1. chuck-farthing — [British] game similar to pitchpenny prevalent in 18th & 19th Centuries Lorson had the eye and arm to almost always succeed in the first round of chuck-farthing, but he flung his coins instead of bunching them in the second round, so was almost always a loser in the end. 2. incontinent …
Author Archives: mysterious6030
1400 Books
Kindly readers of this blog will know that I’ve been tracking my books in a database provided by my lovely (and talented!) wife many years ago. And that I’ve been numbering the books read in that same software. And, additionally, that I have some strange scruple by which I don’t count comic books (and graphic …
Friday Vocabulary
1. mayhap — [archaic] perhaps, possibly Mayhap you’ll find your keys immediately after I hang up the phone, but mayhap you’ll not, so I might as well come over to give you a ride should you need one. 2. smarm — to smooth down with ointment or grease; to fawn over Babbidge’s hair was …
Friday Vocabulary
1. shandrydan — hooded chaise; old ramshackle two-wheeled horse carriage or cart Now I heard the creaking axel of the pastor’s shandrydan and knew we’d been betrayed, for there was no other reason Mr. Goodfellow would be riding down this lonely stretch of path at this ungodly hour of night. 2. polysomnogram — multi-valued …
Friday Vocabulary
1. dysphoria — state of feeling bad or unhappy, malaise The marketing team finished their presentation on moving the Overton Window of dysphoria so that people at least didn’t feel so bad about feeling bad, but nobody in the room felt any better about the plan. 2. punnet — small basket for selling strawberries …
Book List: 1300 Books
Just after Christmas of 2023 … it may have been in the new year and it may not … my wife and I were driving by a Little Library in our neighborhood and she said “You want to check it out?” and I said yes and—30 seconds later she saw me coming to the car …
Friday Vocabulary
1. foment — to incite, to encourage; to apply heat or ointment to (body part) After the splint has been removed, foment the limb at least twice daily. 2. mugfaker — [obsolete slang] street photographer We contacted all the mugfakers within three blocks of the boardwalk to see if they might have taken a …
1300 Books
Welp Has it already been three-and-a-half months since I first realized I’d made another data entry mistake in my Great Book Tracking Project and had to correct my ongoing mistake before giving you, my one or two readers of this blog (I’m being optimistic here), the summary data for the last hundred books I’d read? …
Friday Vocabulary
1. nous — mind, reason; common sense “Use your nous, Shelly!” the captain said, “Place the pickets up on the ridge, not the tents!” 2. mesclun — salad of mixed young greens The agency claimed that a pre-packaged mesclun mix was implicated in the outbreak, but this was denied by the distributor. 3. …
Friday Vocabulary
1. balestra (also ballestra) — [fencing] leap towards opponent with an immediate lunge Dimitrios closed the distance with a balestra feint to the sword arm shoulder, followed by an imbroccata to the chest, and Gregorio was hard-pressed to keep the Greek from ending the fight then and there. 2. pediophobia — fear of dolls …