1. velleity — the merest wish, without any attempt to gain it
For some, reading self-help books becomes an end in itself, substituting a velleity for a program.
2. hamartia — tragic flaw
Bill Clinton’s sexual misadventures seem matched by the hubris of many politicians today, but they pale beside Nixon’s hamartia — a fundamental mistrust of other people.
3. construe — to infer; to deduce the meaning of
He construed her rolling eyes to mean that once again he had had one too many.
4. contemporaneous — happening or living at the same time
Sitting Bull was contemporaneous with Richard Wagner, though one would hardly call them contemporaries.
5. recension — revision, usually critical, of a literary work
The 1984 Gabler recension of James Joyce’s Ulysses was highly controversial, but it is unlikely that any edition of the masterwork will ever be considered authoritative.
6. reputed — supposed, alleged, widely believed
Iraq was reputed to have weapons of mass destruction.
7. Phoebus — the sun; Apollo the sun god
Bedecked in his self-designed Reichsmarschall uniform glorified with gold badges and ribbons, Göring stood like a fat Phoebus in white before the assembled Reichstag.
8. paean — song of praise, joy, or tribute
Some sentences of prose are pedestrian, but some transcend their own words to become paeans to language.
9. synovitis — inflammation of the membrane around a joint
Though the original diagnosis was synovitis, Rimbaud’s post mortem diagnosis was cancer.
10. genesis — beginning, origin
I touched her tattoo; that was the genesis of everything that followed.