The Best Books (read by me) of 2018 A friend on Facebook posted a request for top books of this passing year, so I made this little list. I gave each of the books below 5 stars in my entirely subjective ranking. There are 29 books in total, twenty-six of which are fiction of one …
Author Archives: mysterious6030
Friday Vocabulary
1. stanch — to cut off the flow of; to quench; to repress O let me stanch my primal force Sooner than blanch the wild water’s course. 2. soffit — under surface of architectural feature, such as a lintel, architrave, vault, or arch An accent color of pale orange had been used on the …
Friday Vocabulary
1. clarigation — solemn demand for redress made through heralds prior to declaration of war Despite their important mission, the members of the clarigation delegation were not immune to the siren song of the boogie woogie. 2. swadkin — diminutive of “swad” meaning country bumpkin, lout “Stop pressing that button, you pestiferous swadkin! Cannot …
Friday Vocabulary
1. sennight — seven days, a week It is difficult to believe that Christmas is only Tuesday sennight from today. 2. forearm — to arm beforehand I forearmed myself with the relevant facts in support of my plan to clean the filthy stables by tricking some godlike idiot into undertaking the job. 3. …
Friday Vocabulary
1. trow — to believe, to trust “The parson would never indulge in such reprehensible behavior, as I trow.” 2. theodolite — portable surveying instrument with telescopic sight for measuring horizontal, and sometimes vertical, angles The aging theodolite rarely was put into service, having been replaced in most mensural functions by wireless computer assisted …
Friday Vocabulary
1. drolatic — humorous, comically strange The drolatic characters and incidents in John Kennedy Toole’s prize-winning novel sometimes conceal and sometimes reveal the deep philosophic roots of this posthumously published fiction. 2. jodhpurs — riding pants cut very loosely over the hips and thighs with a tight fit from the calf to the ankle …
Friday Vocabulary
1. specie — coined money Though cash has become rare, specie is rarer still, for no one wants pennies scuffing a fancy phone case or screen. 2. gurning — making a silly or grotesque face [Brit.] Watching the facial tics and spasms of the psychics as they communicated telepathically made me think I had …
Friday Vocabulary
1. gormless — stupid, lacking in intelligence or vitality “If you are going to prefer the word of this gormless gamer to mine, so be it!” 2. gaum — to smear with a sticky substance Though the handle of his baseball bat had been thoroughly gaumed with pine tar, it still slipped effortlessly out …
Friday Vocabulary UPDATED
NOTE: Due to recently (24 June 2019) discovered repetition of a previously used vocabulary word, the offending entry has been replaced with a new word, definition, and example sentence. The original entry is preserved with strikethrough formatting. 1. marmoreal — resembling marble or a marble statue His newly clean-shaven face accentuated his marmoreal visage as …
Friday Vocabulary
1. pelican crossing — pedestrian crosswalk in which pedestrians press buttons illuminating lights to stop vehicular traffic [has nothing to do with aquatic birds] On the weekends it was obvious that normal stop lights should have been installed instead of the pelican crossing, as the continual stream of pedestrians flowing across the avenue from one …