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 …
Author Archives: mysterious6030
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 …
Friday Vocabulary
1. desultory — halfheartedly jumping from one subject to another, fitful, disconnected; lacking consistency, unmethodical, random Was it truly only my own prejudice which made me fear another hour’s desultory conversation with Howard, while I looked forward with eagerness to a delightfully discursive evening’s talk with his cousin? 2. baluster — (architecture) short pillar, …
114,000 Songs
A mere 54 days after my last thousand songs were heard, I have just heard my 114,000th unique iTunes track, a sadly lyrical song written in the Theresienstadt (Terezín) concentration camp by Karel Berman, “Před usnutím” (‘Before Sleep’), performed almost miraculously by the composer himself in 1985. Berman survived Auschwitz to become a quite famous …
Friday Vocabulary
1. clastic — (geology) formed from pieces of broken older rocks The waters were held back by clastic dikes formed from old volcanic fragments mixed with sand which had resolidified over the centuries to form an impermeable barrier. 2. leitmotif — (music) theme associated with particular person, idea, or situation His frustrating insistence that …
Friday Vocabulary
1. roke — fog, mist; drizzle The yellow sunlight now faded with the day’s passing, and the distant path across the moor disappeared as the roke rolled across the damp, grey heath. 2. peruke — periwig He stuck his head through the wig door and waited patiently as James (or was it Jonathan?) placed …
Analysis: The 4th Hundred Books
or, At Least The Unexamined Life Requires Less Math As I mentioned a little while back, I have now read 400 of the books in my personal library since I started tracking my reading back in June 2015. Below is a sketchy analysis of the books in this last hundred books. Of course, as usual, …