1. refection — the partaking of refreshment
I did not want to interrupt their family refection, so I merely took the warm apple pie from the windowsill and hurried off to the nearby woods to enjoy my own repast.
2. brast — [archaic] past participle of “burst”
Though he strove mightily against his foes until his heart fain would brast, their numbers eventually overwhelmed the doughty knight.
3. magniloquent — lofty or grandiose in expression; pompous; bombastic
“So you see before you a man battered by fate, but not a whit cowed by these dark experiences,” he said in his habitual magniloquent style.
4. ruth — compassion, pity
I bless the ruth I found at this house in my hour of need.
5. linnet — European songbird of the finch family
It dawned upon us that this debris was all that remained of the linnet‘s nest, and just then we heard the bird’s sweet song, as if to reassure us that all was well, that only twigs had been damaged.
6. betimes — early
Better you should discover betimes that not all claims of friendship are true than to learn too late the dangers of a gullible trust.
7. vicinage — neighborhood, vicinity
It is from the defendant’s vicinage that the jury must be called.
8. slavey — servant, often a hard-worked serving girl
On the one hand, no more does one see a slavey carrying coals to stoke the heater in great homes hour after hour; on the other hand, fewer jobs.
9. swank — to swagger, to make pretense of superiority
He came swanking in wearing leather ankle boots and bell-bottomed zebra print pants, smiling outrageously behind the huge purple lenses he affected.
10. chiliasm — belief in the prophesied reign of Christ on earth for a thousand years
Chiliasm differs from other strains of millenarianism in its focus on the worldly realm of the Messiah.