1. myrmidon — blindly loyal follower and carryer-out of a leader’s orders
If Hunstman refuses to sign the No Tax Increase pledge, the Tea Party myrmidons may exact their revenge by ensuring that he cannot gain the Republican nomination.
2. metempsychosis — transmigration of the soul
The disavowal of spirit or soul (call it what you will) in modern thought seems to look less and less like metempsychosis and more and more like plain psychosis.
3. acidulous — slightly sour
Attacking the worst excesses of celebrity distracts from real issues of health and life and love, and even the most scathing diatribe warrants an acidulous tone at best.
4. limpid — clear
The hawk circling high overhead was a stark speck in the otherwise limpid desert sky.
5. dyspareunia — pain during intercourse
Barbaric neanderthals might mistakenly believe that dyspareunia is expected by women, but in fact it may be an early sign of ovarian cancer.
6. vermiculate — having wormlike, wavy lines
Every pain, every failed promise could be read in the vermiculate coffer that still held the ring he had never had the courage to proffer to Emily.
7. crepuscular — like twilight; dim
In the crepuscular light of the attic, he could not discern the mounted deer antlers which gashed his forehead, narrowly missing his eye socket.
8. obiter dictum — judicial opinion incidental to a given case, and thus not legally binding
Strangely enough, the entire principle by which the Fourteenth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution has been held to give corporations all the rights of “persons” can be traced to an obiter dictum made in 1886 by a Supreme Court Justice before oral arguments began in the case before the Court.
9. refract — to change by transmission or viewing through a medium
Though each age believes that it and it alone sees clearly what its predecessors only dimly viewed, it is obvious that every age — including our own — refracts the truth through its cultural lens.
10. anon — soon
I will provide you with more vocabulary words anon.