1. wapentake — subdivision of certain shires in Northern England and the Midlands, corresponding to the hundreds in other counties Though an orderly appropriation was to be hoped for, in some outlying wapentakes the bailiff summarily took whatever goods were upon his list, often without payment or with payment only through tallies. 2. fog …
Monthly Archives: July 2020
Friday Vocabulary
1. reredos — decorated screen or wall behind altar in a church; brick or stone back of a fireplace The first project of the Church Restoration Committee will be to fund the repainting of the reredos in the Saint Matthew’s Chapel, using the extensive notes of the 19th-Century antiquarian Devon Shrikeston as our guide for …
Friday Vocabulary
1. prelapsarian — of or pertaining to the time before the Fall of Man in the Garden of Eden; innocent and pristine; supralapsarian (vide infra) My studies in that liberal arts college in New England were an academic prelapsarian nirvana, funded by the GI Bill. 2. blacksnake — long, heavy leather whiplash He weren’t …
Monday Book Report: Journey To The Impossible
I Read It So You Don’t Have To Dept. The Banality of Feeble Dept. Journey To The Impossible: Designing an Extraordinary Life, by Scott Jeffrey This is perhaps the worst book I have ever read in my life. I was sorely tempted just to let the above sentence be my entire report upon this piece …
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One Hundred and Sixteen Thousand Songs (116,000)
Over 93 days after my last thousand songs were heard, I have just listened to my 116,000th unique iTunes track, a likable enough country number from Rosanne Cash, “Green, Yellow, and Red”, from her 1987 album King’s Record Shop. I am reliably informed (well, yes, I read it on the Interwebs) that Ms. Cash was …
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Friday Vocabulary
1. nastic — (biology) (of plant movement) caused by external stimulus which does not determine direction of response A strong flick of the finger against the leaf of a mimosa plant creates a strong nastic response, with the leaf quickly and visibly folding up in a striking example of thigmonasty. 2. snug — (nautical) …
Lexicographer’s Dozen
1. Desterham — Turkish minister of finance (variant of defterdar, apparently only used by Voltaire in his story Zadig) The case was brought before the Grand Desterham, who had both parties beaten soundly with knouts so that both would know the majesty of Babylonian justice. 2. bizzie — (British slang) policeman or policewoman; (pl.) …
Monday Book Report: The Decapitated Chicken and Other Stories
The Decapitated Chicken and Other Stories, by Horacio Quiroga To master the short story is to possess the ability to tersely describe the critical moment, the veritable crux of events, ideas, and emotions—and to capture that moment so that readers can contemplate and appreciate the revealed profundity in these smallest of prose packages. Hector Quiroga—a …
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Friday Vocabulary
1. bolus — overlarge pill; round soft mass, esp. of chewed food What it cost him to swallow this enormous bolus of shame and degradation I hope never to learn. 2. chyme — quasi-fluid mass of food acted upon by gastric processes and passed into the small intestine The presence of chyme in the …