1. flapdoodle — nonsense
Certainly the collapse of that Colorado savings and loan during the ’80s had plenty of suspicious circumstances, but Bill was always peddling some flapdoodle about satanism and child abuse being involved so we just learned to tune him out.
2. lusus naturae — freak, sport of nature, deformed creature
Palmer’s aptitude for whist made him a lusus naturae among the junior officers, and ensured that he spent many hours in the captain’s company.
3. midden — dunghill
All the families of the village are entitled to take from the midden howsoever much they need for fertilizer, providing that they replenish the heap from their own supply of manure.
4. pyrolytic — decomposed (organic material) by subjection to high heat
Medical implants are often made from pyrolytic carbon to reduce the risk of chemical changes during long-term use.
5. redd — to clean or tidy, to put in order, to clear
Well, you’ll never get the house redd up in time if you insist on examining each piece of paper instead of just tossing them into the box to look at later.
6. meiosis — rhetorical figure intentionally portraying something as smaller in size or importance than it actually is
He had a very self-deprecating manner that was at odds with the strange times he lived in, where everyone seemed to promote themselves on so-called social media at every instant of the day, bragging about what they had for breakfast or which shoes they were wearing, while he reported his appointment to the Board of Regents with the meiosis “Got a new job offer today, very excited.”
7. gallimaufry — ragout or hash of odd bits of food; hodgepodge, ridiculous jumble
Her desk was covered with a gallimaufry of items accreted during her tenure: several books on filthy netsuke, sewing patterns from the 1970s, samples of artificial turf, stones which looked like noses, pens almost out of ink, coins, receipts, a half-finished copy of Rabelais, a dried out highlighter, another dried out highlighter, locking pin backs, and a broken abacus.
8. dekko — (British slang) glance, look
She only got a slight dekko at me when the door opened up, and the light was dim; I’m sure she won’t be able to describe me to five-o.
9. larrikin — (Australian) hooligan, (usu. young) street tough
I find it hard to believe he owns the club, since he seems merely a jovial larrikin out on the town.
10. syncope — fainting; sudden stopping, cutting short
Never before had we lived through such a period of governmental syncope, as the flow of money, legislation, and regulation was suddenly cut off, leaving us wondering about its eventual restoration.