Friday Vocabulary

1. bolt — [botany] to change rapidly from growing primarily leaves to produce instead seeds and flowers

Spinach plants will bolt in hot weather conditions, leaving a plant with a very bitter taste (if it does not become entirely inedible).

 

2. verge — rod or staff carried as badge of office

You can see the first duke in the portrait which still hangs above the library fireplace, with his determined gaze beneath his coronet and cap, the verge of gold in his hands, and at his feet a pair of lurchers seeming almost small beneath his looming presence.

 

3. belletrist — writer of artistic and literary criticism

Chesterton was always better as belletrist than as novelist.

 

4. biro — [British] ballpoint pen

Thad slid a biro across the desk and silently pointed to the document awaiting my signature.

 

5. hemidemisemiquaver — sixty-fourth note

Nobody can really be expected to play a hemidemisemiquaver on the trumpet, and I’m pretty sure he only put those in the music so he could say the word over and over.

 

6. carbuncle — severe subcutaneous abscess; red sore on nose or face caused by drinking; red or fiery gem

I had been warned not to believe Darnton when the carbuncle on his nose glowed, though I quickly realized that when the former priest was in his cups he would say almost anything.

 

7. inchoate — incipient, not yet fully formed, unordered

Almost at once the inchoate republic was beset by troubles both external and internal.

 

8. viridescent — greenish

The surface of the muddy river was tinged with a viridescent glow caused, no doubt, by the efflorescence of algae.

 

9. pelagic — of or relating to the open sea, oceanic

So successful were these first pelagic fishing expeditions that the exploration of the inner forest was postponed for several years.

 

10. jocund — merry, cheerful, blithe

Slowly the jocund wedding party made their way down the path to the dappled grove.

 

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