NOTE: Due to recently (27 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. prolepsis — (1) marshaling counterarguments to a position so they may be refuted in advance
“Just because I’m crazy,” he said as a prolepsis to the wild conspiracy ideas he had just recited, “doesn’t mean I’m not right.”
2. prolepsis — (2) prochronism; placing something (person, event, etc.) at too early a date
Many Rotten Tomatoes reviewers noted the heroine’s warning call using the 999 number in 1947 as a prolepsis, but in fact the United Kingdom had introduced the emergency call system a decade earlier, after a disastrous fire in 1935.
Her disbelief that Georgia driver license numbers used to be the same as the person’s Social Security number was just another example of quite common Internet security prolepsis.
3. invigilate — to watch over students during an exam
As a WADA official, Jack’s least favorite job was invigilating while the athletes micturated.
4. flibbertigibbet — gossip; flighty woman
If his next-door neighbor wasn’t such a distracting flibbertigibbet, she would have been quite annoying.
5. chryselephantine — of or covered with gold and ivory
Of the half-dozen lost Seven Wonders, I should like most to see the chryselephantine statue of Zeus at Olympia.
6. soteriology — doctrine of salvation
The one-armed man in the back seat of the bus kept declaiming in a loud voice, saying one should never confuse soteriology with Paulinian doctrine.
7. fain — gladly
“I would fain support you in this battle, were not I so evilly afflicted by these irksome bone spurs.”
irrefragable — indisputable, undeniable
The ability of believers in doomsday cults to rationalize after the world doesn’t end indicates that (for humans, at least) there is no such thing as irrefragable proof.
8. gymnosophist — member of an ascetic group of Jains, noted for wearing little or no clothing and for eating no meat
Fancying himself a latter-day breatharian gymnosophist, he sat in his boxers with his feet up refusing to stand lest he kill some small insect on the floor, but we just thought he was a total nutjob.
9. petrichor — the smell of rain upon very dry earth
They stood panting after their pellmell dash through the downpour, as the thunder faded into the susurration of the falling rain and the earthy petrichor rose up around them in their makeshift shelter at the base of the overhanging cliffs.
10. flagitious — extremely wicked
If you misrepresent another’s intellectual property as your own, I will fully cooperate with enforcement personnel to ensure that your flagitious attack on academic and intellectual freedom does not go unpunished.
*Second example changed to correct poor grade given to original paper