1. dogsbody — drudge, person given menial work Once I lowered my expectations from Senior Vice President to dogsbody I finally found a job opportunity. 2. pyogenic — pus-producing As if an antibiotic-resistant staph infection was not enough of a worry, now we learned that Larry was also in the throes of pyogenic meningitis. …
Category Archives: Vocabulary
Friday Vocabulary
1. gnome — general maxim, aphorism, terse saying with a moral Since, like Polonius in Hamlet, his speech seems to consist primarily of gnomes and clichés, I doubt he would be able to follow this play’s sustained allegory. 2. shirtwaist — tailored blouse for women The old-fashioned establishment did not allow Jane to dine …
Friday Vocabulary
1. parergon — embellishment, thing subordinate to main subject Burgess maintains that the final chapter of A Clockwork Orange was essential to the novel and should never have been removed from the American edition, but Kubrick and many other readers have found it an unconvincing parergon. 2. adust — burnt up, scorched But under …
Friday Vocabulary
1. embonpoint — healthy plumpness; fleshy part of the body, esp. of the bosom Though two decades had passed, she seemed just the same — well, a slight tendency to embonpoint perhaps, which was only heightened by the stately curves of her gown. 2. catarrh — secretions from the nose and eyes which accompany …
Friday Vocabulary
1. rebarbative — repellent, annoying, unattractive I was confronted at the front desk by a rebarbative adolescent, if I can be excused the tautology, who claimed the right to review my credentials before passing me on to the vice principal. 2. compurgator — witness to an accused person’s innocence or truthfulness From the Old …
Friday Vocabulary
1. recreant — coward, craven; apostate, traitor You have shown yourself recreant before all assembled here, false to your duty and false to your word. 2. pruritus — itching, esp. with no visible cause Of course, pruritus may manifest itself when merely mentioned, much in the manner of certain allergies. 3. fremescent — …
Friday Vocabulary
1. beetle — to overhang, to project; to hang over with menace Try as I might, I could not completely ignore the beetling mounds of paper precariously perched upon the shelves of the boarder’s salon or bedroom, which mounds threatened to fall upon us every time we inadvertently jostled the furniture. 2. cattywampus — …
Friday Vocabulary [UPDATED]
NOTE: Due to recently (24 August 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. mulligrubs — grumpiness; depressed state; bad mood or temper I would not pester him with your request …
Friday Vocabulary
1. bema — platform for public speaking, esp. in ancient Athens Heady though it must have been to ascend to the bema, a new-formed philosopher assumed great responsibility when promulgating his doctrine, as the several prosecutions (and many more accusations) for corrupting the Athenian youth indicate. 2. prodromal — premonitory (symptom) The sufferer of …
Friday Vocabulary
1. apostrophe — rhetorical figure wherein the speaker digresses and pointedly addresses some person or personified object But twenty-first century man has made hash of all rhetoric, and even Childe Harold’s apostrophe to the sea has been overtaken by modern humanity’s ability to pollute even the oceans themselves. 2. marge — margin And thus …