Analysis: The 5th Hundred Books

Well, I’ve owed y’all some analysis of the last hundred books read for some time now—just over a hundred days, by my count. I can only plead that I’ve been busy with work and stuff, the stuff being a silly NaNoWriMo project, but I have also been reading at a freakishly breakneck pace since I …

Friday Vocabulary

1. refection — the partaking of refreshment I did not want to interrupt their family refection, so I merely took the warm apple pie from the windowsill and hurried off to the nearby woods to enjoy my own repast.   2. brast — [archaic] past participle of “burst” Though he strove mightily against his foes …

Friday Vocabulary

1. telex — teletypewriter service using public communication channels to deliver two-way text transmission between subscribers Though the public telex offices were jammed with expatriates attempting to send the startling news to interested parties back home, the government ensured that none of those messages made it to their intended recipients, censoring all mention of the …

Friday Vocabulary

1. waler — light Australian breed of riding horse, originally bred in New South Wales Only one of the more than one hundred thousand walers brought overseas by the Australian calvary in World War One ever returned home.   2. rodomontade — vainglorious boast, extravagantly bragging speech In the midst of his vicious rodomontade a …

Friday Vocabulary

1. carphology — plucking at bed linen while in a delirious state While Ophelia’s plucking of flowers may seem only another version of carphology and a sign of underlying madness, her all-too-cogent comments in the language of flowers prove that there is more method than madness in the scene.   2. vesicant — blister producing …

Friday Vocabulary

1. messuage — dwelling house along with its outbuildings and attached lands dedicated to household use We had a small messuage in my youth, though to be fair the only outbuilding was a leaky prefab toolshed poorly placed in the sloping backyard.   2. byre — shed for cows The beeves in the byre became …

Friday Vocabulary

1. indite — to compose, to create a literary composition; (obsolete) to dictate A review of the cuneiform records reveals that the governor of the far-flung province continued to indite missives imploring the High King to send aid long after the military disaster.   2. epistemology — science of the origin and method of knowledge …