1. gyniolatry — worship of women
Perhaps Poul Anderson’s gyniolatry may seem to balance Philip K. Dick’s misogyny, though more likely both are perversions of the true view of relations between the sexes.
2. phenakistiscope — first device for viewing animated images, consisting of a revolving disc with distinct illustrations that appeared in motion when viewed in a mirror through slits also placed on the disc
Perhaps the first experience of the pleasure we today receive from widely available GIF animations was found in the 1830s by those patrons fortunate enough to view the clever looped illustrations of the phenakistiscope, though of course those 19th-Century viewers could only share the animations by handing the toy to another person in the same room.
3. faitour — (archaic) charlatan, cheat, esp. a fortune teller or one feigning illness
Would that I could make that infamous faitour die in sooth and stop forever his false seeming of sickness.
[the entry below was discovered to duplicate a previous vocabulary word from 2018, and has been replaced with the entry above]
scurf — morbid skin condition causing scales of skin to be shed in excess; scales of epidermis continually exfoliated from skin; any surface incrustation
The once beautiful pastry was now covered by a dark scurf of dried mold that sloughed off and dirtied the countertop as the ancient birthday cake was picked up.
4. diplopia — double vision
She had hoped that the crash was not as bad as it had first seemed, but when her diplopia lingered on for several weeks she realized that she needed to go to the hospital after all, if it wasn’t already too late.
5. dibble — tool for making holes in ground for seeds, bulbs, seedlings, etc.; to make a hole with a dibble
The children followed behind Mason with the small beet plants, inserting those into the holes he had made with his dibble, as the young boys and girls could not be trusted to dibble in a uniform and methodical fashion.
6. comber — long, curving wave
The small boat stood suspended for a moment at the top of the comber, poised at the peak of a precipice that was about to crash them into the rocks with its breaking wave.
7. montane — of or growing in or living in mountain regions
On their journey from the dying lake at the edge of the red desert to the wooded montane pasturage they only lost two sheep, though one ram injured his foreleg so severely he had to be dragged in a travois to the flock’s new home.
8. quern — small, hand-turned mill for grinding corn, grain, etc.
The Norse legend of the magical, salt-producing quern purports to explain why the seas are always salty.
9. paludarium — enclosure combining elements of an aquarium with those of a terrarium
Bobbi loved her new pet turtle, but her father quickly realized that the maintenance of the paludarium was much more work than he had expected.
10. kittle cattle — people difficult to deal with; things difficult to manage
You’ll soon learn that home remodels are kittle cattle, and that even small mistakes can grow to become insurmountable problems if not caught and corrected in time.
Bonus Vocabulary
(American idiom, from at least 1835 forward*)
galley-west — into disarray or confused upset (usu. in phrase ‘to knock galley-west’)
All of my carefully laid plans were knocked galley-west by her failure to fully charge her phone the night before.
*Dictionary.com dates this from 1870-1875, but an instance may be found in Nathaniel Ames’s An Old Sailor’s Yarns, published in 1835.