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 …
Category Archives: Vocabulary
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 …
Friday Vocabulary
1. celt — unhafted bladed tool, usu. of stone or bronze, used as chisel or handleless axe The similarity of celts found in Europe and the New World, however, has been claimed by some as evidence for earlier connections between the peoples found in the Americas and those of the Old World, or—as some would …
Friday Vocabulary
1. recrudescence — reappearance, renewed outbreak, reoccurrence (esp. of something morbid or bad) This recrudescence of simony, however, left most strata of society unconcerned, couched in this somewhat disingenuous language of sympathy. 2. chirality — asymmetry of chemical compounds which cannot be superimposed upon its mirror image, ‘handedness’ The discovery of chirality among quarks, …
Friday Vocabulary
1. turpitude — vileness, inherent wickedness If you insist on demonstrating your turpitude before me, I shall have to absent myself, to take a turn or two abovedeck and try to erase these sights from my memory. 2. superlunary — celestial or heavenly as opposed to worldly Maimonides here points out that, though human …
Friday Vocabulary
1. blench — to flinch, to quail Do not stare at me so, lest I blench under your steely gaze that I would rather looked lovingly upon my face. 2. conation — mental facility directed towards striving, will, desire, volition Reichholz claimed that an internal focus upon conation had unintended negative consequences, that the …
Friday Vocabulary
1. passel — group of things of nonspecific number; bunch Then somebody bumped the chair, and Laurie’s purse fell over, and a whole passel of cherry tomatoes rolled out of it onto the floor. 2. noetic — of or related to the mind Although William James insists on the noetic quality of the mystical …
Friday Vocabulary
1. Quinquagesima — final Sunday before Lent, beginning of Carnival The first appearance of Quinquagesima as a pre-Lenten feast (there is some evidence for the term being used for an anticipatory fast) cannot be found in Italy earlier than the 6th Century. 2. bimble — [British] to walk about in a meandering way with …
Friday Vocabulary
1. bludge — [Australian slang] to shirk; to scrounge; to live off another’s earnings, esp. as a pimp It was the first time I’d ever bludged school, so I was more nervous than I ever was after. 2. chukka — period in game of polo, lasting from 7 to 7-1/2 minutes of play While …