Friday Vocabulary

1. embonpoint — healthy plumpness; fleshy part of the body, esp. of the bosom

Though two decades had passed, she seemed just the same — well, a slight tendency to embonpoint perhaps, which was only heightened by the stately curves of her gown.

  2. catarrh — secretions from the nose and eyes which accompany allergies or a cold

He always had had a rheumy constitution, and as rare as a sunny week in San Francisco was a week which found him unhampered by allergies, coughs, and catarrh.

  3. melismatic — of song or melody, as opposed to recitative music

From a thousand karaoke bars and ten thousand videos sprang more and more devotees of the melismatic arts, though most had stronger faith than talent.

  4. gandy dancer — member of a railroad work gang tasked with laying or maintaining track

Though men of every race worked as gandy dancers in the heyday of American rail, all were eventually replaced by machines.

  5. oxter — (Scot. and N. Eng.) armpit

A trained pikeman kens well the weak points of an armoured knight, and will aim for the groin, oxter, and throat if he can get at them.

  6. parenteral — administered systemically otherwise than through alimentary canal

The patient was given parenteral fluids to supplement the small amount of clear fluids she was able to ingest by mouth.

  7. petard — small explosive device formerly used in warfare for breaching gates, doors, or walls

It matters not that they dropped the portcullis before we struck down the defenders at the gate, as our miners will make short work of it with but a single petard.

  8. otiose — superfluous, useless; nugatory

One might well believe that our political news is merely an otiose dumb show designed rather to distract than to edify.

  9. kettle — (Brit.) to confine to a small area as means of crowd control

As soon as the clock struck five, the police quickly kettled the demonstrators, leaving them only one exit route over an overpass heavily surveilled by the brute squad.

  10. disbound — (of a book) having the binding removed or loose

It is extremely rare to find a disbound Dover edition, but this copy of Mumford’s The Brown Decades had only a strip of cardboard along the spine remaining to protect the still tight signatures.