1. budge — lambskin fur Master Pieter sat at his counting table in a warm green houppelande trimmed sensibly with black budge, holding the letter tightly in his left hand, its seal intact. 2. pottle — former liquid measure equal to a half-gallon; vessel of this capacity We split a pottle of sack while …
Author Archives: mysterious6030
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 …
Friday Vocabulary
1. purl — to flow with whirling motion; to flow and burble They sat together on a small blanket spread out upon the grassy bank, watching the gentle brook as it purled through the mossy rocks on its lazy way to the lake. 2. coppice — copse, thicket or underwood grown for intermittent cutting …
Book List: 500 Books
As I told you over a month ago, I recently reading book #500 in my reading records since I began tracking back in June of 2015. When I announced this milestone, I promised both an analysis for the last hundred books read and a listing of the books themselves. This post is in fulfillment of …
Friday Vocabulary
1. losel — wastrel, scoundrel, profligate You say you pity him, that sad losel in his cups, but you would not give him a pfennig of concern if you knew the families he has ruined, the wealth he has squandered, and the love he has scorned. 2. patten — overshoe of wood or metal …
600 Books (not really)
This book made me cry for democracy. In both the transitive and intransitive senses. Since I first began tracking my reading after getting all of my books catalogued in a database a little over five years ago, I have treated comics and graphic novels almost as bastard stepchildren, not counting them fully in my ‘Books …
Friday Vocabulary
1. sannyasi — Hindu religious mendicant Although one might have seen young sannyasis and sannyasinis wandering the streets of San Francisco during the so-called Summer of Love, in most views of Hindu philosophy, that path of near total renunciation was reserved for those Brahmans who had entered their twilight years and were approaching their final …
Friday Vocabulary
1. conduce — to lead, to bring about Far from seeing this as a setback, I believe it will conduce to his eventual success if he learns from the experience. 2. crypt — depression or sinkage surrounding a villus in the intestinal epithelium Each villus may be surrounded by many crypts, and within these—among …