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 …
Author Archives: mysterious6030
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 …
300 Books (Not Really)
Just finished the 300th book that I’ve read since I started tracking just which books I read and complete — though this number has the caveat that it includes comics and graphic novels, which I am not counting in my most strenuous accounting, as discussed in earlier posts here and here. The particular book read …
One Hundred and Eight Thousand Songs (108,000)
Yet another fictional milestone has been achieved, as I’ve just listened to my 108,000th unique iTunes track, a live performance of what purports to be a traditional song of Burma. Those who can read the album cover (reproduced here) may be able to provide more information; all I know is that the song I heard …
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Friday Vocabulary
1. sapropelic — pertaining to or living in mud or ooze made up of decomposed living material His moral sense weighed quite lightly upon his shoulders, making him especially able to thrive in the sapropelic environs of the District of Columbia. 2. fardel — (archaic) burden (esp. of sin or sorrow) Baudelaire speaks in …
Friday Vocabulary
1. scurf — scales of epidermis that are continually peeling off the skin; any scaly incrustation upon a body The telephone pole on the street corner was pierced with hundreds of large staples at eye level, each metal clinch holding down a geologic scurf formed from the shreds of old announcements of lost dogs, roommates …
Friday Vocabulary
1. rennet — membrane from the fourth stomach of an unweaned calf, used for curdling milk in the making of cheese Cream cheese can be made easily at home, since, like many soft cheeses, an acid such as lemon juice is used for curdling the milk rather than rennet. 2. invultuation — creation of …
Surrealism and Revolution
“That there is no solution to the decisive problems of human existence outside proletarian revolution is, for surrealism, a first principle that is beyond argument. Nothing would be more difficult than reconciling surrealism to bourgeois culture. I know that everything continues normally today, as yesterday, as if life were an IOU punctuated now and then …