1. glister — to sparkle
Suddenly the last rock gave way and we felt the welcome breeze of the night air upon our begrimed faces, and beheld in wonder the glistering heavens spangled with an almost blinding glory of stars.
2. sequacious — tending to blindly follow others; pliable, easily molded
But the sequacious and vulgar habits of the multitude are so ingrained that only with extreme difficulty can they be roused even to fight for their own best interests.
3. periculous — [obsolete] perilous
But of all these spiritual dangers, the most periculous is that deceit of the Tempter which makes weary the soul and plagues the heart in the dark of the night.
4. boxty — Irish potato pancake or bread
Some like their boxty with sour cream and scallions or even bacon and eggs, but I prefer mine simply with lots of butter.
5. beakhead (also beak-head) — projecting platform at the forwardmost part of a sailing ship, where decorated rams were mounted in ancient times
And with one final glimpse of the gaudy beakhead of the pirate galley which had seemed so menacing mere moments ago, we saw the last vessel of the predacious squadron sink beneath the sea.
6. borstal — reformatory school for juvenile delinquents
Despite their reputation, you were far less likely to feel the birch across your buttocks in a borstal than in the fine public schools of England.
7. farrow — litter of pigs; to give birth to a litter of pigs
So prolific a pig was of course the exception rather than the rule, but that sow farrowed twice a year while that evil-tempered boar was at MacLeary’s farm.
8. farrow — (of a cow) not pregnant, barren
Later he sold a farrow cow to the preacher, still full of spite after the harsh words of the Lenten sermon.
9. quoin — external corner of building or wall; wedge for aiming ship’s cannon; wedge for locking type for printing
The pirates thought his skill with quoin and linstock was almost unearthly.
10. hammam — Turkish bath
In the dark and moody hammam David lay upon the towel-covered hot stone wrapped in his peshtemal, waiting for the tellak.
11. prehension — grasping, act of taking hold
Even now, years after the fateful events of that awful summer, the couple’s movements and faces still seemed marked by the prehension of that overwhelming fear of long ago.
12. concrescence — growing together of originally separate parts
The science fiction writers of the 1940s and 1950s saw a future where the continued expansion of suburbs and freeways would lead inevitably to an enormous megalopolis being formed upon the Eastern seaboard, a giant concrescence of the once great cities of the American past into an overwhelming super-city which would swallow up all smaller towns and municipalities in its path.
13. midinette — Parisian salesgirl or milliner’s assistant
Even the poorest midinette in her cheapest coat knows more about style than ninety-five out of a hundred American tourists.
14. chopine — thick soled, almost stilt-like, shoes worn by European women in 18th Century
A direct line runs from the clunky hoof silhouette of the awkward chopine to the supposedly sexy outline of the present day stiletto.
15. seity — selfhood
Though the creation of language leads inevitably to the ascendancy of seity in moderns, the primacy of communication presupposes a social order that may be obviated by the fixation, not to say obsession, with an almost solipsist self-love.
16. parturition — childbirth
It is all very well and good to bemoan and belabor the pains of mental parturition; those pains cannot even begin to compare with the real thing.
17. foist — to impose an unwanted thing upon, to palm off
No one dares challenge the power of these liars, and so a mad devotion to idiocy is foisted into the very laws which were supposed to protect the public from such conmen.
18. shog — to shake or roll from side to side; to walk or move in jerks
The monster shogged towards us across the barn, and I was less frightened than bemused; how had this ponderous beast terrified the whole community?
19. guyot — flat-topped seamount
The ocean’s motion has swept away the tops of the guyots, which once were ordinary looking mountains before they sank beneath the waves.
20. rebozo — long woven shawl worn over the head and shoulders of Spanish and Mexican women
Wrapped in her pale blue rebozo the silent woman hunched over the cooking pot, stirring without cease.
Bonus Vocabulary
(British slang)
chancer — reckless and unscrupulous opportunist
His so-called friends are nothing but chancers and oafs, always ready with a scheme to separate Petey from his specie, but never there when the boy really needs a helping hand.
(British slang, now somewhat Yuppie)
sorted — completed, organized, arranged
“The drinks are all sorted; I’ve got Binny at the bar and fourteen bottles of Irish vodka.”
(Scots architecture)
but and ben — simple two-room cottage
The romance of the lowland sheep-farming life faded during that first winter in the almost freezing but and ben, whose walls seem to close in upon the miserable couple as they hid within from the lowering clouds.
(militaria)
Pickelhaube — typically Prussian spiked helmet
All of his former comrades sported lavish mustaches beneath the Pickelhauben they had worn in the memorial photo; only Jens had been clean-shaven at the reunion.
(American slang, early 20th C.)
fanning bee — informal conference, group discussion, gabfest (from the habit of worker bees ‘fanning’ their wings in hot weather to keep the hive cool)
After the game the usual crowd gathered at Barr’s soda shop on 15th for the usual fanning bee, and there was much concern over the poor performance of the rookie left-hander.