1. specie — coined money
Though cash has become rare, specie is rarer still, for no one wants pennies scuffing a fancy phone case or screen.
2. gurning — making a silly or grotesque face [Brit.]
Watching the facial tics and spasms of the psychics as they communicated telepathically made me think I had stumbled into a gurning competition for deafmutes.
3. prate — to speak overlong to little purpose
Though he did prate unconsciously and incessantly, gradually a listener realized that he did have a cogent point he was desperate to relate, but which he was unfortunately too inarticulate to communicate.
4. dyslogistic — having a bad connotation
It was only after the profiteering of suppliers to the Union Army during the Civil War that the term “shoddy” became dyslogistic, before that time being merely a word denoting a felted cloth.
5. charnel — vault for bones of the dead
The shelves in the basement and the notebooks thereupon formed his personal charnel, where his aborted ideas and poetry provided food for silverfish, not for thought.
6. umbrageous — shady, providing shade
The umbrageous eucalyptus branches swaying high above in the wafting air lulled him into a hypnotized state of happy contemplation.
7. remittance man — emigrant supported by money sent from home
In the novels of Henry James, the remittance man is a 19th-century precursor of today’s trust fund kids.
8. marc — refuse remaining in wine press after the juice is expressed from grapes
Though one might very well drink life to the lees, one hopes that the marc will remain untouched, save perhaps by the feet which stomped the grapes to a pulp.
9. spume — froth, foam; esp. of the sea
The toddler was excited by the foaming bubbles that resulted from using laundry soap in the tub, but her mother was dismayed by the overflowing soap, which sent its spume far down the carpeted hall.
10. truculent — fierce, cruel, barbarous
The rule of the mob now held complete and demonic sway over the men, their truculent faces showing only bestial hate as they focused an evil gaze upon the target of their savage anger.