important streams of commerce. 2. aluminium — [British] aluminum In fact, aluminium is quite widespread; the difficulty is extracting the valuable …
One Hundred and Eighteen Thousand Songs (118,000)
Almost failed to notice that I’ve passed another imaginary milepost and have now listened to 118,000 unique iTunes ‘songs’,* which I did five days ago, just before noon. (That would be Thursday for those of you playing along at home.) The 118,000th track was the rip-roaring “Totem Pole” by the tragically fated Lee Morgan, off …
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Friday Vocabulary
1. depilate — to remove hair from, “to make bare of hair” [OED] Josun had originally depilated his arms and legs because of the bicycle racing; now, however, it had become something of an obsession. 2. arrack — liquor made from fermented sap of palm or cane or fermented rice, typically distilled in India …
Friday Vocabulary
1. pyx — small container for holding the consecrated bread of the Eucharist; [rare] box The tiny, decorative boxes so enamored of by modern collectors hearken back to the enameled pyxides of the famous Limoges workshops, regularly made there since the 13th Century. 2. teal — small dabbling duck from which the mallard evolved …