Friday Vocabulary

1. shandrydan — hooded chaise; old ramshackle two-wheeled horse carriage or cart Now I heard the creaking axel of the pastor’s shandrydan and knew we’d been betrayed, for there was no other reason Mr. Goodfellow would be riding down this lonely stretch of path at this ungodly hour of night.   2. polysomnogram — multi-valued …

Friday Vocabulary

1. dysphoria — state of feeling bad or unhappy, malaise The marketing team finished their presentation on moving the Overton Window of dysphoria so that people at least didn’t feel so bad about feeling bad, but nobody in the room felt any better about the plan.   2. punnet — small basket for selling strawberries …

Friday Vocabulary

1. foment — to incite, to encourage; to apply heat or ointment to (body part) After the splint has been removed, foment the limb at least twice daily.   2. mugfaker — [obsolete slang] street photographer We contacted all the mugfakers within three blocks of the boardwalk to see if they might have taken a …

Friday Vocabulary

1. nous — mind, reason; common sense “Use your nous, Shelly!” the captain said, “Place the pickets up on the ridge, not the tents!”   2. mesclun — salad of mixed young greens The agency claimed that a pre-packaged mesclun mix was implicated in the outbreak, but this was denied by the distributor.   3. …

Friday Vocabulary

1. balestra (also ballestra) — [fencing] leap towards opponent with an immediate lunge Dimitrios closed the distance with a balestra feint to the sword arm shoulder, followed by an imbroccata to the chest, and Gregorio was hard-pressed to keep the Greek from ending the fight then and there.   2. pediophobia — fear of dolls …

Friday Vocabulary

1. recrudescence — reappearance, renewed outbreak, reoccurrence (esp. of something morbid or bad) This recrudescence of simony, however, left most strata of society unconcerned, couched in this somewhat disingenuous language of sympathy.   2. chirality — asymmetry of chemical compounds which cannot be superimposed upon its mirror image, ‘handedness’ The discovery of chirality among quarks, …