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 — marginAnd thus the crepuscular light palely illuminates the marge of night.
3. Aceldama — field of bloodshed (from the field bought by Judas with his thirty pieces of silver)One can speak of the brilliant strategic victory of Marlborough at Blenheim, but the landscape was a veritable Aceldama once the fighting had ceased.
4. snooks — rude gesture in which one puts the thumb on the nose and extends the fingersWe all gave the snooks to the cop on the beat and then ran laughing up the alley and over the abandoned field to our hideout in the supposedly abandoned warehouse.
5. guerdon — reward, recompenseLet these strokes of the lash be the guerdon for your treason and your betrayal.
6. staunch — determined, steadfast, true to one’s principles or purposeHe was a staunch friend, as willing to hurry down to the bail bondsman as to help manhandle the corpse into the trunk.
7. glebe — portion of cultivable land assigned to clergyman as part of his beneficeWe found the rector tending to his radishes in the glebe behind the parish house.
8. animadversion — criticism, esp. that implying censureI had thought only to proffer friendly advice and helpful comments, not to cast animadversions at the work which has obviously cost you much effort in time and thought.
9. deontology — study of duty or moral obligationI am afraid you misapprehend me, for though my position as professor of deontology permits me to advise you on the best course of action, I cannot remove your painful tooth.
10. holt — grove, copseWe found ourselves in a beautiful holt such as Chaucer described, so recently dead and dry in the winter, but now gloriously green from the spring rains.