1. longanimity — patient suffering, forbearance
Still, his mother showed such great longanimity during his endless travails that all the neighbors wondered that such a saint had borne such a son.
2. recondite — abstruse, uncommonly profound; little known, obscure
Though I spent several years waiting upon the professor, hearkening to his every word, sitting at his feet hoping to obtain some small portion of his recondite wisdom, I look back upon those times now and realize that I must have been stark, raving mad.
3. munity — bestowed privilege
Do not denigrate the social munities which are vouchsafed to you by your current status and position; they can be taken away as quickly as they were granted.
4. overlearn — to learn or memorize more than needed for existing use
On the other hand, the Ebbinghaus curve of forgetting suggests that overlearning does have a purpose beyond merely deadening the spirit with mindless repetition ad infinitum.
5. buncombe (less common, though the original, spelling of bunkum) — humbug, claptrap; mere speechifying
Naylor’s newfound fascination with scientific mixtures for hog feed is just more buncombe, another effort to make a profit off the current worries of his constituents.
6. flitch — side of bacon; square of whale blubber; halibut steak; lengthwise cut plank of wood
My old Westie’s happiest day was when he found the refrigerator door wide open and chowed down an entire flitch of bacon before anyone noticed the theft.
7. durance — imprisonment; [obsolete] duration; endurance
And while your ears were held in durance by his monotonous words of little meaning, you failed to notice that his eyes were speaking an entirely different sort of message to your own wife.
8. snorter — [slang] rip-roarer, remarkable thing; one who snorts
“Have you ridden yet in Ned’s Italo-Suiza? What a snorter!”
9. fornenst — next to; facing
I placed the poker fornenst the stool, so that it would be ready at hand no matter which way the conversation went.
10. hidage — [obsolete] medieval tax upon land
Infamous for the four hidages he levied upon each plough land, all was forgiven when his foreign wars finally met with great success.
Bonus Vocabulary
(Irish idiom)
on foot of — because of
He was discharged from the post on foot of previous allegations (later proven) of malfeasance whilst fundraising for the United Charities.