1. subrident — with or accompanied by a smile Professor Harlake spoke to the committee with an air of subrident superiority, as if deigning to respond only to prevent even more misinformed opinions from being promulgated. 2. fane — temple The flowers were heaped on the mound like offerings before a pagan fane. …
Author Archives: mysterious6030
One Hundred and Fifteen Thousand Songs (115,000)
So 57 days after my last thousand songs were heard, I have just listened to my 115,000th unique iTunes track, music familiar to anyone who has sat through David Niven’s turn as the famous British secret agent James Bond. The tune, “Sir James’ Trip To Find Mata”,* is one of Burt Bacharach’s contributions to the …
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Friday Vocabulary
1. congener — member of same class or kind as another The zealots of French Revolution, like their congeners, may be recognized by their furious devotion to idealistic purity and their rush to purge anyone they feel disagrees with those ideals. 2. ging — gang; crew of ship or boat Just as the captain …
Friday Vocabulary
1. mizzle — (British) to suddenly depart, to vanish Sure looks like your friend mizzled and left you to pick up the tab. 2. menology — written calendar of saints’ biographies, arranged by each saint’s feast day The conversion of St. Cyriac is only attested in the Greek Menology of Emperor Basil, in which …
One Thousand Words
Just a quick note to note … erm … to take cognizance of the fact that, with last Friday’s Vocabulary post, my Lexicon now contains over one thousand (1,000) separate words. There are actually 1,010 entries, although 8 of these are entirely different definitions of words already present. (You can see these ‘duplicate’ entries by …
Friday Vocabulary
1. vaporing — bragging, boastful talk For all your vaporing about how fine a handyman you are, you’ve done precious little work around the house. 2. gore — triangular or wedge-shaped piece of fabric used as part of a garment, sail, etc. The manufacture of the hot air balloon required the most stringent attention …
Friday Vocabulary
1. frieze — coarse woolen cloth napped on one side only He presented himself as the very type of country bumpkin, clad only in a rough jerkin of frieze and breeches of russet. 2. marasmus — wasting away of the body caused by severe malnutrition Though usually seen in orphaned children unable to feed …
Friday Vocabulary
1. meteoroid — small body moving through space When a meteoroid enters the atmosphere of the earth, the resultant friction causes it to emit light and the streaking body is called a meteor, and if it is not entirely consumed by its contact with the atmosphere, and falls to the ground, it is then called …
Friday Vocabulary
1. egregious — remarkable in a bad way, flagrant To continue supporting my nephew after his blatant malfeasance would be an egregious error on my part. 2. threnody — song or poem of lamentation, dirge, song for the dead The susurration of the wind through the glade seemed a threnody as I watched the …
Friday Vocabulary
1. aelurophile — (also ailurophile) cat lover He had that one condition almost fatal to an aelurophile: an allergy to cats. 2. distrait — distracted, absent-minded I should have known something was wrong when Arthur seemed so distrait at dinner that he ordered red wine with fish. 3. polder — low land reclaimed …